Hobbies! It's important to have things in our lives other than OCD, which bring us joy, calm us down and can provide a good way to redirect our attention away from obsessions and compulsions. I'm curious about your hobbies and interests! I enjoy painting and learning languages- I reached B2 in Swedish and am starting on Korean. I love to follow artists on YouTube who show their methods step by step and try them out. I also decided to learn more Python (programming language) and brush up my C++ in order to work in software development and eventually data science, so I am making a plan to write some code every day. I find that redirecting my attention to these hobbies when I'm anxious makes my OCD symptoms reduce and ensures that life isn't entirely passing me by even though I struggle to be social.

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?

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..