To be completely honest, I just haven't felt like keeping up with my journal. I know it sounds terribly emo of me, but I just didn't want to make the effort. I mean, it's not exactly an "effort" to be active on LJ, but I think you know what I mean. I've just been feeling rather apathetic and depressed, which isn't really compatible with LJ shenanigans. :)

Why, you ask, and I feeling apathetic and depressed? Because I'm still not "better." "Better," for me, means being pretty content with the way things are going. It means not being affected by my OCD to the point that it impairs my life. Neither of those things are happening at the moment, and that sort of thing just tends to get ya down.

Even with my psychiatrist taking charge and being generally brilliant, I've had some annoying ups and downs. You might remember that, in my last journal entry, I said I was, in fact, getting "better." Soon after I had a bit of a "crash" back into an OCD "down" and since then it's been a day by day thing.

The work with my CBT therapist (exposure therapy) appears to make me worse. Trying to "accept" my thoughts is hard, dammit, and I don't think I have the right idea of how to do it. She and I have talked about how to approach the therapy, but it still hasn't "clicked" for me yet. We stopped the therapy for two weeks or so while I had a visit with my psych, who talked with my therapist on the phone. We're all going to work together to figure out what course of therapy is best for me. I see my therapist this Tuesday, and we'll discuss how to nip this thing in the bud once and for all.

As you can imagine, it is extremely frustrating to know that you have expert help from caring people and that you're working your hardest to heal, and yet things are moving very very slowly. I feel like "What am I doing wrong?" - but at the end of the day, I do know that, as cliche as it sounds, these things take time. I suppose that after you've been dealing with something for an awful lot of time, though, you get pretty fed up.

But - I'm in good spirits (despite the head cold I have at the moment - ugh!), and I'm as determined as ever. I've signed up for a class for spring ("One class?!" you say? "Baby steps!" is what I reply) and am so looking forward to Christmas, when we'll be getting together with family (and of course, exchanging prezzies!) This is my favorite season of the year - to paraphrase the great Kate Bush, "December is magic again!"