Obsession: Not Just a Fragrance

Obsession is an unreasonable fixation and compulsion is what follows. Anxiety has opened a whole new world for me in the area of obsession/compulsion. I used to be afraid of nothing. I would eat, drink, breathe, travel, do whatever I pleased, without thinking about what the consequence might be. But with anxiety is a special thing called a "trigger’ – a feeling associated with a situation, a food, anything really. For example, if someone with an anxiety disorder (me, perhaps?) ate a peanut butter sandwich and shortly afterward had an anxiety attack, peanut butter becomes a trigger and must be avoided. As the illogical mind continues to churn out obsessive thoughts, it can veer off into any food that people might be allergic to – shell fish, strawberries, bananas – or any food that the sufferer is unfamiliar with or hasn’t had in a while – sushi, Indiana food, the list is infinite. I’m at the point now that I won’t eat anything that anyone in the history of mankind has ever been allergic to, even though I’ve never had any food allergies in my life.

Then it moves into foods that don’t taste "right." I’ve bought a gallon of milk and, even though everyone who tried it said it was fine, it just didn’t taste "right" so I couldn’t drink it. If I’ve eaten something that changes the way I taste, like onion or garlic, even though I KNOW its because of the other taste in my mouth, if the next thing I eat doesn’t taste "right" I won’t eat it.
Sometimes there is no logic involved in the illogical obsession/compulsion. For instance, I won’t drink water from any other source besides my water cooler and certain restaurants. To go one step further, I won’t drink the water from a new bottle in my water cooler until someone else has drunk it first! I won’t drink any water from a portable bottle unless I empty out the water that comes in it and refill it with my pre-tested cooler water!!

I’m even worse with smells. I can’t be around anyone who is wearing perfume or any kind of scent. Stores filled with scented things are also on me to-be-avoided list. And if I’m driving and smell something like fresh cut grass or diesel fuel, I roll up my windows and turn off the heat/AC, even though I always have it set on recycling the interior air. I don’t want to take any chances. Why would smells be a problem? Because I’m afraid it will give me an asthma attack or stop me breathing, even though I don’t have asthma or any lung problems!

And drugs! Don’t even get me started on them. I can’t take anything. No Tums, no Tylenol, no antibiotics, no sedatives which might actually make me feel less anxious. I had a bad reaction to a drug I was prescribed in college, compesine, which made my muscles tense up, my eyes roll back in my head…it was horrid. Oddly enough, that didn’t make me stop using drugs (legal, prescribed or OTC). It wasn’t until I started trying anti-depressants for my anxiety that the fear began. I tried 3 different ones and each one made the anxiety so much worse that I got to the point that suicide seemed the only relief. After that, no drug was going into my body no matter what. Even though I’d taken Xanax for many years, I couldn’t take it after that. Even though nobody has a problem with Tylenol, I can’t put it in my mouth. I tried some Tums the other day to see if it would settle my stomach, and I had such anxiety from it that I won’t do it again. I had hand surgery this year and coped with the pain by using ice packs and elevation alone! I just hope I never have any illness that requires medicine. I don’t even want to think about that.

These are, I know, irrational thoughts. I know in the logical side of my brain that none of these things will hurt me. But my illogical side is so much more powerful than the logical one that I’m stuck listening to it alone.

So there you have it. Another view from inside my hell.