What have you all named your OCD? I’ve called it the OCDemon, the Worry Monster, the Assassin (this was in reference to the Rurouni Kenshin manga), and more recently, Bobert. For those who aren’t familiar, the principle behind naming your OCD is to help externalize the experience. Personally, a major part of my recovery has been learning to accept that there are so many things that go on in my brain that, while they show up in my conscious thought, are not under my conscious control...or, won’t come under my conscious control just because I feel they ought to, but will require a lot of concerted and targeted effort on my part. (Intrusive thoughts fall into the former category; changing my fear response from Flight/Freeze/Fawn to Respond Constructively *might* be part of the latter; I’m experimenting with this.) Conceptualizing OCD as a whole other person/presence—“an obnoxious teenager talking shit over Xbox Live” is the way someone on tumblr put it—can (eventually; it takes awhile) go a long way in sucking the fear and therefore the power out of the experience of intrusive thoughts.

Niiiiiiiice

@Lunetta 😰

😰

@ARTnotOCD Is your name karen? 😳😳

@luchalysol It is. It’s been a confusing year for us.

@ARTnotOCD You are no longer Karen. You are now Little 3. (My theatre troupe did an updated version of A Tale of Two Cities last year, and one of our castmates, Karen, played one of the revolutionaries, called Little 3 in the script.)

@ARTnotOCD Im sorry, I agree. This year has just been having all of us on edge. Hopefully it goes away soon. Sorry about my ocd name, it was the first thing that came to mind when my therapist asked me to name my ocd

@luchalysol It’s ok. I often joke about it to own it before it gets hurtful. But I guess I also bring awareness to it if it’s not inappropriate to do so. It really hurt me when someone trolled me with a psychiatrist’s video explaining “Karen” as though it were a diagnosis in the next DSM. But actually I usually think of my OCD as like an evil twin, so even mine looks like a Karen. Ha, I guess commenting here is a little bit like speaking to the manager. 😉 See what I mean. 🤣

@ARTnotOCD Im sorry about that. Im all for healthy jokes and banter, but Ive videos of people bullying over something like this. But I agree, it does feel like having an evil twin