That her father died.
That she had left the gas stove on.
That her mother fell down the stairs.
That she accidentally burned down the house.
Welmoed van der Woude was afraid of everything as a child. She compulsively walked around potholes in the street three times because she was convinced that otherwise her father would die. On her way to school, she would spend the whole day wondering whether she had left anything on the stairs and whether her mother would trip over it. She sat for hours in the hallway of her house praying to avert danger. “Dear God,” she would say, “don’t let anything happen to my family.”
For Welmoed (now 62), it was always about the other person. May the other person remain healthy. That things continued to go well for the other person. But things were getting worse for Welmoed himself. An anxiety and compulsive disorder – she now knows. But for a long time no one thought about why that girl, and later that adult woman, was always so scared and nervous, had such a strong need to control and had difficulty functioning.
She grew up in Leeuwarden, in a warm family, but with psychological problems. She had loving parents, ‘I will never say a bad word about them’, but also fearful ones. “My grandmother was given up by her parents as a little girl. Until recently I did not know this, but I now realize that this may have had a major influence on her and my mother. I don’t know about my grandmother, but my mother was anxious and insecure. I can still remember so clearly that we went on holiday and that we had to go back home to see ‘if mommy had taken out the cigarette butts’. And I saw it too, many years later, when my brother had a son and my mother became a grandmother. That she warned extremely often: ‘Be careful that he doesn’t fall, watch out, pay attention’.”
‘Barely any attention for me’
Her mother was psychotic for fourteen years, regularly spending periods in a psychiatric hospital. “Logically, a lot of attention was paid to that. The fact that I also suffered from coercion and fears, hardly any attention was paid to that.”
As a 15-year-old teenager, Welmoed went to a Bible club, where she ended up through a classmate. “That was a fairly serious group, but there was also something pleasant and nice about it, talking about God together in the living room. I also went to Bible camp every year.”
What is it?
If fears are extreme, unrealistic and can hinder you in your daily functioning, then you may have an anxiety disorder, according to the information site angstendwang.nl to read.
“Anxiety is then part of your life, every day. There is no logical explanation for the anxious thoughts and they can take on extreme forms.”
An anxiety disorder can happen to anyone. Something like this can happen gradually and have all kinds of causes. “Heredity can play a role, but also major events, your upbringing or psychological factors.” There are treatment programs and experts who can help people with anxiety disorders. Welmoed always recommends the Fear, Compulsion and Phobia Foundation to her fellow sufferers. “They can help you further and offer a listening ear.”
At some point it was said one day at that camp: ‘If you ask Jesus into your heart and want to dedicate your life to him, then it is not very useful if you are also dating – that does not go well together.’ . Welmoed then had a boyfriend with whom she was at that camp. They decided to break up immediately. “Again out of great fear: I was so sensitive to that.” But after this camp they started dating again, they couldn’t stay away from each other. “For years it hung over my head like the sword of Damocles: God is not allowed to have this love, He must first give a sign that it is good.”
Her compulsion, her desire for perfectionism: it caused her to take everything far too seriously. At one point Welmoed went to college, she wanted to become a medical analyst and worked test shifts in the hospital laboratory.
What if…
The more responsibilities she was given, the more persistent the worrying thoughts became.
Did I do it right?
Didn’t I make a mistake?
What if I make a mistake – suppose I placed the wrong result on the wrong patient, suppose he gets sick, suppose he dies…
Set set set. It kept her awake. She called colleagues: ‘Can you do that experiment again? Want to check my work? I don’t know if I did it right.’ “Halfway through that internship I was so full of fear that I almost ran away screaming.”
She completed her training, passed the exam, obtained her HBO diploma, but she never wanted to work as a medical analyst. And still: no help. No diagnosis. “That just wasn’t there at the time.”
Also her fear of faith – what if I worship the wrong God? – took her over. In her early twenties she ended up with a psychiatrist in Utrecht, whom she knew through the Bible group. She was in therapy with him every week, and otherwise she spent whole days in bed. “I slept a little, and in the evenings I looked for normal life, here in Leeuwarden. I went to the disco and not only found distraction, but also perspective: see, other people also do their thing, they are not afraid at all before God.”
‘Look, others can do it too’
Later, when she again had so much anxiety that she could no longer work, she went for a lot of walks in the evening. “Then I could walk through the streets in the evening, look into people’s living rooms, and I would see them eating. Clearing the table. Watching TV. And then I thought: they are just living their lives too. See? Nothing to it the hand. Very reassuring.”
After her studies, she ended up as a secretary at a utility company, and – she laughs a bit – ‘of course did perfect work’. “What do you want from a perfectionist who is extremely afraid of making mistakes?” But it was difficult. She checked her own work not once or twice, but ten times.
During that time I increasingly realized: there was something wrong with me. “I went looking in a bookstore to see if they could find anything about extreme anxiety and then came across a book in which the author talked about an anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
Ohhh, she thought then. Ohhh. Gosh. Yes. So that’s what I have. Reading the book, every page of it, gave her one big aha experience.
“Knowing is step one. But then you still have to work with it. Trying to understand yourself, to make it lighter.” She checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Franeker, close to home, where she received internal therapy during the week. “I have actually always tried to tackle my problems. That has never been different. I now sometimes see fellow sufferers who do not do that, they are often in a miserable situation and then I think: you can get out of here. You can do better than it is now.”
Therapy helped Welmoed understand what she was struggling with, and the contact with fellow sufferers was also ‘gold’. Laughing: “At half past nine in the evening those therapists were gone, so we went into the café with a small group. Not to drink away the misery, but then we were just still talking about therapy. I learned there to think about things. Why do you do the things you do? Why do you feel what you feel?”
She was able to work again, even got more hours, met her great love Simon, with whom she is still together. “It was all doable,” she says now. “But I wasn’t super happy. I kept being afraid that I would accidentally do something wrong that would endanger someone else. If I sat on a chair that creaked, I had to check all the chairs so that someone else didn’t fall through their chair.” would fall and his neck would break. I saw danger everywhere and was convinced: if I make a mistake, I will end up in hell.”
‘No rules, no punishment, no hell’
But Welmoed wouldn’t be Welmoed if she also started working on this. “I started looking for different forms of faith. And then I ended up with a milder version through a book by philosopher Bram Moerland. It was about a writing with sayings of Jesus, found in Egypt in 1948. The message, in short, was: God loves everyone and is in everyone. That felt like coming home to me. No rules, no dogmas, no punishment, no hell, but love.”
Welmoed hesitated for a long time: whether or not to have children? Her husband stood by her no matter how her decision turned out. “I didn’t want to pass on my disorder. But my desire to have children was stronger.”
Welmoed had a daughter. She loved being a mother and, surprisingly, was not an extremely concerned parent. But things went wrong again when she went on holiday with her family ‘somewhere in Drenthe in a caravan’. She registered with the fear and coercion clinic in Groningen, which – ‘fortunately and finally’ – was there. “It was a day therapy but my husband said: ‘It is better for you and our daughter if you sleep there’.”
‘I was that desperate’
The therapy did not work immediately because she was so depressed. That is why electrotherapy was proposed, a treatment that was controversial because of a possible effect on short-term memory, but Welmoed did not think about that. “I was so desperate, I thought: I’ll do anything, take anything, take my legs, my arms, as long as I get my head back.”
She kept her arms. She kept her legs. And, after many conversations, cognitive behavioral therapy, reading self-help and spiritual books and support from her husband, she felt ‘in good spirits again’. “It’s not completely over,” she says. “I can still be afraid of trivial things. And I now know that it is trivial, but at such a moment it feels real and big. It’s about recognizing it in yourself and learning to deal with it through therapy.” to replace your thoughts, which are unrealistic, with real thoughts. I have learned to examine those thoughts instead of immediately acting on them.”
‘A tremendous quest’, Welmoed calls it, and now she wants to help others in that quest. Fortunately, her daughter does not have it, but there are ‘plenty of others’ who, according to Welmoed, are unfairly ashamed. For eighteen years she has been leading peer groups with people who also have fears, or obsessive thoughts or actions, or both (it often goes hand in hand). “It is so important to talk about it. To seek help. Some have extreme fear of illness, others are afraid of the streets, do not dare to go into a store. And still others, for example, have to tear a tea bag into four at all costs. Yet we understand each other and we need each other. Sometimes in the form of a hug, sometimes in the form of a hard joke.”
‘I had a lack of self-love’
Their fears are all different, but according to Welmoed, everyone has the same thing: a lack of self-love. “Don’t think I’m vague, but self-love was very important to me. Taking good care of yourself, putting yourself first. I really had to learn that. When I’m stressed and with an unhealthy lifestyle, I have many more complaints than when things are going well. me. My sister once said to me: ‘You should actually just say to yourself in the mirror every day: ‘I am good the way I am, I can be there’.”
With her fears, because sometimes they are still there. “When I leave the house, my husband and daughter know: he takes a quick look at the gas stove and appliances. And you know those little carpet tiles on the stairs? We have those at home, and every time I’m afraid that one of those tiles will come loose.” “, my daughter or husband might slip and break their neck. I can think about it all the time. On busy days I don’t worry about it, but when I have some time, I think: I should actually check those stairs.”
“But my husband is someone who doesn’t always go along with it. He then says: ‘Have you found a stick to beat yourself with again? And then I think: yes, he is right. It is a stick. Not a realistic fear And I realize that more and more. Because, let’s face it: all those things I feared in my life, nothing at all came true.”
Sunday interview
Every Sunday we publish an interview in text and photos of someone who does or has experienced something special. That can be a major event that the person deals with admirably. The Sunday interviews have in common that the story has a major influence on the life of the interviewee.
Are you or do you know someone who would be suitable for a Sunday interview? Let us know via this email address: Zondaginterview@rtl.nl
Read the previous Sunday interviews here.
2023-12-17 07:24:44
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