Beautiful Minds
This week, I got to experience something I’ve wanted to for a very long time - a room full of people like me.
I found out about a Zoom writing workshop for people with OCD from the International OCD Foundation, and was excited at the thought of finding creative inspiration while making new friends.
The workshop was holiday themed, and before we began, we took some time to get to know each other. I was surprised to learn that the workshop included people from all over the world signing in at a variety of time zones of varying convenience; there were also people of different ages, genders, and life backgrounds.
As someone who has not interacted much with other people with OCD, I found it fascinating to observe how people reacted to different things. I could tell differences and similarities in my own OCD versus other people’s, something I have found interesting for a while but haven’t really had the chance to explore.
Growing up, I always wanted to know other people with OCD. I wanted to see if we had any obsessions or compulsions in common; more than anything, I wanted to feel like I wasn’t alone as I figured out how to live a successful life with my condition. The only examples I had were negative and very public; I wasn’t aware of people around me who I could ask questions or learn from.
Writing was a common denominator of a hobby for all of us on the call, and unlike what I’ve experienced in any writing workshop before, we started the session by working together on prompts. It started out pretty simply - we identified common symbols for holidays around the world - and then branched out into coming up with holidays for pictures of random objects.
Contrary to most of the time when I’m in a writing workshop, I mostly stayed quiet and observed. I wanted to hear other people’s ideas and learn how they got there - but when there was a prompt to come up with a holiday based on a photo of bacon and eggs, I gladly contributed that this could be a celebration of Second Breakfast Day.
After we moved to individual prompts, I took some time to reflect. I don’t usually share my passions immediately, but in this setting I felt comfortable. I knew that other people were doing the same thing, and the space felt like somewhere no one would be bullying anyone else for how they expressed themselves.
Some people were shy and some were loud; some were excitable and others overanalyzed every prompt. But in the end, what mattered was how the facilitator described what she wanted us to do with the various writing exercises: to show off our beautiful minds.
This phrase made me stop and think. So much of the time, it’s discouraged from showing too deep of a window into a mind that isn’t neurotypical. It’s easy to fall prey to that with friends and family to the point that there aren’t many opportunities to share what really matters. But in this setting, where we all had a mental health struggle in common, it felt like a space to not only be safe but be celebrated.
In other words, in addition to the made-up holidays we wrote about, we were all celebrating ourselves - something I’ve found to be incredibly rare among neurodivergent people.
Joining this group has inspired me to continue to seek community. The more it’s clear that we don’t have to suffer alone, the easier it will be to speak up and smash the stigma preventing us from being “out” in the first place.
Michelle Cohen, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.