Have you ever had to deal with fear of loss so great that throwing garbage away became a problem?
With a deep association between garbage and loss of life, wife's OCD is not allowing throwing away garbage. A garburator like contraption takes care of the organic stuff, so no real bio-hazard, thankfully.
It's not getting rid of it that is the problem. It's not hoarding it. It's that the process of getting rid of it takes too long.
Our building does not have a garbage shaft, so we have to carry our garbage bags down (using the elevator) to large garbage bins outside, which are unfortunately visible from our windows (so no throw and forget - until garbage pickup day).
So at first, wife would allow me to take garbage (and recycling) out strictly on pickup day. But now she wouldn't allow even that. Fear for my life? with her association of fear of loss and garbage, possibly. She's ok if some stranger comes and picks up our garbage and throws it (we've managed to get a neighbor's kid to do that while the school year was still going, and she was ok with that).
At the beginning of the onset of her severe form of OCD, when walking outside she would pick up any piece of garbage that entered her awareness and go and throw it to a garbage can. Through the process trying to negotiate with herself when enough was enough.
As it progressed, she got sophisticated, arranged to have a plastic bag and sanitizer with her, and would go and pickup garbage wherever we were. She would clean entire parking lots (for 3-4 hours at a time), before she was 'done'.
She was so fearful of this compulsion, that she was scared of looking out the windows of our apartment, because if she saw something there that disturbed her - she would have to go out and pick it up and throw it the garbage. Of course, when she went out, she would see other items to pickup, and would return home much much later.
One time, she even ran out to pick up stuff in heavy rain, and returned home drenched and crying and "can't take this anymore".
I have NLP practitioner training (we both do). So we decided to try NLP process on the garbage pickup.
What do you know, garbage pickup stopped - completely. No more picking up garbage on the streets or parking lots.
But as much as NLP can be used to deal with specific symptoms (or rituals), it can't cure OCD - so of course, other rituals took the place of the 'pickup garbage'.
In the meantime, a dear friend of her passed away as well. Someone that she was relying on for continuous reassurances (another OCD trait). That, in turn, made her OCD worse further. And now a close relative of hers is old, senile and she's afraid for them as well.
How can one deal with so much fear of loss - she's not willing to accept the losses, which is the main part of the problem. I'm hoping that with lots of therapy, she will at one point be ready to accept that.
In the meantime, garbage is still piling up faster than we can get rid of it (when we finally find arrangements for it), so we'll see how that goes.
If anyone had similar experiences, and overcome these debilitating fears, please share your thoughts. Even if you haven't would still love to hear from you.
at100
