- Username
- Fathomable
- Date posted
- 4y ago
I spend time outside: walking, hiking, kayaking. I enjoy gardening, reading, and working on large-scale projects like refurbishing furniture
Woah, carpentry/upholstery? That's amazing, I love seeing upcycling projects and home transformations, it must be really satisfying. I should really spend more time outside but I don't have a garden and the only exercise I really like is swimming :o I'm hardly ever in my OCD-brain when I'm outside
@Louw Right now it’s more repairing, sanding, painting. But when I get back in my own place again and have room, I’d love to learn how to reupholster furniture. Yes, being outside is like a release from most of whats making me anxious. Maybe as the weather gets warmer you can find a place to swim outside?
Fitness has changed my ocd and my life. It’s my hobby, it’s my passion, and I hope to be able to make it a career in someway someday. For me, fitness is a two for one: It makes me feel good physically and mentally. Not only does it take the attention away from my ocd, but it is also a very healthy way to teach your body and brain to deal with and release stress. All I can say is, find your fitness. Find what you would get up early and do for free. Every person’s will be different. But find your passion, run with it, and help others find theirs along the way✊? ocd strong
I love to draw, or sketch in my free time. I'm currently planning on doing a 30 day palette challenge, and hopefully try to be more active on my insta! I also like languages, and wish to study some of them, but staying on it is a bit of a problem for me.. speaking of languages, what are your methods for learning one? Cause I always seem to get distracted and whatnot.. Other than that, I like to watch or read about mysteries in life. Hmm, not sure what else, tbh..
Awesome, you should definity give us your insta handle when you do the challenge! With languages, I just try to keep it fun- if I'm not enjoying it then I won't do it, and I don't let it become a chore or a pressure for me. But I have started Dutch, Arabic and Russian and not gone past the basics because I just didn't develop a passion for them. I use Duolingo and memrise to start (and making my own flash cards) and then start reading as much as possible (children's books are great) and looking up the words I got stuck on while trying to get the gist of sentences. I think the key is keeping things just challenging enough to not be boring and not be disheartening. With enough reading, I start to understand the grammar rules intuitively without needing to formally learn them. Songs work great for me too, learning a song gains you a bunch of new vocab plus is actually fun, and you feel like a don once you understand it. If possible, speak with natives from as early as possible! Italki is a great app for that, you can pay for lessons or do free chats with other users who speak your target language and help eachother with speaking. So you could be taught some basic Chinese while talking to a Chinese dude with good English who wants you to correct him on his grammar mistakes. Also, once I have a good grasp on basics, I try to narrate my day in my head as I'm doing things, like: "I'm playing a game now, but soon I am going to take a shower, and then I will eat cereal and toast for breakfast, and try to find my glasses" etc etc. That works great for discovering gaps in my basic vocabulary and gives me practice forming my own sentences. It also gets me in the habit of somewhat thinking in the language. I only found trying to watch TV/movies in the language useful once my Swedish was good enough to hold a proper conversation, though. Honestly just be sure to vary your methods- if you're enjoying it you'll be able to stick with it. It feels really amazing when you start to understand what you read or hear without having to do any manual translation. Definitely worth it! There are some cool polyglots on YouTube who can keep you inspired, I like Ikenna and ofc Wouter Corduwener who is a lovely guy too, we chat sometimes. Go for it with languages! Pick one which gets you excited and just dive in. The beginning is amazing because fluency actually starts to come so quickly and you can get excited about new realisations. It's the later parts which get a bit dull, more tedious grammar, endless new vocab etc, and that's when it's best to try to do immersion and cutting out English so that you can absorb new words without having to do awful stuff like study.
@Louw Well, I already have the Instagram and I did day one, but that was long ago xD I'm now on day two, and hopefully will be able to finish it today.. As for the languages, thanks a ton for these advice!! They're pretty helpful, and I've tried some of them with French. I'm about intermediate level in it, and trying to reach a good level of fluency, but always seem to lose interest.. I don't think it's an issue with the language, but rather that I get unmotivated a lot ? even with drawing.. Do you have ideas about how to deal with that?
@Adrianos Hmmmm, I don't really have any solutions for that. I'm a big procrastinator so I procrastinate on other things by doing my hobbies instead to be honest. I guess the fact that they feel like an escape means that I don't need motivation for them. I just keep my apps and books/painting stuff all handy and it's very easy to pick them up. It probably helps not to think of them as things I need to get good at for any reason, they're just things I like doing for me, so I don't need to be amazing at them or not make mistakes etc and nobody is telling me to get on with them (I procrastinate on things which have meaning and expectations attached to them). And I use both hobbies to combat perfectionism OCD: when I paint, I show people my mistakes and unfinished paintings as I'm doing them, and with languages you have to make mistakes constantly in order to know what you don't know. I guess it's a form of ERP. So my best advice is to dig and try to really understand the reasons why you don't stick with it. It could just be that you don't enjoy it, in which case you need to make it fun or just not do it and spend the time on something you're interested in. There's no shame in not doing it.
@Louw Hmm, interesting.. never thought of it that way.. I guess I don't really consider these to be my escape.. I guess that would make sleeping my hobby since it's my form of escape xD Well, tbh, I do enjoy drawing and sketching and all that, and I feel really great when I do some good art.. but a lot of times it's just like "meh, I suck at the one thing I love so I'm forever a failure" or "this looks bad already, might just give up" etc..
Ooh I think this is very cool.
I’m in school right now, but I slice watching movies and I speak French
This thread is for anyone who wants to chat with me about their nerdy interests! I'm really into Nintendo games and animation. Would love to meet some other people here who can relate, maybe we can exchange our Switch friend codes and play online sometime! I know this app is for OCD treatment, but I really want to use this platform to connect to people and make new friends. We all know how difficult it can be to engage in conversation with others when we suffer from intrusive thoughts, believing they would hate us if they knew what goes on inside our heads. We're all here for the same reason, so that barrier of entry is gone. We don't have to worry about hiding our "deepest, darkest secrets" because that ice has already been broken. As someone who also suffers from social anxiety and spends most of my time in isolation (I only have one close friend I talk to regularly--I fell out with my three best friends in the past year, which has been incredibly difficult) I think reaching out and connecting with others is instrumental in my recovery process. So, this forum is purely for people who want to be friends and talk about our hobbies and interests! While I'm hoping to find some likeminded gamers and artists, I'd love to get to know you regardless of what your hobbies are, so feel free to share your interests even if they're different from mine! I hope this doesn't violate the rules of the app or anything, but I really wanna keep the discussion on mental health to a minimum in this thread, if possible. I just want this to be a fun space to share what we like! Exposures are an essential step in the recovery process, but that doesn't mean our goal should be all work and no play. Let's just enjoy ourselves here and tell OCD once and for all that we don't have to take everything seriously! Tell me what movies you like, what TV shows you're watching, what video games you're playing, what projects your working on! Just be sure to make it FUN!!! 😁😁😁
anyone have advice on how to continue participating in your fave activities, hobbies, ect when you're having specific intrusive thoughts about those exact things that you typically enjoy? ocd has *really* been attacking my special interests, hobbies, work, ect. I usually just push through and let the thoughts happen while I'm doing them anyways, but it gets honestly exhausting.
Should I put videogames?? It's one of my favorite hobbies And it used to keep me from obsessing and from overthinking But I had an ocd flare 3 weeks ago and idk, my life just hasn't been the same, I feel panic, anxiety, things just doesn't feel the same, I haven't been able to play video games since I feel they could make me more anxious Is it ok to quit them??? Or should I try keep playing??
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