OCD and Intrusive Thoughts. Is This Me?

I work with a lot of clients who have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and something I thought was interesting was that they didn’t consider it until they realized how much it affected their lives in some way. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, also known as OCD, is a disorder where people tend to have uncontrollable obsessive and or intrusive thoughts that can lead to compulsive behaviors related to those thoughts. OCD can also present as obsessive thoughts without the compulsions and is called Pure O.

The reality is that a lot of people, even without OCD, can have intrusive thoughts, such as ideation or impulsive thoughts, but with OCD the thoughts occur very frequently and cause immense amounts of distress.

How do you tell if you have OCD or not? First off, be careful not to fall down the rabbit hole of catastrophizing and over-diagnosing yourself. I know we’ve all been down the WebMD rabbit hole of symptoms and it may cause unnecessary stress to think of the worst outcomes. Be mindful of how checking affects you and focus on looking into therapy/getting tested.

Remember that a diagnosis doesn’t mean a cure, but sometimes it’s validating to know those intrusive thoughts are not you or what you want. They are just thoughts. It can be a struggle when dealing with thoughts that are fear-based, thoughts that challenge your morals, invalidate your being, etc. Working with a therapist to help sort out and process the thoughts and what they mean to you can help you move forward and navigate OCD. It can be extremely daunting at first, but working in a safe environment to share and process these thoughts can help you navigate them in a way where it doesn’t feel as difficult.

Creating Art and Mental Health: 7 Ways To Help Activate and Work With Your Creative Side

For the people who are creative and like to enjoy artistic activities such as drawing, crafting, sewing, painting, writing, etc., I’ve noticed it can affect our mental health in various ways. The thing is, people who like to create can struggle with the motivation to be creative. Our brains and desires want to but a lot of times it can be challenging to just initiate the things we want to do.

Feeling creative can be a nice outlet to express ourselves, a good distraction, coping, can help with self-confidence, give feelings of productivity, etc. It’s nice to feel accomplished and we can even enjoy the things we create and share them with others if we want to.

For me, I enjoy crafting and sewing in cosplay and, honestly, there are times when I can be hyper-fixated on a project and making plans and buying or doing things that are easy but doing the actual crafting is hard. A lot of the struggles that can be difficult with crafts is feeling down on yourself for having difficulties starting, or maybe you started a project and haven’t finished. Sometimes we fall short of our expectations to create and start getting frustrated with ourselves.

It’s not easy to find a solution and everyone is different, but we can try to motivate ourselves to create things if we desire to despite different obstacles that come our way.

1. Brainstorm: Brainstorm a project you’re interested in and ideas that could motivate you or keep you excited.

2. Get your supplies ready: Try to gather all the things you need for your project. If you’re sewing make sure you have your fabric, needles, thread, patterns etc. If you're drawing make sure you have your materials such as paper and pen or pencils or a tablet if you’re digital etc.

3. Set realistic expectations for yourself. It can be hard if you have a perfectionist mindset (like me). Sometimes you have to be ready to accept errors and come back later to redo, or settle on a rough draft and tweak things later. Sometimes just creating something is enough. If you feel like it doesn’t meet your expectations, think of ways you can improve whether it be feedback, asking for help, or trying another method.

4. Mindfulness of self. Be mindful if you are self-critical of yourself. As with expectations or even not feeling happy with work it’s good to be aware of how it affects us if things don’t go as planned or bashing work or even comparing self to others. Be aware of things that make you spiral about creating and find ways to cope ahead whether it be with a therapist or even with other creatives who have similar struggles.

5. Finding ways to start up. One of the hardest parts is the initiation of a project. Find ways that help you to start whether it’s setting up a day to be creative with friends, having someone nag you, starting a timer and forcing yourself to start for 5 minutes and see if you can get in a flow state, etc. Troubleshoot ways to help give you that push to start things. Everyone is different when it comes to self-motivation.

6. Set up plans on how to go about the project. This may not work for everyone but if you’re more of a creative person that needs some sort of plan or organization, plan out how to go about things.

7. Ask for help. Ask for assistance whether it's asking for advice, being company, helping with parts of a project, moral support, etc. There are many ways that you can ask for help.

I’m sure there are more ways to navigate other hurdles I’ve missed and I’m happy to edit this post if needed in the future. I want to encourage others to create things whether you create as a hobby, for self-expression, for coping, as a distraction, to boost self-confidence, for money or some/all of the above. Creating things can be helpful in many ways and can be used in many ways you see fit for your life.