Good Day Today…

Today was a pretty good day. It was pretty cold outside so we didn’t get out much but had fun nonetheless. My daughter’s OCD symptoms weren’t as bad today which leads me to think that maybe the household stress is triggering it and making her symptoms worse. Don’t get me wrong, I am still 100% convinced that she does in fact have OCD I just think that when there’s more stress, her symptoms get worse. Which makes sense since it is an anxiety disorder. She is still constantly touching and straightening. My parents were over for a visit and were waiting for Amira to go outside but before she could go out she had to straighten everything in the living room including the rocking chair. It had to be facing straight, not on an angle. So my mom bumped the chair to make it crooked to see if she would realize as she had her back turned and sure enough, as soon as she turned around, she saw that the chair was off and straightened it again. It’s so frustrating to watch her do these things and not be able to stop them. It takes so long to just leave the house as she has all these rituals she has to do.

On the plus side. We were getting ready to go in the yard to play and Amira was doing her cleaning thing like she does before we go out. She went into my room, saw all the books that were piled on the floor from our reading earlier and she came back to me and said, "there’s a lot of books, I think I will clean them after we play in the yard". I immediately gave her a hi 5 and told her that was awesome that she could just leave it. I reassured her that it was no big deal that the books were on the floor and told her she did great for "bullying" her "worry monster" as I call it. I am trying to get her to realize that this constant worry and touching thing she has is like a bully telling her what to do and that she can fight back by doing things like not picking up the books right away. I got this idea from a website called anxietybc.com that the mental health worker gave me and let me tell you if any of you have children struggling with any kind of anxiety be sure to check it out as it has tons of useful info on there.

Oh, we went to my parents farm the other day and my brother had this new kitten that he didn’t really want. My dad had given it to him thinking it would cheer him up as his girlfriend of 8 years just left him recently and he said he doesn’t need a kitten as he already has 2 dogs and no time for even them. He works nights lots. So he said we could take it and we did. My daughter didn’t want it at first but later she said she was saying that because my husband said he didn’t want it and she didn’t want to be a girl then, she wanted to be a boy. Go figure…Weird. But she is totally in love with it now and I make a big deal of how good she is with the kitten to make her feel proud and special cuz I really think she needs that right now. More praise and attention. It’s hard when you have two kids to give them both the attention they need and I think lately my hubby and I let stress take control of our lives and she got left on the back burner, while Tahir being so young automatically got most of the attention. I think that was part of the issue too as she was having severe seperation anxiety from me, esp when I would put Tahir to bed. She would sleep with daddy but would cry I want to sleep with mommy and I couldn’t put both of them to bed together so I would spend a good 10 mins reassuring her that when I went to bed I would take her into my bed with me. She makes me pinky promise now when she wants to know for sure that I will do as I say. I started the pinky promise thing knowing that if I give that promise I can’t break it cuz now it’s so effective when I use it cuz she will trust me to do what I say. It definately works well in relieving some of her anxiety about certain things.

Now, on the other hand. I am doing ok. Still struggling with being ok with my weight but at least I am now eating and I can tell you this. I used to say that I was ok and able to do everything when I was starving myself but I can totally see the difference in my life now that I have food in me for energy. Taking the kids out to play in the yard no longer feels like  a huge task and I actually get pleasure in doing it. The days no longer feel endless and I actually have fun during the day when the kids are up instead of just looking forward to their bedtime. I look back and wonder what I missed when I was so preoccupied in starving myself and for what did I do that. I am now almost at the same weight I was to begin with so unless I was planning to starve myself for my entire life, that journey was pointless, at least in what I thought I was doing…..I thought it was my life, my purpose, my source of happiness. I was so wrong. I want to live, to experience, to have joy and just be here in the moment and I can do that now. It’s great.

I will update again soon . I am waiting for child and youth mental health to call me back about my daughter and for a referral to a pediatrician for her and hopefully will have some direction soon. Hope you all are well. You’re always in my thoughts….