I still have writer’s block but I can feel I’m becoming unstuck. I started the intro to my book again last night, writing a spin off of Romeo and Juliet. I am going to see a performance with Superman (Tom Holland) playing the man in question next month, so I am sure I will be further inspired.
I think the perfectionism side of my OCD is coming out post seeing Colm Tóibín: ‘if I can’t write like him, then what’s the point anyway?’ An author friend said to me today I have to just do the thing I really don’t want to do, which is find designated time, sit down, and write.
OCD, and more specifically OCD recovery, is very nuanced. It needs to be, because OCD itself wears many masks, too. I’m talking specifically here about doing the things you don’t want to do. ‘Fine,’ says one voice (just using the above as an example) ‘it’s not my time to write, I’m too busy, got too much going on.’ The other voice, perhaps the nasty OCD then says ‘but you’re not writing because you’re a failure, you’re lazy, and you’ll never amount to anything.’ Or as my Latin teacher kindly wrote in my half term report when I was 14 and had never done Latin before, ‘disaster area.’ She didn’t write anything else. Her name was Doc Bill, well that was her nickname anyway. Can you imagine writing that about a child? Strange times they were, the 90s. I showed this to my psychiatrist when I got diagnosed with ADHD. I guess in some ways I was a disaster area. I came bottom in physics in the whole year. The results came out on the school noticeboard in the form of a hierarchical vertical black line (bizarre in method and also how my mind remembers this so clearly) with a huge gap between the penultimate person and me, rolling in at 13%. I wasn’t able to do physics. My brain just couldn’t work it out. But when Mr Freebairn introduced me to Hamlet when I was 16 – well that was a completely different story. Everyone has a gift and everyone to some degree is a disaster area in some areas of their life. It’s light and dark. The worse thing you can do is shame a child, and I think some of the aforementioned went in somewhere deep, settled, and made lots of profound internal decisions (or I made them, unconsciously) about how I would operate in the world and how the world saw me. They really need to pay teachers more because they play a defining role in shaping future societies. This is an edited extra paragraph that I really did not plan on putting in, but I’ve left it in anyway. Yet again I thought I wasn’t capable of writing anything this evening, the dulcet tones of the football in the background (as per usual England are 0-0 at half time when they should be 5-0 up) and me wanting to hide, not do this, etc. But here I am. I’ve got clever fingers, and I’m doing this as an exposure – something my OCD doesn’t want me to do.
Back to that other voice. Or, should I say, another voice. How about using that?
The voice that takes a little bit both of those voices surrounding my writing. For example, ‘I acknowledge that I’m really busy and it is indeed hard to write. However, I do have the time to do a little bit every day, even if it’s just one page. Then, slowly, I will get there.’ I’ve even done this in this blog post. I set out to just write a little bit, and here I am blabbering on about stuff that means a lot to me. I love that I can get Hamlet, the late, great Mr Freebairn and mental health into the same blog. I think if he could read this now and know how much his lessons changed my life he’d have loved it. When he died I wrote and told his daughter Claire my thoughts about this. He always brought great art (in the form of English Lit) UP to simple levels that everyone could relate to… and this is a real gift. Notice I’ve used UP and not DOWN, for when you simplify you elevate. No pupil was a disaster area because they didn’t get it. After all, Shakespeare didn’t write those plays so people could study them in dusty Oxbridge rooms, he wrote them for the public to see, enjoy, cry, laugh, empathise, etc with. I am now remembering with a lot of shame that I did initially say I wanted to go to Oxbridge, wanted to study English, went to a meeting about this at school, and it definitely didn’t happen and I cannot remember why but I am remembering with that shame how I sat in that room with lots of clever people who I am assuming thought ‘what on earth is she doing here?’
Back to the therapy side of things… it’s really important in OCD recovery to do stuff you think you don’t want to do, as I have said here. I also think it’s great to talk about when you feel shame, like I have just done, even though I don’t want to. Sign up for that art class that you think you don’t have time for. Write the book. A friend of mine told me today (she is a successful author) ‘if you don’t write this book Jess, you will regret it for the rest of your life, you’ll walk into every room and think, ‘why didn’t I write a book about these people, this theme,’ etc.’ She has a really good point.
Working with people with OCD is such a privilege on many levels. I love seeing people get better, and I also love the minor kick it gives me to take my own advice. I told someone today to sign up for a class, and now I need to apply this to my own life. I’ve got to bust through the fear and keep on trying to get this book to submission standard. Another friend said ‘just write from the heart Jess, you’re fantastic.’ Taking compliments is really hard, but it’s also something that I am trying to do more and more. This is the non disaster area of my life. What is yours?
If you’d like therapy where we can do Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) to raise your self esteem and recovery from OCD (double whammy) then please get in touch – jessica@jessicadrake.biz
Jessica Drake - OCD / Anxiety Psychotherapist 