“It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found”

“It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found”

Donald Winnicott

I came across this quote looking at really early drafts of a novel I am working on, about a character I created with chronic self esteem issues. Making it as close to the Hero’s Journey, as I could, I wanted her to be hidden and then found. These early drafts are not as bad as I previously thought. The idea is there, and it needs development, like everything. I did a writing course when I got a bit of road block because I didn’t really believe in myself, and although the course was brilliant, it took me way off piste with ideas and themes (perhaps that it the point, and it’s improved my writing no end). 

I had the good fortune of meeting an author in the doctor’s surgery, of all places, some months ago. We connected and she generously invited me to lunch. After a lot of chatting we got down to the novel’s plot. She gently lowered her glasses as I tried to explain what the book was about (she could see I didn’t know myself, because I didn’t believe in it, and it wasn’t from the heart) and told me it was all very complicated. She was right. Way too complicated. 

I have tried to dress this novel up, because, frankly, I didn’t think I was enough. I didn’t think the story was enough. I tried to make it more epic than it needed to be. Stephen King says keep it simple. It’s worked for him. 

A great friend of mine and I were discussing Normal People the other day, which unless you’ve been living on Mars you’ll know is a number one bestseller and latterly a TV series written by the young author Sally Rooney. Rooney has said in interviews that she doesn’t write much outside of her own experience. When you think about what Normal People is about, the plot is so simple, and so fantastic. Rooney wears her heart on her sleeve and gets it all out there. We all (well enough of us to make it a bestseller, anyway) lapped it up. At some level most of us have been riddled with teenage angst. We could all connect. That is what it is about, connection. The word connection also makes me think of the wonderful author Johann Harí and his book Lost Connections (Why You’re Depressed, and How to Find Hope). 

I was trying to write something that was trying too hard, basically. I think I’ve done that my whole life. I was told when I went to rehab 12 years ago that I was looking for love in all the wrong places. Approval seeking, constantly. It’s just like reassurance, the topic of last week’s blog. It’ll NEVER be enough. Never. What OCD does is just raises the stakes higher and higher so that the reassurance, or approval, has to get more intense. In the end, we have to be able to give it to ourselves, not seek it outside. 

When I came back to this quote by the great psychoanalyst and paediatrician Donald Winnicott I think about OCD as well as my great passion, writing and literature. OCD wants us hidden, and will tell us that it is simply a disaster to thrive in life, to have something good, to be ‘found.’ Addiction does the same – they are similar conditions in some ways. I have both, and I see it so well now, what these things can do to me if left untreated. They’re not intelligent illnesses but they are sneaking, waiting in the wings if we don’t stay on top of our mental health. 

We all have our own definitions of the word ‘found.’ Does it mean to start something, to end something, to create something, for example? It’s a personal preference and what I am discovering from my work with OCD clients and the work I have done myself, via Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is that it is actually OK to be happy and to strive for what you want. We don’t have to live in misery and let OCD rule our lives. We can continue to discover things about ourselves that are holding us back – crazy plot lines, in my case. The onion we peel as we do this work is one crazy ass plot line for me, anyway. 

The disaster really is to not engage in the work and reach our true potential, whatever that is. So it really is a disaster not to be found – and it’s a joy to be hidden because being hidden is easy, until it’s not. 

Contact me to book a session of CBT therapy for OCD incorporating ACT and ERP, among other things – jessica@jessicadrake.biz