Why is it that the more stressed and anguished over time I am, the more stressed and anguished I become.
Take yesterday (in fact please take yesterday and wipe it from my memory bank – it was terrible). I rushed all day. I had a million things to do (okay nine) and they were all in different places (okay they weren’t) and they all required at least some brain power (yes they did).
I could not concentrate on anything because as soon as I tried to do something I thought about the next thing I was meant to be doing. So I did what any normal person would do in that situation – I decided to cut up a hundred vegetables and cook a curry for dinner.
I then loaded many, many posts on to the backend of Mamamia, prayed for people to be nice on the site, shopped for provisions, went past the building site to shout at gee on the builder, met a very strange woman who bought my old desk on e-bay and tried to fit it into her tiny two door hatchback, re-re-redesigned the kitchen and all I had to do was to take Little Pencil to basketball 14kms from home by 5pm and I could call my day done.
So we left the house at 4:40pm (because we had to finish homework, refuse a snack, find the ball, pump the ball, find socks, tie the shoe laces without visible bows and play a quick game of handball all in between getting home from school at 4:00pm and leaving for basketball)
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The more I worried about it, the more convinced I became. My brain was saying “it’s off – you always worry about leaving stuff on but you never do”, but my emotions (which are much louder) were saying” QUICK get home, your dog is going to die”.
So I raced home and ran inside. The stove was off of course, and the dog was lying on my bed dreaming of having a sane owner.
And when I got back into the car and tried to explain to Little Pencil the whole concept of “better safe than sorry” loosely interpreted as “better late for basketball than homeless”, I started to worry – when I checked the stove did I actually switch it ON by mistake?
Am I alone in this obsession about leaving stuff on? Is it a lesson life is trying to teach me? If it is I would really like to learn it and move on (just as soon as I have checked the hair straightener because I just know I left it on).
I was reading your post and finding myself getting more and more anxious. Like you, quite often in the middle of a chaotic day, I will cook something and create a huge mess. I have stove on OCD as well. Thank god we do not do basketball though – that would be too much!
At least there are no stoves at basketball…..xx
My 21 year old daughter suffers from the same thing. She is constantly checking that she has turned everything off and will leave the house then ring her housemates to check she has turned stuff off.
She is often late for work etc due to having to go back home and check everything is turned off.
There has to be a label for this. I wonder if their is some sort of treatment you can get to alleviate the stress this problem causes.
Treatment comes from within.
We’ll go for treatment together – we’ll go to Kylie Ladd xxx
The pyschologist in me would like to reassure you that panicking over stuff like this is a reaction to feeling out of control in other areas of your life (taking a stab- the fact your house is a pile of rubble, that you seem to have upset the rain gods and that your job may just have been the teensiest bit stressful over the last fortnight) and trying to wrest back some control.
The often similarly insane harried working mother in me is still laughing over “better late for basketball than homeless”.
Hugs. But maybe leave a checklist on the front door just in case 🙂
I do believe I owe you $150 xxx
My OCD is the ‘did I lock the front door?’ variety.
Perhaps ‘auto-pilot’ is to blame here. Some days I notice I’m in auto-pilot moreso than usual… I go through routines or habitual activities and when I’m done I can barely remember if I had just done it!
This is what I call ‘unconscious action’. Most people call it ‘going through the motions’. I go through the motions when I have a long list of things to do. Ticking the next item off the to-do list is generally the only ‘conscious action’ I’m doing!
Perhaps the ‘did I leave [insert appliance] on?’ OCD is just your conscious mind asking you kindly to be more conscious, or aware, during your day. If we’re consumed by thoughts about what we have to do next, or worried about something that has happened earlier today (this week, this month, this year, this life) – then how can we be conscious of whats going on during each and every moment that passes us by?
How can we become more aware, more conscious’? Well you could read a book by Eckhart Tolle (http://www.amazon.com/tag/tolle) or His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama (http://www.amazon.com/Dalai-Lama/e/B000AQ027U/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1)…
Or you could aim to increase the amount your are present in each moment of your day. Every hour or two count your breath for 10 cycles, noticing your chest rising and falling. Lately I’ve been practicing being more present with company – really looking at the person I’m sitting with, appreciating them, noticing the color of their eyes… I would surmise when we engage our conscious mind in the present moment – we tend to worry less about what we left on, or whether we locked the front door. With daily practice of activating our awareness of the present we decrease our stress and learn to really enjoy the beauty of each moment.
/end rant 😉
wow – I am exhausted. Thanks for the great advice
I’m often panged with the OCD variety ‘Did I leave the interwebs running?!’
To me – that’s a given xx
I agree with Kylie – everything she said. Just take some time to slow down and breathe. You are running on overdrive right now – at some point you have to change gears or you are going to blow up the motor. We don’t want that. No siree. Not one little bit. xx
Don’t worry – I will keep putting along
me me me.
You just described me. And my days.
And yes, I cook or clean or go on twitter just as all else I need to do is about to crash around me.
And I have turned around from being halfway to wherever to make sure the iron, that I quite possibly hadn’t used for over a month, isn’t on.
Am there with ya sister.
If they put us in straitjackets do you think we will constantly check the locks?
I have OCD of the ‘Did I lock the car’ variety, I’m constantly running back from the entry to the shopping centre to check I’ve locked my car (much to the disappointment of those trying to find a parking spot), and I do it in my driveway as well. I feel your pain!
xx
(Long time reader, first time commenter – found you on Mamamia and I love your blog :))
Thank you Amy_eb – I check my car a lot as well.
Oh dear. I think I have the opposite of OCD. Let’s call it AMP. (Absent-minded professor syndrome). I could blame it on the fact that I’ve been sleep-deprived since, oh, my first child was born (4 years ago) but in reality I am just a daydreamer. I have to concentrate pretty hard or else my mind wanders… I am easily distracted… what was I saying?
Oh yes. In recent times I have left the sunroof open on the car for it to get flooded during a rainstorm (it was sunny when I left it open… duh)…lost my Oroton change purse that my mum had just given me for my birthday (still don’t have the heart to tell her)…left the car door wide open after taking my son out, gone to the shops for 2 hours, and come back to find (luckily) the car and contents still there…. left the back door to the house, not just unlocked but wide open while at shops, again, house and contents still there on my return….nearly burned the house down not once but twice when I actually *did* leave the stove on (I was still in the house so luckily noticed the plumes of smoke in time to destroy only the pot that the porridge was cooking in)… I know there will be some people tut-tutting and thinking how could I be so careless, but please believe me when I say I try so hard to concentrate on mundane tasks, it’s just, there’s so many other interesting things to ponder, or some other life-threatening activity distracts me (1 year old balancing on edge of table) and I vow to return immediately to previous activity, but somehow…
My 4yearold still reminds me of it by playing with his firetruck and asking me to pretend to “nearly burn the house down cooking porridge but this time pretend it really happened and I am the fireman to come and put the fire out”.
I do think I’ve gotten a bit more vague since having kids, but in my own defence I’ve never accidentally left them anywhere and I’ve only heard the words “Mum, YOU FORGOT TO BUCKLE ME IN” as I’m reversing out of the driveway a handful of times….
Thank you Maya., You make me look positively sane. xx
I now have an iron that turns itself off after 10 mins of non use, a deep fryer that turns itself off if the fat gets too hot, a car that locks itself when I walk out of range. I have all these things so I don’t have to keep checking…… mind you I can’t work out how to get a self closing/locking front door when I leave the house.
I’m in a new job & still learning the ropes, I’ve also taken on additional tasks and then today someone was away so I had to man the front desk for a while. Someone turned up today for a meeting… I called the person she was meeting with to tell him she’d arrived. I then hung up and called him again because I’d forgot that I’d called him THREE SECONDS EARLIER. I’m actually quite smart – just too much in my head!
Oh, and I always double check the front door – no idea where it came from or when it started… but I always check.
Oh Doll…I feel your pain. I ALWAYS check then re-check my car door when I’ve locked it…third time’s a charm! When I was working, read stressed to the gills, I would obsess over the iron being left on, at times, I’d actually go home just to check it. It was ALWAYS off. Now fast forward 5yrs later, I no longer worry about the iron, but I ALWAYS check the front door…twice before I head out. Overload methinks addles us! Soooo, I want you you grab yourself a bottle of wine, a comfy place to rest and get good and sozzled, drink those stresses away…after you’ve checked the stove! 😉
This is the reassurance I need today! Sitting at work fretting that I’ve left the stove on at home after making rice for my lunch this morning. I’ve got good drills, of course I turned the dial and left the rice to steam off the heat. And of course, I would have seen the burner on when I came in later to pack it into my bag… right? right?? this wasn’t even on my mind until I got on the bus and thought “gosh, I’m right on time today. Oh lord, I’ve probably cocked something up though… did I leave the stove on?” and thus vicious circular thinking the rest of the day… Monday I am taking a picture of the stove before leaving the house!