The Hidden Battle: A Lifetime with OCD, Anxiety and Hope

 

Transcript

ANNOUNCER  This is Curious Incident, a podcast for special needs families, and your window into the world of special education. Special needs parenting can be challenging, and we want to make it easier by providing you with the resources you need to help your child.

ADAM:  It’s my pleasure to present my next guest on the Curious Incident podcast, Kristine Champagne. Kristine has been my assistant since she joined our law firm in January 2023. She saw the move to our firm as an opportunity to expand her knowledge and skills while ensuring that her work continues to be meaningful and helpful to others. Kristine brings with her over 15 years of experience working in education with many of those years spent specifically supporting students, their families, and their educators. Kristine, it’s wonderful to be with you here today.

KRISTINE:  Thank you, Adam. It’s a pleasure to be here.

ADAM:  Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself?

KRISTINE:  Certainly. I was born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I lived in Ottawa for the first 40 years of my life. I worked for the Public School Board in Ottawa for just over 15 years, and much of that was spent in the school environment, and also a portion of that was spent at the Board Office supporting the Learning Support Services Department, which in the Public Board in Ottawa is the equivalent of the Special Education Department. When I saw the opportunity to join the firm, I saw it as something that I could really connect with because I love being behind the scenes and supporting and knowing that the work I’m doing is contributing to the betterment of others.

ADAM:  Absolutely. Kristine, how early did your anxiety and OCD first show up as a child, and what were some of the earliest signs that your worries were different from what other kids might typically experience?

KRISTINE:  Looking back, I can probably say that I wasn’t aware that I had anxiety and OCD until probably my mid-teens when I had an incident occur in my life that I know we’ll speak about later, and that incident is what led me to get treatment, seek help, do therapy, be a little bit more aware of who I was as a person, and so now looking back, I can tell you honestly that I don’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t have anxiety and OCD, excessive worrying and rituals that I constantly had to perform.

ADAM:  I’ve spoken with many people who have OCD and they’ve all talked about having struggled with it when they were younger and the confusion of not knowing what it was, and so I’m just wondering what that experience was like for you and how you view it when you’re reflecting back on it.

KRISTINE:  It was a lot. I didn’t know at the time that it was a lot. I didn’t realize that everyone didn’t feel the way that I felt, that they didn’t put the pressures on themselves, even as a small child. I put so many pressures on myself, and not because they came from anywhere externally. They truly are something that I somehow conjured up in my brain, and that’s kind of where it all began with me, and I don’t remember a time when I didn’t do it. Looking back now and I think of a four-year-old Kristine, I think, wow, I can’t believe that I didn’t realize the way that my brain was working wasn’t the same as most people.

ADAM:  What was four-year-old Kristine worrying about?

KRISTINE:  One of the biggest worries that I had growing up was that I would disappoint my parents or my family. It’s truly not because my parents ever put any pressure on me to be anything more than I am, and they’ve always been so encouraging for me to be myself and to figure out who that was when I was younger. But for some reason, I put this tremendous amount of pressure on myself to be the perfect child.

ADAM:  You often describe anxiety and OCD as best friends. What does that relationship feel like day to day?

KRISTINE:  I say that they’re best friends, but they’re also the biggest enemies. So when I think of them, they work hand in hand, and they don’t always work in the same order. One can happen, triggering the other, and the other can happen. So there are times when I am sleep-deprived, feeling stressed about different things, work—this is your fault, Adam—you know, work, family, all of that, and all of those things will contribute to my intrusive thoughts, things that happen. And when those creep in, then that will trigger my anxiety. And sometimes it’s the opposite. Sometimes I will be doing something that’s completely out of my comfort zone, and that will then trigger intrusive thoughts in reverse. So for example, flying. Flying for me is very difficult. Not because I have a fear of flying. I think I have the very rational fear of crashing that everybody else has, but for the most part for me, flying is difficult because it is not something I have any control over. When I think about flying, I think about being in the air, and the what-ifs for me are what if you begin to panic? What if, what if, what if? All of the panics, the hyperventilating, all of that, the fight-or-flight mechanism that kicks in when that starts, that anxiety that I’m feeling triggers the what-ifs—intrusive thoughts. But then there are other times it’s reverse, where I just have these intrusive thoughts, and then I begin having anxiety because I’m having the thoughts. I have anxiety about having the thoughts, not necessarily what the thoughts are, not necessarily just the fact that I’m having them, and that I don’t have control over

ADAM:  them. Just pointing out the word you used, control. So much of OCD is about control or feeling like you’re lacking it. You talked about intrusive thoughts, you talked about what-if, you talked about the cycle, so let’s work to break this down together. Can you talk about what intrusive thoughts felt like for you as a child, and is there one that still to this day stands out for you?

KRISTINE:  For me, as a child, my intrusive thoughts centered more so around my family. In particular, I would say my parents. I think that I worried about anything changing my home environment. So that could be if my parents had an argument, I would worry that they were now going to get divorced. And if my parents went out for dinner or with friends, I would worry that something was going to happen to them they would have a car accident on their way home and be killed, and my world would end the way that I know it. And so my intrusive thoughts were centered around my parents, my family. And to this day, because I live 500 miles away from my family, I still battle them. And so they’re different, but they do still center a lot around my family. So I worry about my parents’ well-being. My father has had some health issues in the past. And so those health issues, the anxiety that I felt with them triggered new intrusive thoughts, new worries. I can say that I definitely still struggle with similar intrusive thoughts. They’ve progressed over the years because I think I’ve always put so much value in my family and my home life. And this now includes my husband and my daughter. Because I’ve always put so much value in my family, my home life being my center, my grounding, I think that that also makes me co-relate those anxieties and intrusive thoughts to center around them.

ADAM:  So the intrusive thought starts with a worry. And what is it about the thought that you experience in a different way than someone who doesn’t have OCD experiences it?

KRISTINE:  I will have that thought hundreds of times. They will happen so frequently and the feeling, the physical feeling that I have when that thought occurs, when it runs through my brain, the physical feeling that I have when that thought occurs, it’s as though it’s the first time I’m hearing it every single time. So I have the thunk in my stomach that drop feeling, the heart beating fast, the palpitations, the angst, the worry, and it occurs every single time. I have normal typical everyday worries that everybody has and that does not happen. Or maybe it happens once and never happens again because I’ve thought the thought through and I worked out the solution to it and I’ve moved on. But when it becomes an intrusive thought, whether I’ve come to a solution, whether I’ve figured out what it is, I will repeat the cycle every single time.

ADAM:  And you’ve told me, and I think this is true for lots of people with OCD, that you know the fear is irrational. And yet you keep having the thought over and over and you feel the fear as though it’s imminent and real. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

KRISTINE:  You asking me that question actually prompted me to think of how there have been instances when I am trying to describe things to someone who doesn’t have OCD and battle with the anxiety and intrusive thoughts the way that I do. They struggle to understand what is actually happening because for them they have the logical side of the brain, which I also have, that says it makes no sense that you’re thinking this repeatedly and that you’re worrying about it exactly the same way repeatedly. And that even if you’ve come to a solution or a resolution to that thought, you’re still reliving it over and over again. So when I think about OCD, the way that my brain works and all of that and putting it together, it’s really challenging because I have the logical side of my brain that says, you don’t need to think this. Why are you thinking this? This makes zero sense. That’s not going to happen. If you count this and you do this and you wear this on a Wednesday and none of that’s going to change anything. I logically know this, but there’s this little imp in my mind that says, nope, you still need to do it all.

ADAM:  So you mentioned counting. How did counting become such a central compulsion in your life and what did it mean to you at

KRISTINE:  the time? Counting became a central compulsion for me back when I was younger and I recall specifically an evening when my parents had gone out and my sister was babysitting me and my parents hadn’t come home yet. Of course, I was worrying and all of the scenarios were running through my head. And a way that I distracted myself from the worrying was that I was sitting at the front window of my house and I decided to count the cars as they went by. And then I began telling myself, okay, my parents are going to be home within 20 cars coming by. Now I lived in the country. So you’re thinking 20 cars, you live in the city and you’re thinking, okay, that’s three seconds. For me, that was probably a 15 minute time span from where I lived kind of thing. And so I said, you’re going to count 20 cars and they’re going to be home. And that’s kind of what triggered it, where it began. The counting for me actually progressed into other things when other things happened in life. So counting for me has gotten much less, thankfully. I know that for me in the early stages in my childhood teens, early twenties, counting

ANNOUNCER  was very important to me.

ADAM:  Some people don’t understand the relief that people with OCD get from the compulsion. Do you want to speak to that?

KRISTINE:  When you have an intrusive thought, when you have OCD and it manifests in the way that mind does, the intrusive thought happens. And it can be something unintentional that occurs that you will suddenly begin to use as a way to cope with the intrusive thought. So for example, the counting for me, counting was a way to calm or lessen the intrusive thought. Counting for me became a way that I could control something that was out of my control. Moving forward, it progressed into other compulsions. If something happened, let’s say for example, on a Wednesday and I thought back about what I was wearing that day or what I had done that day or who I had spoken to that day, somehow my brain would connect things and say, okay, if you don’t want this to happen again, then you need to ensure that you don’t wear this. You don’t eat this. You don’t drink this. You don’t speak to that person. Little things that logically I know make absolutely no sense, but that little imp in my brain that tells me you need to follow these rules would lead the way. And so those compulsions would develop.

ADAM:  I was going to ask this regarding the counting, but I guess also regarding the other compulsions that you mentioned, could anybody have noticed that you were doing these compulsions?

KRISTINE:  I’m not sure if anyone would have noticed per se. I think as also a part of my coping mechanism, I developed the skills to do them all very discreetly. I think it wasn’t until that particular incident that occurred in my mid teens that things really came to fruition, that sort of shone a light on it. Up until that point, it wasn’t noticeable. I don’t believe that I did it in front of anyone or that I was necessarily having to do it so many times or so obviously that it would be noticeable to anyone. I don’t think that my parents noticed it. I know my sister never mentioned that she noticed it before. Now she notices because I don’t make the attempts to hide some of them the way that I once did.

ADAM:  This part is fascinating to me and just using my own experience to have gone until adulthood, not knowing that I myself had OCD, just raises so many questions in my brain. How did that happen? I know that when I was younger, I did compulsions of my own, but they were done discreetly the same way you’re describing. And how is a parent or a teacher or an advisor supposed to notice what a child is struggling with when the compulsions, the outward sign of OCD is being done discreetly or privately?

KRISTINE:  For me, I just figured everyone was doing it and they hit it as well as I did.

ADAM:  Let’s get to the mid-teen years. We’ve been building up the suspense. Take us back to that day in grade 11. What happened and why was it such a turning point in your mental health journey?

KRISTINE:  Our final exams were just after Christmas and I was in a final exam for my parenting class back in the day when we did things like parenting and home-ac. And I remember that morning coming to school. I remember feeling really good that morning, being super comfortable, not feeling anxious. I was very well prepared for the exam. And I went in. I went to the cafeteria and I got myself a bagel with cream cheese and a chocolate milk and went and sat with my friends and we were joking around. We were laughing. We were having a good time. Back then, we did not do exams in the classroom. What our school did was they brought all of the desks from the classrooms into the gym and they were all lined up. So you were not necessarily sitting with classmates. You were sitting alphabetically. I remember going into the gym and I was sitting amongst much older people. I was with people who were at least two years older than me. I didn’t know anyone. And I remember starting to feel sick and I was feeling nauseous. I was feeling. I had stomach cramps. I began to sweat and it just kind of thing. Think about when you feel like the flu coming on. That’s how I began to feel. So I didn’t think anything of it at first. But then probably halfway through the exam, I knew I was going to have to go to the washroom. And I put my hand up and I had a teacher come over, a teacher that I didn’t know. And I had the teacher come over and asked her if I could go to the washroom. And she said that somebody else from the row had already gone and I would have to wait until they got back. And I said to her, I don’t think I can wait. And she said, well, if you leave, you’re going to be forfeiting your exam because you need to be supervised if you leave the exam. So that, just that I can still hear her voice telling me that. And so I sat back down. And I was right. I couldn’t wait. And as you can imagine, I was sick in front of everyone. I was absolutely mortified and I was just so embarrassed. And I remember looking up at her and she said, okay, you can go. And now. Right. So I could remember hearing people being grossed out, of course, naturally. And I remember people, the snickering, the comments, just, I don’t remember particularly what was being said, but I can still kind of hear that, that chatter, that the noise. And so for me, that felt like the end of the world. And I was 16 years old and I had just embarrassed myself, the nightmare that you have so many times I may as well have gone to school with no clothes on. That’s how I felt. And so I was completely mortified, embarrassed. And I went to the washroom, cleaned myself up. I was brought to the office. I called my mom and told her what had happened. She came and picked me up. And it was a very long time before I returned to school. That incident, the feeling out of control when I wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom, triggered in me what I now say is the fully grown beast of OCD and anxiety. And it also, in that instance, at that moment, also triggered depression. That to me, when I think about my OCD, I think about that as the triggering point. I realized that I had it, but it wasn’t something that was life altering for me in such a way the way that this was.

ADAM:  Because after that day, you stopped leaving the house.

ANNOUNCER  Correct. If you like what you are hearing, please let us know by subscribing to our podcast and letting others know about it too. If you have thoughts, questions, comments, or would like to suggest ideas for a future episode, we’d love to hear it. So email your feedback to podcast at dionlawfirm.com.

ADAM:  What did daily life look like for you during that time?

KRISTINE:  Daily life back then was so challenging. I not only had the anxiety about leaving the house, about having to go to school, face my peers, and all of what came along with that. But I also had anxiety about how I was going to find a way to be allowed to stay home and to be allowed to not leave the house. Not only was I managing the anxiety and the intrusive thoughts that were forming about the incident, but I was also managing the anxiety about anxiety. I was worrying about the worrying. And so there was that whole other side of things that came in particular to being at home and trying to deal with it without coming forward and saying I’m really struggling. So I was trying to find a way to convince my mom that I didn’t need to go to school that day or it became a series of, oh no, this is, I’m feeling this, this is wrong. This is what’s wrong with me today. I can’t go. Or, you know, I heard it’s supposed to snow later, so I don’t want to drive to school. And you know, all of the different things that I could come up with to avoid school. So there’s the school avoidance. And then there was the other stuff that I still hadn’t even faced. The anxiety and the intrusive thoughts that came from everything that happened because little did I realize that in the back of my mind, I was formulating all of these thoughts and soon to become rituals that needed to happen to avoid something like that ever happening to me again.

ADAM:  It’s so complex and avoidance is a common coping mechanism for people with OCD. Do you want to talk about what avoidance did for you as a coping mechanism?

KRISTINE:  Avoidance for me as a coping mechanism eventually developed into agoraphobia. I was months and months at home without leaving my house and my.

ADAM:  At all. We’re not just talking about school, but you were not leaving your house at all.

KRISTINE:  No, not at all. I may have gone to a family members house that I felt comfortable with, but even at that, I would struggle with getting there, leaving the house to go there. I may have been okay once I was there, but I battled with getting there. And so at this point, my anxiety, my OCD was no longer just impacting my life. It was impacting my entire family’s life because I was refusing to go anywhere and I would literally make myself physically ill when it would come time to leave the house. So much so that eventually my mom brought me to the doctors. I was put through all of these medical tests to try and determine what was going on. The only one that came back positive was that I had also somehow managed to develop an ulcer throughout all of this. So when they say, you know, that worrying and all of that can cause you to have an ulcer, it can, but it was also my bizarre eating habits at that point as well. So I had all of these things. I had coping mechanisms that had developed. If I have this, if I eat this on this day, it’ll be a good day. You can’t eat this on this day because you had that on that day. And those little things happened all the time.

ADAM:  You mentioned rituals before. Those are the kinds of rituals you mean or were there other rituals that were helping you feel safe.

KRISTINE:  There were other rituals that helped me feel safe and I’m going to be fully honest with you. I still have rituals to this day. And as much as I know, they don’t make logical sense. There’s certain things that will always, and I believe they will always be a part of me. And there’s nothing that I can do to stop them. And I’ve realized that it’s easier sometimes to learn how to carry them around with you rather than to battle them constantly.

ADAM:  And I think so much of OCD is learning how to manage it. And we’ll come back to this with the intrusive thoughts too about figuring out how to let them be or where to place those thoughts. Sometimes when you’re trying to actively get rid of them, it just makes matters worse. So yeah, a lot of this is about learning how to manage it.

KRISTINE:  And that kind of brings me to the moment when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to manage this all on my own.

ADAM:  What was the moment like when you finally said, I need help to your mom?

KRISTINE:  I remember sitting on the couch. My dad had gone to bed because my dad’s workday started very, very early and often ended very, very late. They had their own company that ran from the house and it consumed so much time for my dad. My dad worked so hard for his family. And so he had already gone to bed and I remember sitting on the couch. I don’t remember what it was that prompted me to think it, but I just knew there was just this clarifying moment. It was as if the clouds parted and I looked at my mom who was coming down the hallway and I said, I need help. And she said, I know.

ADAM:  I just want to commend you for your courage in saying that. And for anyone out there who is listening and has done the same or is struggling with OCD and can’t quite get the words out to say to an adult, I need help. I mean, that’s hard. That can be really hard to acknowledge that and get those words out. And you did that. You spoke up and you said, I need help.

KRISTINE:  I did. If you think back to when I talked about the pressures that I put on myself to be the perfect child, that worry, that anxiety that I always had about being the perfect child and the least burden on my family, the moment where I realized that I need help to admit that I was also admitting that I was putting burden on other people with whatever it was that I was going through. It was fantastic for me to be able to say I need help and admit that. I also want to acknowledge so that if anyone is listening, it’s also acknowledging that guilt, that shame that you might be feeling. And that’s okay because that’s part of knowing you need help. That moment when I said to my mom, I need help and she said back to me, the only thing she said back to me was I know. And in that moment, I realized she was waiting for me. She was waiting for me to say I need help. I can’t do this on my own. And I was tired of doing it on my own.

ADAM:  Yeah. You had to get there yourself and you did. We got to drill down into the guilt and shame some more. I’ve had that myself. The way I would describe it is gnawing. It’s just gnawing it eats at you when you’re feeling those feelings. How do you put that in perspective for people who are listening have felt similar emotions related to their OCD? What do you have to say about it?

KRISTINE:  The guilt, the shame that you are feeling is exactly the same as those intrusive thoughts that you’re having. There is no rationalizing them. There is no logic to them. It’s really just a different form. If you ask me, the guilt, the shame that those feelings are just a different form of an intrusive thought because the reality is that while you’re feeling and carrying around all of this guilt and this shame and feeling just so terrible because you’re creating all of this and it’s invading other people’s lives. So all of that, you’re carrying all of this around. But in reality, that’s not true. It’s not the logical truth.

ADAM:  How the logic goes though and tell me if this resonates with you is this would be so disappointing to them if I shared this with them or you use the word burden. If I told them about this, it would be so burdensome to them. What you’re doing by framing it that way is keeping them from helping you. If this is someone who loves you and cares about you by sharing it with them, you’re giving them the opportunity to help you with what you’re struggling with. If you keep it inside, that opportunity never happens.

KRISTINE:  That’s exactly it. That is exactly it. And that’s why I say those feelings that are preventing you from getting the help that you need need to be looked at from an OCD perspective as an intrusive thought, as something that is a manifestation in your brain and nowhere else.

ADAM:  So what changed after that conversation with your mom?

KRISTINE:  So much changed. I was able to get in with a psychiatrist who specialized in adolescents, adolescent treatments. And so I immediately began treatment with her. And I remember starting off going twice a week to see her and it was a battle because at that point I was still battling leaving the house. It was challenging just getting me there. But I went and I pushed myself because I knew that I had to. I was so tired of carrying all of the rest around with me that the less-ser-evil, I guess, if you will, was leaving the house to go to the therapy sessions. So it’s mentally exhausting.

ADAM:  Yes. Those loops that one’s brain can do when they’re struggling with OCD are exhausting.

KRISTINE:  I’m not going to lie and say that I’m cured. I’m not. But my treatments and medication and various types of therapy have made it much easier for me to exist with OCD and anxiety than prior to that moment.

ADAM:  Sure. I know medication raised a new set of issues for you. We’ll get to that soon. First, when you were diagnosed with OCD, generalized anxiety, disordered depression, and agoraphobia, was that a form of relief? What was that like for you?

KRISTINE:  So my OCD brain being what it is and the way that it loves to present itself, in many ways it was a relief to be validated. So while I had something that no one else could see because it wasn’t a physical illness in such a way that it was obvious to anyone from the outside looking at me, it felt good to be acknowledged and seen and to be able to put a label on what it was that I was going through because after the incident happened, I realized that what I was going through was not typical, that the majority of kids my age were not battling these things. So after that, that’s when I realized I had all of these things happening. I didn’t know what they were. I didn’t know why it was happening. I genuinely remember thinking, I’m crazy. And I, you know, the word crazy was terrifying because you hear all of these things, you watch movies and television. And I thought, okay, this is who I am. I’m going to end up in some facility locked up in a room. And, you know, I genuinely believed that eventually that’s where I was going to end up. When I went to her and she acknowledged, she was able to tell me what it was that I was going through. And she was able to give me hope that it wasn’t going to be this tremendous weight that I was carrying around with me all day, every day. So all consuming that in that moment, it felt great. But it also opened up a whole new set of worries and anxiety. And so, you know, it was great. And I still absolutely will say it. But I also want to acknowledge for anyone going through it that, yeah, you’re still going to have these other thoughts that come into mind and worries. I think that those are things perhaps that some people don’t think about. When you go to therapy, when you talk to somebody who is a professional and knows how to handle these things, there’s a very good chance that it’s going to trigger other things that may be difficult to go through as well. But it’s necessary.

ADAM:  Yeah. You mentioned hope. I think that’s exactly what you’re giving listeners with OCD who are tuning in. Many of them probably have thought similar thoughts that you just shared. And it’s good to hear from someone like you who has had this experience and lifts it, tell the tale and manage her issues. And so I give you credit for coming on to share that with people.

ANNOUNCER  If you like what you are hearing, please let us know by subscribing to the Curious Incident podcast and letting other special needs parents know about it too. I give you a thoughts, questions, comments, or I would like to suggest ideas for a future episode. We’d love to hear it. So email your feedback to podcast at dionlofirm.com.

ADAM:  Things changed for you when you got those diagnoses. I know starting medication brought on new fears for you. So can you share how you worked through those issues with your OCD in the mix?

KRISTINE:  I refused medication for the first few months of treatment. So I feel like it’s important to acknowledge that I pushed back on those. I worried that it would change how I felt physically, how I perceived the world, how just everything. I think I somehow thought that they were going to change my personality and make me into some different person altogether because I didn’t understand at the time how medication works and how it can be helpful. I will say when I told my mom that I needed help and I started my therapy, that was rock bottom. I did dig a little deeper still even after that in therapy and go a little further down before I finally said, okay, let’s give the medication a try because again, in those instances where I was at, for me, it took me to feeling that level of exhaustion, just feeling overwhelmed every single day. And I didn’t want to feel that way anymore. So the alternative to that was starting medication and continuing with my therapies.

ADAM:  That new fears did medication and therapy bring out for you.

KRISTINE:  Just worrying that it would make me feel different physically, that it would change my personality somehow, which is absurd, it does not. And yes, there are symptoms that you may experience in the beginning because it’s the same as any medication that you take. If you have an infection and you take penicillin, you may have some physical symptoms that come with that. So, medication for OCD and anxiety are no different. There are definitely symptoms that you may experience that can be anxiety triggering because it’s a new odd sensation that you maybe didn’t experience before. But also the therapy side of things where you’re doing so much self reflection, that’s not easy. Self reflection is not easy. Allaging your strengths and weaknesses are not easy. And because I battled with how I viewed myself because of all of this, that made it even harder because I didn’t want there to be something that made me look at myself even more negatively than I already was. That was terrifying at times. And that’s probably still some of the things that I do struggle with today is battling with who I am as a person and seeing myself and valuing myself the way that I think I should. I logically know that I have tremendous value in this world, the way everyone does. But my OCD brain does not know this and they don’t get along most of the time.

ADAM:  I just want you to know that our team of the office values you a lot.

KRISTINE:  Thank you. I appreciate that. And I will say, I think I was very upfront with you when you hired me that I said to you, listen, I need feedback. I need you to let me know when I’m not doing a great job and let me know when I’m doing a great job because that’s who I am because of those struggles that I have. But I’ve learned now after years and years of therapy and becoming an adult that it’s okay for me to be upfront and forthcoming and say, this will help me. So this will help me be a better employee. This will help me be a better person that if you can give me some feedback, then I kind of know where I’m standing. So I’m turning off that part of my brain where I’m worrying about all of that.

ADAM:  Absolutely. Absolutely. Cognitive behavioral therapy became a huge part of your recovery. Can you describe the visualization technique that you still use today?

KRISTINE:  One of the episodes that we did with Dr. Eli Creme was very reminiscent of some of the therapies that I had done with my psychiatrist. I do have relaxation techniques that I will use in moments, particularly when I fly. I also use medication when I fly. So I never fly alone. But one of the cognitive therapies that I did early on and still use to this day was that I visualize my anxiety or the intrusive thought, whichever one it is, as something physical. So for me, I visualize it as a big rock. So it’s a big rock. I want to say it’s the size of a football maybe. And I visualize myself taking that rock, that thought and putting it into a box. My boxes are black with hot pink bows and they have the little lids that you see in the movies where you don’t have to unwrap the butt. You just lift off the lid. So everything kind of just stays together. It’s super easy to access. So that’s what I do. I just set the lid on top after I put my rock into the box and it goes up on a shelf in my warehouse. And my warehouse is infinitely large. It never ends. It’s as big as I need it to be. The only thing I can see though, so that it’s not overwhelming, is the one light that’s overhead where I’m standing in my warehouse. Everything else is dark around me. I know all of my other things that I’ve put in there are still there, but I only see what I need to see at that moment. So essentially what I’ve done is I’ve put my thought or my anxiety, whatever the worry is that I’m dealing with, I’ve put it away in a box and I’ve put it up on a shelf where I know it’ll be when I need to access it later if I ever do. So I haven’t battled it. What I’ve done is I’ve accepted it. I’ve accepted that it exists and that’s allowed me to then put it aside. It’s still there, but it’s not right in front of me and that’s okay.

ADAM:  So first of all, I love the specificity of your visualization. I mean that seriously, I think the specificity is important for these techniques and it resonates so much with me personally and perhaps to our listeners with OCD as well. I am very familiar and you probably are too of the stickiness of intrusive thoughts and how they can just get stuck there and you try everything to get rid of them and they don’t go away and eventually hopefully you learn that the fighting with the thought makes it stick around more.

KRISTINE:  It sure does.

ADAM:  So so much of it is learning that thoughts come and go, letting them do that. And what I love about your technique is you have the comfort of knowing that they’re still there. They’re not going anywhere. You’re not trying to get rid of them. They can hang around if they want to and at the same time they’re warehoused.

KRISTINE:  They’re on a shelf. They’re on a shelf and I don’t have to carry them around anymore.

ADAM:  They don’t need your attention right now.

KRISTINE:  My OCD, my anxiety, all of that that comes together as a package deal. I carry that around in my backpack all day every day. That never leaves me. That never leaves my side. But I don’t have to carry around with me everything else that that little thing in my backpack has created or manifested because I just put that in my warehouse.

ADAM:  Love that. You’ve worked in education for nearly two decades. How has your own experience shaped how you support children now?

KRISTINE:  I think not knowing when I was a child that I had something a little different than what all the other kids had kind of thing. I think that knowing now what I know has made it so much more possible for me to empathize and really put myself into somebody else’s shoes. When I hear of a child who is on the spectrum and is struggling with sensory issues and is struggling with eating specific things, struggling with whatever it may be, I can relate. It’s not to say that what I have struggled with or battled with is the same, but I know in my brain that it’s something that not everyone is going to understand much the same as what these children are going through. That way I can relate and I want to do what I can the way so many did for me to make it easier to navigate life. I love knowing that I’m making a difference because there are people specifically in my life who made a difference and I like knowing that I’m going to be that person. Whether it’s a conscious acknowledgement or not, I know to this day I have some parents still from some of the children that I was working at the school that those children attended, I have some parents on my social media to this day and I follow the children and I think I had a hand in that and I love that. In some ways that kind of makes me a little bit grateful that I’ve gone through some of the things that I’ve gone through because I’m not sure I’d be the same person if I didn’t.

ADAM:  That’s beautiful. You mentioned that now you ride the same roller coaster, but with the lights on, what does that sense of awareness and control mean to you today?

KRISTINE:  I used to always say that I felt like I was on Space Mountain. You know, it was that roller coaster that’s in the dark. You never know when you’re going to turn left, right? I’ll go up, go down. That’s how it felt for me before I had that aha moment where I told my mom that I needed to get help. And now since then, I feel like that was the day I turned the lights on. So I’m not going to say that the ride is any less turbulent or that it doesn’t have concerning drops and twists and turns and all of those kinds of things because it does. But I have a much higher awareness of what is to come and how that’s going to turn out. And so I think in many ways, now that I have the lights on, it’s a far less scary ride.

ADAM:  Nice. Before we wrap up, do you want to say anything else to our listeners or shout out to Steve?

KRISTINE:  I have a wonderful husband who was a fireman for 30 years who dedicated his life to service and the betterment of others. He is truly a hero. And he for me is such a rock. He has become a sense of stability that allows me to explore things that I probably never would have. He has traveled so much more. We’ve done so many things together. And he’s still the person that I love to go home to that I look forward to just sitting on the couch with watching a movie and just being myself. He accepts me for who I am and all of my crazy, if you will. And so I kind of try to laugh at who I am in certain ways because I know that certain things are just absolutely ridiculous. But I still do them. And that’s okay. And he knows that. And so that’s something, you know, I want to say thank you to him for my parents, my family is fabulous. I’m very fortunate. And I want to say to those who aren’t as lucky as me that I do also have other people who have been a part of my life who impacted me greatly. Adam, you’re one of them. I say all the time how lucky I am to work for someone like you because I love the work that we do, but also because you have an understanding of some of the things that I have struggled with. And knowing that brings a level of comfort that makes a difference, that it just makes it easier for me to be who I am. And that’s life altering. And so there are so many people that, like I said, I want people to realize that even if you don’t necessarily have the supportive family, find those people because you can, they exist, I promise, they exist. People can make a difference for people. We need people. We need other people. We can’t always just do it ourselves. And as soon as you realize that, then the weight of that burden that you’re carrying around with you becomes so much lighter.

ADAM:  I think that’s a wonderful message to end on. Kristine, thank you so much for sharing your story with our listeners. The way you’ve managed your experiences with OCD is inspiring. And I’m sure we’ll bring hope to many listeners out there. I’m looking forward to continuing to work together and help children with special needs get what they need to succeed.

KRISTINE:  Thank you, Adam. And thank you for this opportunity. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your journey because it really is a very special journey.

ADAM:  That’s really nice of you to say and I’m glad that we get to be on the journey together.

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