I have been obsessing all morning. Mostly about getting older. There's a line on my face and I don't know how long it's been there (maybe even a couple years), but now every time I see it, it reminds me that I'm getting older. I've started seeing lines on other people's faces that I had never noticed. Maybe this has to do with my new glasses, or maybe it's really just about the obsession. I want to go back to not noticing these things.
Now, I'm really not old but any stretch of the imagination and I'm at least five years off from wanting to have kids, so really, there's nothing to worry about. Not that getting older is ever something to worry or obsess about. It happens and there's nothing to be done about it.
I then decided I was obsessing about getting older really because I'm not satisfied with my current line of work. If my work were more interesting and felt like it was going somewhere then getting older wouldn't be a bad thing; it would just be part of getting to where I wanted to be.
I started thinking if I want to do something more interesting, I really need to go back to school. I started researching PhD programs. Ugh. It would be at least two years before I could get into such a program and that would mean taking a lot of classes and do a lot of volunteer-type work in order to be able to get in. I would have to decide about quitting my job and I'd be old when I finally finished.
I started to cry. I seemed to have encountered an impossible problem. I was too old to do anything and my life would just suck for the next 40 or so years until I retire.
OCD trap: I gave into reassurance seeking. I called my partner and told him my morning ordeal. He told me I didn't really want to go to graduate school (which I don't) and that if I wanted to do something else I should take a direct route to working on that. He suggested continuing to put effort into this blog, which I am now working on.
I get frustrated at myself for these few-hour obsessions. In hindsight they are obviously obsessions--the flood of questions, the sense of extreme urgency, my inability to focus on anything else. At the time, though, they somehow seem real and important and it takes me a while to realize that they're not. I wish I could just skip over the hours of obsessing by realizing early on in the process that I was having an obsession and reminding myself that these absurd questions didn't require my immediate attention. Somehow, though, it never seems to work that way.
I suppose this is part of the reason I'm in therapy: I have trouble managing my obsessions. Yet something I've noticed is that therapy isn't really about recognizing obsessions earlier, it's about getting rid of the ones that are plaguing you. I asked my therapist about this last week, and he didn't have much to say on the topic that I didn't already know. I can't really expect any magic words that will allow me to get any better nipping obsessions in the bud. At the end of the day, it comes down to self-control. I know what an obsession looks and feels like, it's just a matter of doing what I'm supposed to do as soon as I possibly can.
Now, I'm really not old but any stretch of the imagination and I'm at least five years off from wanting to have kids, so really, there's nothing to worry about. Not that getting older is ever something to worry or obsess about. It happens and there's nothing to be done about it.
I then decided I was obsessing about getting older really because I'm not satisfied with my current line of work. If my work were more interesting and felt like it was going somewhere then getting older wouldn't be a bad thing; it would just be part of getting to where I wanted to be.
I started thinking if I want to do something more interesting, I really need to go back to school. I started researching PhD programs. Ugh. It would be at least two years before I could get into such a program and that would mean taking a lot of classes and do a lot of volunteer-type work in order to be able to get in. I would have to decide about quitting my job and I'd be old when I finally finished.
I started to cry. I seemed to have encountered an impossible problem. I was too old to do anything and my life would just suck for the next 40 or so years until I retire.
OCD trap: I gave into reassurance seeking. I called my partner and told him my morning ordeal. He told me I didn't really want to go to graduate school (which I don't) and that if I wanted to do something else I should take a direct route to working on that. He suggested continuing to put effort into this blog, which I am now working on.
I get frustrated at myself for these few-hour obsessions. In hindsight they are obviously obsessions--the flood of questions, the sense of extreme urgency, my inability to focus on anything else. At the time, though, they somehow seem real and important and it takes me a while to realize that they're not. I wish I could just skip over the hours of obsessing by realizing early on in the process that I was having an obsession and reminding myself that these absurd questions didn't require my immediate attention. Somehow, though, it never seems to work that way.
I suppose this is part of the reason I'm in therapy: I have trouble managing my obsessions. Yet something I've noticed is that therapy isn't really about recognizing obsessions earlier, it's about getting rid of the ones that are plaguing you. I asked my therapist about this last week, and he didn't have much to say on the topic that I didn't already know. I can't really expect any magic words that will allow me to get any better nipping obsessions in the bud. At the end of the day, it comes down to self-control. I know what an obsession looks and feels like, it's just a matter of doing what I'm supposed to do as soon as I possibly can.
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