🧠#103: Pipes and puzzles
After another challenging week, I share a positive spike, taking my kids and winning the organ, and the return of sudoku.
You can view this update on my blog at bennorris.com.
After another challenging week, I share a positive spike, taking my kids and winning the organ, and the return of sudoku.
These weekly updates share life with OCD as part of my Mental Work Health project to reduce stigma around mental health, especially at work.
Something hard
A positive spike
I shared a couple weeks ago that I had gone completely off of Prozac, which I’ve found the most helpful so far in helping to manage my OCD symptoms. That was in update #101: Tapering off everything.
Then last week, I shared my experience being off of everything, except Xanax & Dr Pepper.
That was such an awful week that it caused me to stop and consider the course I was taking. The goal of the changes was to improve my baseline a little bit from where I was. But I know that when I’m on the Prozac, my OCD is manageable. I don’t feel like I want to die, and I’m able to move forward with things. I’ve gone off and on a couple times, and each time, it serves to remind me just what a difference it makes.
So I met with my psychiatrist and decided I am going to stop the experimentation phase for now, and get back on what I know works for me. At least well enough.
Almost immediately after starting the Prozac again, I started feeling so much better. Intellectually, I knew that it wasn’t actually the medication yet—this one takes a bit to build up in my system before it really does anything. But my psychiatrist has talked with me about the value and importance of the placebo effect.
I think a lot of the benefit came from the hope that it instilled in me. Part of what I was excited about was the lack of uncertainty. I knew much more of what to expect, and could more or less plan on a return to being functional within a few weeks.
A couple days after the positive spike, I was back to spending half the day curled in my armchair, just trying to make it through the hour.
I felt robbed. “I was feeling so much better,” I thought. “How could this be happening again?”
In my moments of lucidity, I knew that this is what I should expect. I’m not out of the woods yet. I still have a little ways to go before I can expect my body to stabilize. And even then, I’ll still have OCD. I should just be able to manage it better.
At the end of the week, I looked back on my mood tracker for the past month.
I could see how things had gone downhill, and then been so low for a while. There was the clear spike, and return to baseline. But there was also hope. Movement is good at this point.
As hard as this week was again, I feel hopeful that better times are just around the corner.
Something good
Winning the organ
As a father, one of the hardest things for me is seeing my children suffer, particularly when it’s with distress that feels all too common. OCD, and mental illness in general, has a strong genetic component, so I am not surprised when I see some of my traits showing up in my kids.
On Saturday, I had the chance to take some of my kids downtown in Salt Lake City, to Temple Square for a special event. The local chapter of the American Guild of Organists had organized an annual activity called Pedals, Pipes, and Pizza, to give children exposure to playing the organ.
I was hoping to take three of my kids, but the morning off, one of the kids couldn’t get going. The distress levels were too high. It was too early in the morning, and required changing into church clothes, and we were going to be gone too long. So that child stayed home. Chalk up a win for OCD.
When the rest of us got there, we got to start in the historic Tabernacle and learn about the organ in there. It is one of the largest in the world, with 11,623 pipes.
Over the rest of the morning, we had the chance to see, and even play practice organs in the basement of the Assembly Hall, as well as the main performance organ there, and also the magnificent organ in the Conference Center.
We discovered that the main point of the activity was to give the children a chance to play a piece on each of the organs. One of my children never would play, because other people were present and would hear. Score another for OCD.
But the third child was our victory story. That child also refused at first to play, but when I pulled up sheet music of “Silent Night” on my iPad, and annotated it with all the notes, she agreed to at least try. After playing a few measures in the Conference Center, she looked up at me and asked if she could be done. At the last organ we visited, after adding annotations of all the fingerings to the music, she played the whole piece. She was so proud of herself.
Both kids that went had a great experience. It was a good reminder for me that even if OCD intrudes in life and takes away some experiences, we can still succeed overall.
Something else
Return of sudoku
One of the activities that has helped me make it through the past couple weeks has been the excellent sudoku app, Good Sudoku.
This is one that I first wrote about nearly two years ago in update #16: Distress tolerance & sudoku. It has come and gone, like most of my obsessions, and re-entered my life a few weeks ago.
As I wrote back in 2020:
There is a fine line for me between distracting my brain as part of distress tolerance, and numbing or seeking escape. Whether it was the right thing or not, I found great relief this past week in discovering the Good Sudoku app.
This was perfect for me. My level of agitation continued to be high until I could engage my brain enough to be distracted. Trying to read or watch TV was not cutting it, but sudoku was perfect. I enjoyed ignoring the time component and focusing on finding the patterns and solving the puzzles.
Because the app helps you level up to do harder and harder puzzles, I can regularly stay perched at the line between engagement and frustration. If I need a little bit more satisfaction, I can drop down and do an easier puzzle. If I need more brain stimulation, I can try a harder one.
One of the best things for me to keep me from tipping over into pure frustration is the Hint feature. If I feel stuck, I can get a hint and find the move that I hadn’t been able to see. I try to play hard enough puzzles that I typically need 1-3 hints.
So often, I wish that life had a Hint button. My OCD will often cause my brain to get stuck trying to understand something that someone said, and not allow me to move on. I wish that I could just get an alternate explanation without requiring the person to say things in the “right” way so that I can process them more easily.
Until that arrives, I need to continue to sit with the distress of uncertainty and do my best.
Wrap up
I’ve heard from a number of people who are also struggling right now. Life is hard! I hope that you can meet the challenges you are facing with grace and compassion for yourself.
The best Hint button I think I’ve found for life is self-compassion. It unlocks so many things when you can allow yourself to just be and do without judgment or condemnation.