Fish and Fear

I've been writing a lot lately about victorious living. I'd definitely prefer to write about the good stuff, but honesty demands a fuller picture. This is a rather long post. If you are at all curious about the way my mind works, or what it's like to live with OCD, or rather, to live getting over OCD, this is my attempt to give you a deeper look. I also touch on ERP (Exposure Response Prevention), the treatment that has allowed me to get past some of the fear-paralysis. But if you aren't interested, or if you're too busy just now for a long read, I'm not a bit offended. So, with that caveat, here goes:

A few days ago, I decided to face one of my fears and cook up some fish. Yes, fish--the stuff the Japanese and Dutch and Swedes and Norwegians all eat raw. I'm horrified of anything raw; don't ask me why: I know that ultimately, the fear is irrational, but irrational or not, I'll still find reasons, and writing about them only solidifies them for me. I’m also aware of the risk that someone else with contamination OCD might be reading this, and would not need more reasons to be afraid of stuff! (Having said that, if you are in the worst throes of contamination OCD, and you aren't supposed to even be on the internet right now, please don't read this. Contamination OCD is notorious for piggy-backing on anyone else’s hint of a suggestion of a fear).

Anyway, I took on the fish challenge. I'd had quite a bit of success taking on challenges in the kitchen: dealing with raw veggies, cooking potatoes, eggs, ground beef, steak. This ERP (Exposure Response Prevention) isn't easy and doesn't change things quickly, but with lots of practice, I've been seeing changes in my levels of anxiety.

Here, just a quick explanation of ERP (Exposure Response Prevention). Basically, the idea is that actions determine belief. If I act like I'm terrified of something, I'll believe that it really is dangerous. It's strange, I think I always assumed it was the opposite: that beliefs determined actions. But I've discovered lately how very potent the causal connection is between action and belief. The more I clean and avoid things "just in case" it could possibly cause disease, the more completely certain I become that it will. So instead, ERP is me forcing myself to face the fears, do the dreaded, and practice living AS THOUGH I believed that these things are not, in fact, dangerous.

The goal with ERP is to stay with the feared object or activity until anxiety decreases to a manageable level. For me, this never happens in a single cooking session, so I will have to re-visit fish probably a dozen or more times before it stops causing me horrendous anxiety. That's life with ERP.

The practice session was brutal, and I have to admit, I did not do very good ERP. First, I spent hours on the internet trying to ensure that the type of fish my dad had bought was in the lowest mercury category (seeking assurance on the internet is one of the worst of my obsessions). At the time, I don't think I really realized I was seeking assurance again, but once I had visited about a dozen sites that all said opposite things about my fish, it finally clicked that I was doing it again. So I got my hubby to take over. He found one reliable site, and confirmed that this fish would be fine. ERP-wise, I probably shouldn't have even checked. What's one little meal of fish slightly higher in mercury than the lowest possible…? But sometimes ERP has to go in stages....

Anyway, once I'd determined that this fish was actually going to get cooked, I had to thaw it. The package said to thaw it in the fridge for 4-6 hours. Typical for my OCD, I had to follow the directions exactly, so I put the frozen fish in the fridge precisely 6 hours before I wanted to get it into the oven.

Well, 6 hours later it wasn't anywhere close to thawed. My mom pointed out that she always thaws fish on the counter, but of course I couldn't, because the package said to thaw in the fridge! There it is: OCD is all about RULES.

Since it was frozen, I had to handle it to break it up. It would only be the second time I'd touched raw meat since before the OCD flared. I took a deep breath, turned the tap on BEFORE I got my hands fishy, and got it over with. A few minutes later, after I'd dried my hands, put the fish in the oven, adjusted my apron, and gone on to chopping vegetables, the panicked thought hit: "Did I really wash my hands? Or did I do it well enough? And even if I did, what if some germs from the fish splashed up onto my arms while I was washing my hands...?" This kind of thing is perfectly run-of-the-mill for my brain on OCD. And it is exhausting, agonizing. But I've learned that the only way to deal with it is to at least pretend to ignore it. So I kept chopping vegetables. But I was crying and shaking, and there were no onions in sight. I wept through the rest of the meal prep, but I kept going. I dreaded the time when I'd have to pick up my baby, wondering if there was nasty toxic fish juice all over myself, but I didn't run for the shower. I just kept cooking and crying. Then the fear turned a slight corner: what if I do run for the shower? I've done all this ERP work, and I am so close to breaking down, quitting, changing all the towels and aprons in sight, and going to have a shower. But if I do, all this hard work and anxiety would be for nothing. But if I don't, I'll be even more anxious.... But if I do, this won't ever get any better.... And on and on....

By the time supper was supposed to be finished, I was exhausted and as tense as a bad sewing machine, and the fish still wasn't cooked. It was in the oven, sitting in a liter or so of liquid from thawing. At this point, I got offers of help from several directions: my mom, my dad, my hubby. But I couldn't even answer; my mind was frozen as the fish had been. When I get anxious, I can't think, I can't talk, I can't even comprehend what people are saying to me. So I just kept going as best I could. My mom suggested pouring the liquid off the fish so that it would cook faster, but I was terrified, certain that there was no way I could do that without splashing raw fish juice everywhere. So my mom did that for me.

Dinner was finally on the table, and my little lily had to be picked up. I did it, somehow, and even nursed her after supper without changing my clothes. That was a couple weeks ago, and she did not get sick!

But I haven't tried cooking fish again.

Eggs, laundry, a newly crawling baby, packing, PMS, and a road trip would be enough challenges for the next little while....