In my last article I described the initiation of behavior cognitive therapy in treating my obsessive compulsive disorder associated with my hypochondria. I talked a little about my psychiatrist and how I found her personality to be a little overwhelming.
After the first real session where she described the therapy and how it can treat OCD, I thought long and hard about how well we would work together. Frankly, I was hoping that she would be more sympathetic. I wondered if her no nonsense attitude was part of the therapy. She was strict and determined to hold me accountable. I began to wonder if what I really wanted was a more sympathetic ear. I had envisioned therapy sessions where I would do most of the talking. Her style or method was clearly to grab the bull by the ears and deal with the very specific thoughts and processes of OCD.That proved difficult during our first sessions.
Dr. Romero said that the immediate cause of the hypochondria and the OCD was anxiety brought on by certain losses in my life over the last few years. The losses were things I could not control. They happened relatively close to each other, time wise. She said that to discover the real and profound underlying causes of that anxiety would take more time, and that we would get to it eventually, but for now she wanted to cure me of the OCD associated with the hypochondria. By the way Dr. Romero mentioned Sigmund Freud every so often, which I found very interesting. (He is fascinating, but there are theories of his I really disagree with.)
I did not want Dr. Romero’s personality to get in the way of the therapy, and for a while I thought it would. And then I realized that the dynamics of her personality were similar to mine. We were both smart, intense, articulate and a little stubborn. She could be very blunt and so could I. Maybe that was the problem. When I finally made the decision that I would continue seeing her, and that I would just have to get over the fact that we were similar in character, I relaxed and started appreciating the therapy. I liked how she was always attentive, although sometimes it was tiring, and the fact that she concentrated so much on the dynamics of OCD, although at first it made me uneasy like bad tasting medicine, but that you know will help in the end.