When therapy backfires

I figured it would be of interest to introduce you to what I do for work. I recently went to Mexico with a co-worker and whenever we told anyone what we did the first comment we got was "oh, I know someone..."

I work at a mental hospital with mental people. Specifically with OCD (which will now be referred to as 0CD). 0CD is commonly thought of as people who wash their hands too much. That is, obviously, a large part of what I deal with... contamination, germs, phobias... all that good stuff. What most people don't know about 0CD is the other "parts" to it. Intrusive thoughts, BDD, other things that I can't think of right now... there's a whole spectrum of disorders that can be classified under 0CD.

I find intrusive thoughts rather interesting. Everyone has them, however, some people tend to take them a little more seriously and therefore obsess over them, which is where the 0CD comes from. Intrusive thoughts are thoughts that an individual has about sexual or violent themes. Killing your grandmother with a broken beer bottle? Yup. Sexually molesting farm animals? Yup. Thinking your walking on babies as you walk down the hallway? Unfortunately, yes. Intrusive thoughts I think are one of the scariest aspects of 0CD. They are, however, the most fun to treat.
In order to treat someone with OCD we "expose" them to their fear stimuli. Whether that be germs, reading scripts of harming people, or having them insult you because they're terrified of insulting people and therefore being seen as a "bad" person. I once had someone come up to me, out of nowhere because I didn't know what was going on, and tell me to "stop drinking your coffee you stupid bitch" and walk away like nothing was said. That is just one example of what I do on an everyday basis.
This next example is, however, one of my favorites. I was working with a patient who had a fear of stabbing people. Now, I get it, normally people say WHY would you give them a knife if they think they're going to stab someone? Well, the answer is this: with 0CD they really won't do it because they're terrified of harming people. Good to know, right?
So here I was, maybe 3 months into my job, when I found myself working with this rather large and crazy looking woman. She had a fear of cutting people. Naturally this meant I had to expose her to what she feared. There I was, naive, new to the job, and thinking I was ready to dive right in... I was sitting at the dining room table with her and she was holding my hand up like a slab of chicken and taking a knife and making cutting motions, sometimes touching my skin. This was enough to make me want to run down the hall screaming, but I held my composure and told myself to suck it up. It wasn't until I started making lunch with her, again, holding my hand like a piece of chicken and saying over and over under her breath, "I'm going to cut you up" as I stir a pot of mozzarella sauce that I'm making for lunch.
I'm not sure if it was the redness of the sauce or the way she was holding my hand up by my thumb and making cutting motions like my hand was a piece of raw meat that got me... probably a little bit of both, but it took all of 30 seconds of me looking between my hand and the sauce and her crazy eyes to get light headed enough to almost puke and pass out right in front of her. It took all of my self control to carefully put down the ladle, tell her that she was doing a great job, and excuse myself to use the rest room in order to not fall, hit my head on the counter, and hit my face on the ground. 10 more seconds of doing the exposure and that's exactly what would have happened. Thankfully I made it out in time and told my boss that I was going to puke and pass out and therefore needed to take my 30 minute break. He was nice enough to bring me a bucket and check on my patient as I dry heaved in the back office.
I've always been good at timing things just right!