Posted by mattdds on March 10, 2003, at 0:48:57
In reply to Atypical OCD - URGENT med suggestions needed NOW!!, posted by ace on March 9, 2003, at 3:39:30
Ace,
All I can say is WOW, great description of the *exact* mental dynamic that plagued the first 25 years of my life! You did an excellent job of describing this, better than I ever could have! I loved how you explained the intrusive thoughts that "contaminate" your experience, almost like they're saying "as long as I'm here you won't be able to enjoy X activity". This can be very difficult to shake, not to mention depressing!
I, like you, dislike labels, and prefer to work with specific problems. It is more meaningful to me to describe in detail the dynamics of an experience (when, where, time, how I felt, what I was thinking) as you did perfectly, than to vaguely say "oh, it's OCD". But anyway, I had never thought of myself as "OCD", because I lacked the compulsions, but you make a great argument here. But the cognitive component of my problem was was exactly as you described.
I'm sorry, but I can't say that I have any med solutions for this. I can say that I did try ALL the SSRI's, including Luvox, but they all worsened my condition. I have become very skeptical of SSRI's, and wonder if they are much more than placebos with (really bad) side effects.
This type of problem that you describe, being "atypical", is not something most CBT therapists could solve. But I'm quite confident it's amenable to CBT. Really, most clinicians use a watered down and very outdated version of CBT, and I wonder if most people really get an adequate trial of it. I had to read some seriously advanced theoretical stuff that most practitioners don't even know about yet (BTW, the scientist-practitioner gap in CBT theory is HUGE). Adrian Wells over in the UK is doing some beautiful and very groundbreaking work on the CBT treatment of OCD and GAD. I'd say 99% of CBT practitioners don't even know about this, really cutting edge!
I know your feelings on CBT, so I won't push it. But if you are interested in chatting more about this, the offer is there, over at psychological babble. I have some great book suggestions and personal experiences. I too had BDD when I was younger, and tended to get "stuck" in repetetive, bizarre thought cycles. But also, never had any psychotic component to the whole thing.
FWIW, it seems like some people are having some luck treating the cognitive portion of obsessions with atypical neuroleptics. Although they have some pretty severe possible SE's which you'll have to do a cost-benefit analysis on.
I hope you get some relief from your more persistent symptoms, in whatever way you can!
Best of luck, friend.
Matt
poster:mattdds
thread:207316
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030306/msgs/207659.html