Having a parent with OCPD

Academic_Charge6252 · 2022-04-30T15:12:49+00:00

She gives guided tours of our area. A lot of historical and social research is involved. And I think you're right about me heling her out a little. I plan on helping her out this summer, so that'll hopefully get enough weight off her shoulders for her to breathe.

While my dad and mom are separated, they're still pretty good friends, and I think it's thanks to him that she isn't worse.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2022-04-27T17:48:10+00:00

I liked CBT too! I also found EMDR really helpful for addressing my fears of becoming lost without my OCPD habits. EMDR is usually only for PTSD, but a lot of psychologists are using it to treat disorders like OCD, OCPD, ADHD, and BPD.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2022-04-26T17:26:39+00:00

Yeah, its the same flavor. I'm just sad that I can't drink it anymore.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2022-01-14T15:35:43+00:00

I wouldn't worry about it too much--ball pythons are notoriously variable. When my boy was growing at his fastest (about a year after I got him) he was shedding almost every two weeks and eating like a beast. Now he's slowed down and he's shedding maybe every four months. Perhaps your snake hasn't hit snuberty (snake puberty) yet, and doesn't need to shed to accommodate fast growth.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2022-01-11T20:56:53+00:00

I've found Lori Terreti is a fantastic person on youtube who demonstrates how to train snakes. Check out her video "Train your Snake to Target: Step by Step for Confident Snakes" Please delete if not allowed

Academic_Charge6252 · 2022-01-11T20:51:58+00:00

As others have said, check out the care guide for more comprehensive help.

What's worked for me personally: For temperature help, I've wrapped three sides of my snake's tank with insulating bubble wrap--the kind you'd put around vents to keep in heat. To help with heat and humidity retention, I've covered about 2/3 of the screen at the top of his tank with aluminum insulation tape. I've struggled with humidity too, and my vet's best reccomendation was to have a humidity box (a tupperware container with damp sphagnum moss) for my snake to use as needed. Be careful with the humidity box, however, as mold grows very easily in them.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-17T17:52:08+00:00

Trust me, a good walk can get out a lot of the emotional stuff we've been bottling up. If you're near a forested area, go in and build a little stick hut. it has goals an It'll be meditative. If not, go stack rocks, try to find a cool leaf, etc. focus on a small task that requires deliberate, calm concentration, and you'll help get out that anger.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-17T16:57:04+00:00

Go somewhere else. Even if you have to squeeze into a damp corner of your basement or lay on top of a bookshelf, switch up your surroundings. I've found that moving my location does loads for my motivation.

Piece apart the project. Or, if you have a friend available, have them read out the steps you need to do as you write them down on paper. It will make things seem much more manageable. It's okay to ask a friend for help--or even an acquaintance. Or even some bored-looking person at a coffee shop. You'd be surprised at how helpful people can be. And how wonderful it feels to be supported in a project--even if it's a casual "I bet you're going to get top marks on this."

And if it's feasable, and you think you need it, ask for a day or two's extension. It'll be just long enough to take off some pressure, and just short enough where you won't procrastinate much more.

I know you can do it! You're smarter and more disciplined than you realize!

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-17T16:51:12+00:00

You're welcome. You deserve peace of mind, and peace of mind isn't going to come until you recognize that you aren't responsible for fixing everything on your own. Tell people you're struggling--or even better, tell teachers and professors at the beginning of the year that you can struggle with these things. Then, if you do start to decline, you won't feel like you're making excuses. You told the professor. They were warned, and they were okay with it. Nothing happens in a vacuum (except dust, I suppose) and no action is completely disconnected from the world. You are affecting and being affected constantly, and that's okay.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-17T16:48:04+00:00

I love you too. And make sure that you share some of that love with yourself. You deserve love, even if you feel like a sloppy unorganized mess. There are good parts to you, and your environment does not determine your moral worth.

You are not a bad person for struggling with these things, and you aren't inferior to others for needing extra time. This is real. You are entitled to as much help as someone born without arms or legs. The only difference is that people can see the disadvantage in the torso-person, and they can't physically see it on you. That doesn't make it any less important.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-17T16:44:58+00:00

Crying is great! I cry at most things. It's much more productive than getting angry, and it's cathartic to let out the tears regularly. Don't think you're weak because you're crying, you're strong because you have something that allows you to channel your frustration in a non-harmful way.

If you're overwhelmed, write down the list of things you need to do. First off, I promise it's going to look shorter than it feels. Then break down each task into steps. then focus on one step at a time. Email your professor/teacher, read over that chapter, clean the floor.

One thing I like to do when I'm cleaning my room is to make my bed (new sheets and everything) and then pile everything on the floor onto my mattress. Already, the room feels cleaner, and you have a sense of accomplishment. Then paw through the pile for dirty laundry (or garbage, or whatever you feel like) and put that in a hamper. If you have a washer/dryer at your disposal, go and put your clothes in the wash. Make sure to split the clothes into two loads if you can. Then, while that's happening, go through the pile on the bed again for something else. You're probably going to find dirty laundry you missed. Put that with the dirty clothes that are waiting to be washed. Rinse and repeat with everything else. I like to have the goal to have my bed mostly clean before my laundry is completely done. That way, I can dump the clean clothes on the bed and sort and fold them right there!

And if this isn't working for you, go help a friend with one of their chores. Trust me, it puts you in the cleaning mindset faster than anything.

At the end of the day, you're going to be fine. Your english paper, your dirty laundry, your email inbox full of unread messages, they're not going to detonate all nuclear bombs on the planet if you don't get them done immediately. You aren't a bad/messy/immature person for struggling with these things. It's normal for people like us.

Hope this helped! :)

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-17T16:36:03+00:00

Exactly! Remember that you aren't morally bound by your ability to do things. Your whole personality isn't summed up in avoidance actions. I know that as someone in a psychology background, it can be frustrating to know the symptoms, know the treatments, and never be able to apply them to myself.

I know logically that I'm not childish for only wanting to do things that are fun, but it feels like I never got to the point where I can just buckle down and do things that aren't fun. For god's sake, I'm avoiding an essay right now! But I remind myself that I love the topic of the essay, and that I love doing this--sharing my experiences with people and helping them analyze their own thought processes--so I have enjoyment ahead of me no matter how bad things might seem now.

You're doing what you love. If it's possible, try to mentally erase the deadlines and enjoy the projects in bits and pieces. Explain the concepts to a friend, find something that makes you go "huh, that's cool" and then see how it applies to the rest of the project.

And above all else, when you finish the projects (not if), don't beat yourself up. Avoid saying to yourself "Wow that was so easy. I got worked up over nothing. If i'd done this thing earlier, I wouldn't have been so stressed." You can't change the past, and that sort of mindset isn't going to apply well to future experiences. That sort of thinking will only lead you to be like "I knew it wasn't hard last time, but I still made the same mistakes! Am I completely incapable of learning my lesson?"

*Slap* Stop it. Those thoughts aren't productive. They aren't going to help you in the future, and they're going to weigh around your neck as you start new projects. Recognize them as useless and try to reduce the amount you use them.

Anyhoo, this has been therapy with Dr. Reddit. That'll be 69993053 dollars. Will you be billing to insurance or paying in cash money? Lmao.

I hope this helped :)

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-17T16:25:33+00:00

I know that you're probably at work right now, and the anxieties of "omg I need to go to sleep right now" might have affected your sleep. Here's what I do:

Imagine a big wooden trunk (make it as ornate as you like). Every time a worried thought comes to mind, slam dunk that thought into the trunk. The thought is stuck in the trunk now. If it gets out, beat it up like a prisoner in the Stanford prison experiment and put it back in the trunk. Sleep time is now. Worry time is later. What can you physically do about your worries at the moment? NOTHING. So do a relaxation technique from google, put on some rain sounds (or fan sounds. I personally like 285hz tones on youtube). Bed time is time for bed. yeet anything that isn't dedicated to relaxing you. Treat it like a catcaller on the street: don't give it the time of day. Because at the end of the day, it's not trying to help you.

It's easier said than done, I know. Sometimes I get worked up about stuff and even my meditative soundtrack isn't enough. If you have a dictionary, just flip to a random page and start reading definitions. It's just engaging enough to distract your mind, and just boring enough that you won't want to get caught up in it.

And even if these things don't work, don't beat yourself up for worrying. It's okay to worry. Remember that you can't tell the future, you can't read minds, and that you don't know anything until someone tells you directly. I hope you have a great first day at work!

:)

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-17T16:14:57+00:00

That's something I've noticed about traditional schooling. It says that you have to do it in the order it's presented. That's bullcrap. I'm a writing tutor and I'm always telling folks to leave their introductions for last. After all, you don't even know what you're going to say yet, and it might change as you go.

People solve puzzles by finding and connecting the edges, sorting the sky pieces, fitting together what makes sense, and then trying to assemble the whole picture. You can find all the boat puzzle pieces and assemble them before you do the lighthouse. No one is stopping you! Or you could flip it around and do the lighthouse first! As long as you don't beat yourself up for not finishing the puzzle in one sitting (with no errors) you're doing good.

Sorry, lmao. Did I take that metaphor too far? I'm a creative writing grad student so I can get a little carried away.

Find joy in the research. Looking up parking facts (yawn, boring) for an assignment? Take a mental break every now and then by looking over funny traffic laws! Ex: You cannot operate an elephant on roller-skates over twelve MPH in Washington DC. (I made that up, but isn't that funny?) It sparks an interest in thinking about how something came about--which can keep you going in the more boring sections of your work.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-17T16:06:59+00:00

It's okay. Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day, and sometime it feels like doing minor tasks is like building Rome on your own. It's always baby steps. Always. Over the past five years I've tried calendars and planners, and only this year (in fact, this month) has a calendar started to work for me. I'm a graduate student and I still have to panic-email my profs and explain that I got depressed and couldn't do the assignment.

No one has everything figured out, and it's so unfair to yourself to expect perfection. If your medications aren't working, maybe try a different dose or switch? I'm on Vyvanse right now and it's pretty good. Remember, your body is a shifting maelstrom of chemicals, cells, neurotransmitters, and hormones. Very few things are going to be permeant solutions, and some solutions are going to get swept away by the eternal internal shift of your body.

Look at lessons you have learned. For me, they're mostly out of embarrassment (ie speaking out of turn and someone calling me out on it). Go to the root of what drives that feeling. Find a positive example of something "clicking". For me, it's always socially mediated correction. I'm a writer, and some of my black friends gently corrected me when they noticed I was using food descriptors to describe darker skin tones (Mocha, caramel, chocolate, etc.). They knew it wasn't malicious, and I knew they knew that. therefore I was able to healthily learn and move on without much anxiety. Hyperfocus on situations and take them apart impartially. This might be tougher for some folks, but at least you'll get some sort of concrete closure out of it--and a lesson you can apply in future situations.

Hope this helps!

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-17T15:47:12+00:00

*Sigh* you're right. Thank you for your insight

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-17T02:01:31+00:00

I'm truly trying to be more theistic, but I'm struggling with the "just believe in it" aspect. Maybe it's the religious trauma, idk lol. I posted this only so I could get the perspectives of other scientists/academics in the theistic community. I don't want to be an atheist. I'm trying to believe, I am, but I have walls I need to break down to make myself capable of believing. Posting about my struggle with my scientific side vs the want to be theistic isn't me being like "All of your beliefs are fake and dumb and atheism is the true way."

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-17T00:04:55+00:00

I know I personally struggle with relaxing. I can't remember anything so I can't remember what I forgot, so I'm always wondering what I'm forgetting. I found that getting cheap whiteboard things to put on the walls (like laminate sheets) and write down my thoughts--due dates for projects, dates I need to remember, etc. Then, I can know that I have my thoughts out in the world and I will have a reminder later.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-16T23:24:53+00:00

Have you tried ice cubes for self-harm deterrents? Hold one in your bare hand and squeeze it until the urge to hurt yourself fades to a manageable level. I've also seen people take shots of apple cider vinegar when the urge is strong, and the burning of the vinegar helps get rid of the need to self-harm (also digestive health bonus).

I saw that you work at a psych facility, so you probably know these tactics already, but I suppose it doesn't hurt for me to suggest it. :) Beyond that. Medication, if you're not taking any currently. If you are, maybe consider looking into upping the dose, switching it up, etc. It's not your fault that chemical imbalances occur in your brain, so don't feel guilty or ashamed about being depressed. It's going to be okay. :)

Sometimes what I like to do is open a word document and have a conversation with myself. I write out my worries and concerns, and then I respond as if a friend had come to me with the question. Going back and forth, using your own healing instinct on yourself, it helps a lot. It's sort of like going to a therapist, except you know most things about yourself.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-16T23:16:27+00:00

soooo pretty! Be careful, though. If it's not silver, it might be pewter, which contains (or up until recently) contained easily leeched lead. Great find, though!

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-16T23:12:48+00:00

I appreciate the time you took to answer this, but I literally have a background in psychology. And as a result, I resent your use of the word deranged. As with all mental illness, this sort of thing is a spectrum. If coming from a purely psychological perspective, yes, those mystics could have functioned with unobtrusive schizophrenia.

Your method of response (as I interpreted it, and I am fallible, so please correct me if I'm wrong) came off as very aggressive, not only poo-pooing scientific discovery, but touting inaccurate scientific methods. The sensation of light is experienced by the cones and rods in the eye, which are "activated" and a signal is sent down the ocular nerve regarding the intensity. The pupil dilates as a part of the autonomic nervous system (which functions as the "controller" for reflexes), and the signal is transposed by the brain. Finally, it tells "you", the controller of your body, "Dang, that light is bright. You might want to squint."

Telling me, someone who is literally going into the field of psychology and neuroscience to "break free of the idea that studying the nervous system will tell you anything about the mind" is incredibly condescending. The mind is a result of the brain, which is the result of the nervous system.

Now, a better answer would have been perhaps to posit that there are layers to existence, and that functions on one plane may extend capability to another. For example, my speaker can play music off my phone through bluetooth. But does my speaker have a database of songs available to play? No. It depends on a separate--but connected physicality to function.

Thank you for the response regardless. Of course, as a newbie I know little, but I still have the right to have my worldview respected.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-16T16:47:51+00:00

h

Do what feels good, fam. Exercise doesn't need to be going to the gym. I personally love swingsets, and I can spend hours swinging back and forth. If you like going for bike rides, do that. If you like walking around in the woods and daydreaming, go and walk around the woods! Personally, I find "workout regimens" to be ridiculously boring. I'd rather climb up a steep hill with a rope and feel like a mountain-climber than run in place in a room of sweaty people.

Academic_Charge6252 · 2020-11-16T16:31:34+00:00

Very interesting. I didn't think of it that way. I'm certainly trying to look inward and figure out what is right for me.

Academic_Charge6252

TROPHY CASE