Dreams + hurry + worry = OCD

I have been having some really vivid dreams of late. I hope this is because I am sleeping deeply, although I do feel absolutely exhausted at night. Perhaps that is the Easter holidays with four year old twins. 

The dreams are of course random but they seem to consist of similar feelings. There is control, and there is worry. Worry that I am going to be found out. Last night, aside being at my old school where I felt really left out (which was often the case), I was in an old house with multiple floors and a steep staircase. Perhaps the floors signify the layers that have to be shed to get to the true self, to be rid of OCD, which has plagued me on and off and in varying degrees for most of my adult life. 

The house was really messy, and I was racing against the clock to tidy it before my husband came home – not a reality in our lives at all, I think the point was that I was hurrying and worrying. These are such a big part of my life, less so now that I am in recovery from OCD, but they exist nonetheless. 

In another dream, I was in a kids’ clothes shop with a friend but I was terrified because I had lost my children, or I just didn’t know where they were. We were in our local town but it looked like New York with massive buildings. 

I have spent the morning feeling very wired today, perhaps last night’s dream propelled it, or perhaps it was because I overate yesterday and my sleep was fitful, disturbed. Gabor Maté’s book Scattered Minds has a wonderful title for ADHD, something I deal with on a daily basis. I think it’s so aligned with OCD – for me, anyway. Doing a million things at once so quash the worry, but creating more worry as a consequence. The way I interpret wired is actually scattered. Not knowing where to start. 

My OCD definitely flares up when I am stressed, so I wonder why I find turning away from stress so difficult. I have blogged about this before, in my post about ADHD and making an old fashioned bed. 

Control is inherent here. If I can control what people think of me, then I will be happy. If I can control when I am next going to get some work, I will be happy. Happiness is sort of ‘over there’ – it’s like a piece of plastic that blows across of car park in the wind… as you try and catch it, literally as you pounce, it moves further away, eluding you. 

BKS Iyengar, the great Master of Iyengar yoga, said that learning to train your breath, i.e. being calm and/or happy, is like trying to catch a horse that doesn’t want to come to you. The more you try, the more it keeps running away. Stay still and chill out, basically, and the best is yet to come. That’s really hard when you have OCD or ADHD. I received an email from a yoga teacher I know, also on Substack – Carolyn Cowan or Deserving Calm, that said calm is really around the corner, waiting to be discovered, if only we would let it. 

It is a daily choice and one that I can access when I choose to. It is about choosing and I don’t always make sound choices. Being on my phone too much, answering every message because I am WORRIED that if I don’t someone will be angry. HURRYING. WORRYING. And also forgiving myself when I don’t do life perfectly. 

Exposure and Response Prevention or ERP is so useful, even when your OCD hasn’t spiked. You can use it any time to really feel what is going on for you, sit with the anxiety, and then let the anxiety come down. I think that is a way of accessing calm. Contact me on jessica@jessicadrake.biz if you’d like to know more, or book a session.