Julie Sibert

Wadena County Public Health
RN, BS, PHN

I just received a call from a client.  He said he was in a very bad place so he called the Peer Support Line number I had sent him.  He states he felt much better after talking to the lady that answered.  He stated it took a few hours to work up the courage to call, but he will do it again if he needs the support.  He also wanted to know if there is any in person support there.  I did email him a link to your website again with it open the WRAP program and your email info. 

Thank you for developing Wellness in the Woods.

Mental Health is a Superpower

Terri Hanson

Recovery in the Woods
Certified Peer Support Specialist

OCD is cool because it shows up differently in everyone. For me, it wraps around every corner of my brain. This picture-this is the “cool” part of having OCD, the ability to organize, fold, map space and turn a mess into something nicer looking in record time.

Wanna know what it was like as a child though? It was being so terrified of throwing up that I had to ask my mom “How many crackers can I eat before getting sick?” That question happened every day, until I memorized the exact number she said for every single food. It was counting, lots of counting. It was holding my breath while we went by a graveyard, it was locking the doors but rolling down the windows while we went over a bridge. It was checking the locks over and over and over again in the middle of the night. It was stress induced nose bleeds daily during math in 3rd grade because we were learning long division and I missed the first day.

It was going to church almost every day because the rituals there eased my anxiety. It was cancelling out and praying away every bad thought I had for years. It was inability to change a habit or routine without having a panic attack. It was wanting to go to a sleepover but feeling too anxious to go. It was sorting seed beads into colors for 8 hours straight, mixing them together-and then doing it all over again for another 8 hours. it was focusing on something so intensely that I couldn’t hear anything around me.

As an adult, I had to go to the same coffee shop at the same exact time and order the same thing every day for years. I had to drive the same way every time, otherwise, I would get lost. I would be on a hamster wheel of negative thoughts when I didn’t do something right, and it repeated day after day after day. I couldn’t get over even the smallest of comments or critiques. it was not feeling like I could ever travel. It was seeing a semi hit my car every time I drove past one on the highway. I got sick after eating meat one day when I was 18-then was a vegetarian for 6 years because of it. Don’t even get me started on needing to tear out book pages as I read them. It’s knowing that everything you are doing doesn’t make sense, is a waste of time, is statistically unlikely and is just not rational. It’s ridiculous, and helpless and when people notice what you’re doing-it’s incredibly embarrassing and humiliating because you can’t explain why.

OCD felt like an addiction, it felt like madness, it felt like immense dread. It felt like a mind prison. It felt like an eating disorder. It felt like a form of slavery or hell. It felt like I was one moment away from tragedy or ruin. It was terrifying at times, dangerous at times and I was too embarrassed to tell anyone the full extent. That was, until I met Dawn, my best friend.

Actually, she’s my therapist. we’ve revisited and dissected every single trauma or memory I’ve ever had-and it wasn’t until I started to share some embarrassing pieces of my OCD behaviors that I felt my cheeks get hot, broke out into hives and had an outburst of tears. I knew then, that all of the things I’ve ever done now that made me feel [edited] insane, finally made sense. This was a life changing moment for me. but then I was scared to take medications. I eventually did and it wasn’t too bad-it actually helped immensely, but it was difficult to do art or write poetry and I wasn’t laughing as hard as I remembered.

After two years of medications and therapy, here we are now: navigating this overly glamorized mental illness only with the use of therapy and my handy dandy coping strategies. Trying to find the balance of what feels right, allowing myself to use my OCD only for the betterment of home or for a purpose, without it controlling me.

THIS picture is power and freedom for me in so many small ways. Now I challenge myself to go different ways home, to try different foods, to walk different paths in the woods, to travel and explore and talk nicely to myself. I am aware of what my diagnosis is and how it shows up for me, and it makes it so much easier to navigate. I now help people take control over their mental health journeys with compassion, love and best of all, some level of understanding. I break stigma by advocating for seeking help if you need it. I can walk along side of them with full hope that things can and will get better.