Happy Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Awareness Month to everyone who creates art to escape the pressure to be perfect.
Art has always been a passion of mine. It became more of a lifeline as I navigated my OCD as a teenage girl.
Obsessing over irrational fears. Repeating mental rituals to feel safe. Ignoring certain songs because a lyric might make a fear come true. Seeking reassurance and still not believing it. This is what OCD looks like in my mind.
I’ve spent a long time learning how to live with my brain. Living with OCD means coexisting with relentless thoughts and rituals. It can take on infinite forms, and for me, it can be all-consuming at times. I’ve found that when it feels too loud, art is what quiets those thoughts.
There’s something beautifully ironic about using creativity to fight a disorder that’s so strict.
OCD thrives on control and rules. Art lets me retaliate by creating drawings and ignoring the urge to perfect them.
When I’m focused on drawing or painting, I trust myself and my creative mind again.
Art helps me create a language that my OCD can’t override. My relationship with art teaches me that coping with mental health can be soft, gentle and even fun. It doesn’t have to be brave or loud to be good enough.
Most of the time, people with OCD live in silence. You get good at hiding it. You put a mask over the rituals and tell yourself that your compulsions are ordinary behavior.
Social media reinforces this silence by turning OCD into an aesthetic, a quirk or a hashtag on a video of a closet full of color-coded clothes.
Slogans like “art saves lives” flood my feed, but they start to lose meaning with repetition as people mindlessly scroll. The truth is that these battles don’t look like motivational Instagram posts. They look and feel like survival in a very unglamorous, daunting form.
Social media has done to OCD what it does to most complex topics, diminishing it into something clickable, quirky and inaccurate.
Social media doesn’t show the guilt loops, the panic spirals and the late-night rituals. It doesn’t capture how exhausting it is to live in fear and dread, knowing that a threat is irrational but still feeling fight-or-flight in every cell of our bodies.
I wish social media made more space for the messy, complex parts of battling mental health. When OCD gets marketed as a quirk, it stops being seen as a disorder that deserves understanding and compassion.
If social media could one day communicate the truths of OCD as more than a hashtag and a trend, those who struggle with it wouldn’t have to explain themselves to be believed.
Until that day, I’ll keep drawing and filling my sketchbook to show that OCD doesn’t have to be scary if you don’t give it the power to be.
Happy OCD Awareness Month to everyone who still wishes they were “normal” sometimes.
SZA’s song “Normal Girl” is about the desire to be accepted and loved for who you are, even if you’re still learning how to love yourself and your mind.
It’s easy to wish to be a “normal girl,” but there’s power in overcoming mental health struggles that is rewarding and inspiring.
This might feel better than being “normal.”
Forced optimism isn’t what people need if they’re struggling with mental health. They need a space to express their feelings and thoughts honestly.
Mental health survival stories are not always inspirational and beautiful. They can be messy, lonely and confusing, just like art.
Art doesn’t ask us to be perfect.
The way society frames mental health can overlook and delegitimize creativity as a form of healing and self-care. Art can be the most accessible form of therapy available.
Art isn’t a cure for OCD, but it redirects negative energy into something comfortable and expressive. The same force in our minds that fuels tireless cycles of thoughts can make something beautiful and meaningful.
Art is my companion. It stays up with me all night when I can’t fall asleep. It fills the void when my ears are ringing with unbearable silence. It lets me create.
Art takes you as you are, without apology and without an explanation. Turning to art is not escapism, it’s resilience.
Happy OCD Awareness Month to everyone battling their thoughts with courage and color.
We aren’t alone.
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