I navigate a life while caring for my mental health. Since childhood, I’ve worked alongside mental health professionals to help me manage and navigate living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or O.C.D. Although I work very hard at my self awareness and wellness, there are still moments where I lose self awareness of my disorder. My O.C.D. feels like a gift at times and in other moments it feels like it’s a curse.
I obsess and commit to a project where it is done thoroughly. O.C.D. can be at an advantage when it comes to studying objects due my practice of rumination. This act involves me questioning, assessing, memorizing and exploring the possibilities and limitations of an idea or object. My more persistent and stress inducing symptoms include: cycling, just the right feelings, seeking reassurance and over seeking perfection of a task.
Those behaviors can cause me to lose perspective and awareness of time.
I sometimes use up an abhorrent amount of time from my day and in other moments be incredibly efficient with organizing solutions to a problem or task. My O.C.D can also cause me to overwork a project and ruin it too. Paint through the paper fibers from reworking a piece, over polish a piece or sand a piece so well in certain areas that it is no longer level and so on… So, while I am unique with the way I see the world, translating what I see in art can become distorted by the disorder too. Learning to trust the right voice that guides my hands from within is still a practice.
The Artwork:
O.C.D. 1,2,3. Gouache, 2022
For an artist with O.C.D., sleeping can be incredibly vibrant and visual. I have my own personal movie theater in the dark, with a very visual projection of whatever thoughts cross my brain in waves. Often these images cycle on repeat and quickly. I meditate and do my best to imagine a pleasant place in nature that soothes me. I do my best to hyperfocus on one thought and to slow processing it down. On days I really struggle, I can usually twist an obsession in a way it can be useful to cope. If I cannot escape the behavior, I may as well make it work for me so I imagine numbers and focus to visualize them. I call them forward to attention and into great focus. I’ll imagine their colors, texture, size and shape. Sometimes I count up and other times I count down. I collect and herd these numbers, watching each one leap away, until I fall asleep.