A Place to Put My Irrational / Intrusive Thoughts: Part 1

Note: I began writing this blog in 2024, which was a very stressful time in our lives. Things are much happier now.

Okay, so I have OCD. I didn’t find this out until I was a grown-up lady in her 40s. It was a fucking eye-opener. More so than realizing I have aphantasia or admitting I am definitely autistic.

With the OCD comes irrational and intrusive thoughts. In an effort to remove the power from these things, I decided to start sharing them.

Please note, I know these thoughts are ridiculous and irrational. Sometimes my brain does not and will loop on them for hours. It will not be helpful to tell me things like, “That would never happen,” or “That is a ridiculous thing to think,” or “You shouldn’t worry about things like that”. I know this. That is part of my mental illness.

I’ve found that if I speak things aloud (most of the time through the form of writing here in this blog), they don’t loop as much in my head. So I’m trying that with my dumb old intrusive thoughts to see how it works for them.

Here they are, in the order they invaded my brain:

• The act of posting this list of intrusive thoughts is sure to make them all come true.
• I will start a fire because I am using both the heater in the basement bathroom and the dryer, which is in the room next door. I am unsure if this has ever happened before, but I just know I’m gonna have to run out of the shower with the house in flames behind me.
• I haven’t heard from Mickey, and he is somehow involved in the incident at the Ypsilanti Walmart, where a lady is slashing liquor bottles with a machete.
• I heard a noise upstairs. A quick creaking sound. That must mean that the attic has been taken over by squirrels because it is cold outside, and they have nowhere to go.
• Every single time Mickey leaves for work, my brain tries to convince me at least 8 times that he has gotten into an accident on the way there.
• Should I go taste some of the human remains that live in my office to determine if they are, in fact, salty like my brain thinks?
• My brain constantly tries to convince me that the things Mickey says when he is in a meltdown are true.
• In the middle of happily reading a book, my brain decided to hit me with this one: “What if you slice through a couple of your fingers when you cook your grilled cheese later? But with the spatula, not a knife. So that it really hurts.” Along with the accompanying feelings, including a heart race. Wtf, mate?
• 7/10 times when I open the door to have stoop time, my brain convinces me I left it open too long and one of my squirrel friends has snuck in and wroken havoc. Yes, I know wroken isn’t a real word, but it really works here. Wreaked felt like it wasn’t chaotic enough.
• In the middle of the night, when it is windy, and I hear the wind whipping around the corners, my brain tells me that the mudroom is actively separating from the house.
• When it rains, I’m convinced there are multiple brand-new leaks in the roof that have appeared overnight, and the roof will cave in at any second.
• When I haven’t heard from someone I love in a long while, my brain will try to convince me that something awful has happened, either healthwise or now they hate me and never want to talk to me again.
• Oh, my most frequent intrusive thought is that my claw-foot bathtub will fall through the floor every single night while bathing.

This is just a short sample of the mess of my brain. It gets swirly in there when times are stressful. I do think that taking the time to type some of these thoughts out and share them will, in the end, be very helpful.

It has also helped me figure out that I have two clear OCD triggers, and those are:

• the weather
• people I love’s health

Both of these have very valid reasoning. The weather, because D and I (and hubby at the time) lived through back-to-back-to-back hurricanes, where the roof blew off after the first one. And the health? Well, my dad died of a heart attack while he was out of town almost 30 years ago. And then, more recently, Logan was very sick at a time when he was radio silent, which was another shock to the brain.

Now, I’ve done enough work on said brain to know that the move here is not to avoid triggers completely, but to work through them. You know, come up with some self-talk and a plan to move past these things that have not happened so that I can enjoy the ones that do.

However, if a squirrel friend sneaked into the house, I would definitely name and befriend them and have a pet, probably.

I forget about this blog post a lot, so this is only a small fraction (say, 0.05%) of what is going on in my head at any given time. It’s wild how my positive thoughts have to scream to make themselves heard. I will note that I began this blog in 2024, and I’ve made so much progress in my mental health since then.

Is this something you struggle with as well? How can we overcome this stupid problem together? I know you’re amazing, why can’t YOU know it too?!

I titled this part 1 in case I wanted to do a part 2, but we’ll see…