You’re Not Crazy: Living with Anxiety, Obsessions and Fetishes

By Laurie Singer

This book will change your life

You're Not Crazy: Living with Anxiety, Obsessions and Fetishes is designed to help those who suffer deeply from anxiety and its manifestations, especially in these times of escalating mental health concerns exacerbated by the devastating pandemic.

Are you suffering from any of the following?

• Anxiety (a feeling of worry, nervousness or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome)
• Agoraphobia (an extreme or irrational fear of entering open or crowded places, of leaving one's own home or of being in places from which escape is difficult)
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (a disorder in which a person feels compelled to perform certain actions repeatedly to alleviate persistent fears or intrusive thoughts, typically resulting in severe disruption of daily life)
• Excoriation (a compulsion to damage or remove part of the surface of the skin)
• Fetishes (a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree with a particular object, item of clothing or part of the body)
• Conversion Disorder (exhibiting psychosomatic symptoms including blindness, the inability to speak, numbness and paralysis).

This illuminating workbook is filled with stories of humanity at its neurotic quirkiest who find life-altering transformation and offers readers a methodical solution that can liberate them from similar anxiety-based maladies.

Those who either suffer from such afflictions or who are family members of someone in desperate need of help will find hope in these pages as they read the stories of patients who discover empowerment, newfound confidence and, most importantly, the burst of freedom that comes with a rapid correction of maladaptive behaviors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laurie Singer Behavioral Services Inc.
• Release date: Apr 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781735944807

Book preview

MY STORY

I understand the power and seemingly uncontrollable feeling of severe anxiety. I know the deep roots of trauma and anguish that can lie underneath it. I have lived it from a very young age into adulthood.

I first began therapy as part of my analytic training. I remember answering questions about my childhood for perhaps the first time in my life. I explained how my father had raised me, my brother and younger sister because my mother, who suffered from alcoholism and drug addiction, had abandoned my family by the time I was ten years old. I told her about my son, Jacob, who died of cancer at the age of two when I was twenty-six years old. I told her of the miscarriage of twins shortly after Jacob’s death. I told my story in a casual, matter-of-fact tone, the way a person might recite a grocery list, as opposed to an accounting of abuses and tragedies—each on its own constituting an emotional body-blow worthy of deep exploration.

The therapist sat in her chair across from me. She listened. She informed me that I had endured a lot of trauma in my life—an idea I had never properly articulated, never properly realized, or internalized. She asked if I had ever been to therapy to talk about my life.

I realized, at that moment, that I had blocked out of my mind the terror I experienced when my mom began to yell and physically go after my father. I pushed down the feelings of dread and fear I felt as my brother, sister, and I hid under the bed, worried what my mother might do next.

Looking back, I realized I had been experiencing anxiety. As a young child, when I opened the door to come home from school, I would ask myself what I would find. Would I find my mother, who had been drinking all day, ready to rant and carry-on or the mother who was nice and loving? I learned from an incredibly young age to shove my feelings deep inside and not tell anyone about the pain I was feeling. I had not realized that anxiety would one day ambush me—and when I least expected it.

I told my therapist my form of therapy was running. Lost in the stretch of my legs and the rhythm of my breathing, I would have time to reexamine, reframe, and work through my thoughts and feelings.

I had realized that my son’s death was traumatic for me. He endured so much suffering in the two and a half months between his diagnosis and death. A large tumor in his stomach crushed his spine and left him paralyzed. The torturous chemo treatments he endured felt as if they echoed through my own body. My husband, daughter, and I were forever changed as individuals and as a family, both broken and bonded by the shared burden of emotional pain.

After Jacob died, I was forced to grapple with the searing anguish of a mother’s loss as well as the guilt that came from the relief I felt over the end to my son’s pain and the strain his struggle had put on us. I lived in a fog, trying to take care of my five-year-old daughter and not cry too much in front of her, to shove the pain deep inside, not to be seen by anyone.

Shortly after Jacob’s death, when I found out I was to have another child, even the joy of a pregnancy was not nearly bright enough to dispel the shadow of grief cast by the loss of my son.

Then there was spotting, a very bad sign eight weeks into a pregnancy. I went to the doctor’s office in a numb, emotionally distant state. They ordered an ultrasound. An unfriendly nurse put some gel on the end of an instrument and rubbed my belly. I feared another loss, more pain, the blow that might at last break me.

The nurse said sternly, crisply, Yep. You had twins. But you see this sac is empty, so you lost one. She said it as though she was informing me of the expected installation time for a water heater. She said it—I realize now—in much the same distant, unaffected tone with which I would later recount the event to my therapist. The nurse went on in the same bland, uncaring tone, Most likely you will lose the other one too.

I lay on the table, tears streaming down my face. I could not take this anymore. My heart was pounding through my chest. I could not speak; I could barely breathe. Once home, I made myself go through the motions of life for my husband and daughter who needed me.

I went home desolate but determined to do my best to save the second baby. However, a few months later, I delivered the fetus myself at home, put it in a baggie, and asked my husband to take me back to the hospital.

I was done. I could not take any more emotional pain.

Anyone who has been raised in a home with an alcoholic parent will recognize the phenomenon. The child’s experience, being the only reality he or she knows, comes to seem normal, no matter how out-of-the-ordinary it may be. During my mother’s alcoholic rages, my siblings and I suffered in a way that no child should have to endure. My father would try to shield us from her, tell us to get in the car quickly and take us away from our home. We were so young, hiding in the car as my mother lay under the tires, threatening us if we left.

My therapist recommended the book Adult Children of Alcoholics (Dr. Janet G.Woititz, Ed.D., 1979). Reading it, I felt she wrote the book about my life. I saw myself, my mother, father and siblings all there. It was strange to be so accurately captured on the page, but it elicited a profound sense of relief, revealing the existence of other people who had experienced the same type of childhood I had.

As a result of being stirred up by the reading and the re-examination of my relationship to my parents—pulling me far out of my carefully-compartmented comfort zone—I experienced my first attack of severe anxiety.

After one of my more emotional therapy sessions talking about my mother, or perhaps about my son, I left to go to a meeting at a nearby hospital, during which a video was screened about a sick child who eventually died. As I watched it, my chest felt very tight. My heart raced. I could not move, and I began to cry uncontrollably.

Leaving abruptly, I was not certain I was in any condition to drive myself home. Yet apparently, I was in no condition to make rational or responsible decisions either—I started the car. I have a vague memory of talking to myself while I drove:  Just keep breathing. You can pull over if you get dizzy again…or if it gets worse.

Other anxiety attacks came in the days that followed. It wasn’t long before I decided I should avoid driving on freeways entirely—in California, not a reasonable conclusion.

When I told my therapist what was happening, she diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder. She mentioned the use of cognitive behavioral therapy. She taught me to relax my mind and change the thoughts in my head.

This was a good approach, but I needed something more.

I thought about a lesson I had been using with kids in a group setting during my internship. The premise was similar to a game of baseball: running to different bases, stopping on first before deciding to run to second base. The idea was to get the kids to pay closer attention to their decision-making. Stop. Check it out. Is it safe? Go! I thought maybe I could change the bases into a traffic signal. It turned out amazingly effective when used with my own clients.

I became a guinea pig also. When I started to get anxious about entering the freeway, I would remember the signal technique. Red warned me to stop what I was thinking about. Yellow reminded me to change my thoughts to anything pleasant. Green signified I should start my deep breathing.

It worked! It was such a relief to drive without panic.

I realized what a great combination the two therapies were. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps with the negative or anxiety-provoking thoughts, and behavioral therapy seeks to change the environment, using visuals as reminders to help one remain calm.

I know that not everyone wishes to spend years prying apart the minutia of painful memories. Some people, like me, just want to fix the problem and get on with life, free of the recurring spiral.

The two modalities of therapy I have combined provide amazing relief and recovery when used together. I know from firsthand experience.

Now you can discover the power of calm, the freedom from panic and the ability to control your thoughts. Read on. You are not nearly as alone as you feel.

You can do this. You’re not crazy.

PART ONE

LET US BEGIN

It’s time to get unstuck. You will solve the problem that holds you in place, the one that keeps you spiraling from the same gravitational force of irrational behavior and stops you from moving forward with life. Perhaps you feel alone in your efforts, unsupported by those around you or trapped by circumstance, but you know it is time to make a change.

If you have picked up this book, either you suffer from some troubling behavior or you know someone who does. You will find stories of people in circumstances much like your own and those in circumstances only vaguely like yours. Mainly, you will find that as unique as your story is, elements of it are not unusual. While every case carries its own specifics in detail and nuance, the broad strokes overlap, and you will learn new ways of handling life’s challenges.

You are not alone. You have never been alone. The things you fear or the helplessness you feel as you watch your loved ones repeat a cycle of self-destruction once again are normal responses. You have simply never been given the tools and information to handle this challenge.