Hallelujah!

I have not had a great couple of days on the response prevention front. I have not prevented my responses. I have been both obsessive and compulsive.
Check out my hands:

Scarlett O'Hara would say those are not the hands of a lady. That's what too much hand washing, hand sanitizer, and cleaning with bleach (without the proper use of gloves) looks like. I know my behavior is really probably worse for my physical (let alone mental) health than coexisting with the germs, but that's not how it feels. So I keep thrashing my hands and loading on the lotion. The lotion is losing.

See, those cracks kinda hurt, and they are really the least of it, so I have decided I need to look into therapy and medication again. Can't someone just give me a pill to cure my crazy? Okay, probably not. But I'm hoping to bring the anxiety down enough to help me not to engage in the compulsions, thus allowing me to deal with exposure therapy sans having a panic attack every five minutes. Finding a therapist is really a lot more work than I thought it would be. I figured there'd be therapists aplenty wanting to cash in, but it seems there is no shortage of crazy. All week I've been playing phone tag, being told my insurance isn't accepted, being told my particular brand of crazy isn't really this or that therapist's focus (depression people, you are in the money, by the way; they all seem to specialize in that), and being told "not accepting new patients" (this happens a lot---I suspect an above average ratio of crazy people to mental health specialists in the DC area).

My first therapy session was a trip. It was a huge step for me at the time, and I was pretty sure it would show up on some document to any possible future employer in bold letters reading, "CRAZY PERSON ALERT," but I was desperate enough to live with that stigma. I went to my first therapist before we moved. At first she seemed kinda like what I expected. She told me she's really into brain science. She told me that my serotonin levels are probably off. Okay, seems reasonable. Then she told me we needed to get to the root causes of my anxiety, the real issue being fear. That all seemed properly Freudian. So we played a question and answer game.

What are you afraid of? 

Hantavirus. (I was still mostly stuck on one germ then; mouse poop kinda triggered my germophobia going OTT.)

Why?

BECAUSE I COULD DIE! MY CHILDREN COULD DIE!

So the root cause of your issue is fear of death? 

Duh. Mice would just be cute if not for the fact that THEY CAN FRIGGIN' KILL YOU. Sure, getting sick isn't fantastic either, but what really bothers me is the whole death thing.

So you need to stop being afraid of death.

Yeah, not gonna happen. I don't have any plans to discontinue death avoidance.
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Then things got weird. My therapist, maybe figuring we were the same religion, it being St. George, UT, started bearing her testimony to me. For real. She had been in a car accident and had a near death experience, she explained. And she had seen the light, so you see, there's no reason to fear death; she saw Jesus. And where would we Utah Mormons be if the pioneers had feared death? (I don't know. New York? Personally, I've never been sure dragging your children across the country with a handcart is the best plan.) I hope she did see Jesus (but if so, which version?), but one more near stranger's near death experience probably isn't the cure for me. Also, I wanted to ask about brain science, to ask if maybe getting hit on the head had caused her brain to fire off some chemicals that made her think she'd seen Jesus. Instead, I nodded my head and wondered if maybe I should look into a more traditional therapist. But there you have it, folks, never fear. My therapist saw Jesus. So it's all good.