Second Best Life

A counterintuitive approach to creating/living/risking anyway

“My drawing might be terrible,” my six-year-old son whispers to me. After his words tickle my ear, I feel the rush of his exhale against my face. The breath, the fear, the grip of frustration releases and his body softens. 

I do not refute his statement. I do not jump in to say I love him no matter what or that there is beauty in mistakes. I do not uncrumple his drawing that he balled up in a fit of frustration when his finished product did not match the artistic vision in his head. 

“Yeah, it might be terrible,” I repeat and hand him a marker. 

He sits back down at his spot at the kitchen table cluttered with glue and scissors, scraps of construction paper and pom-poms, and starts coloring a new page. 

***

In my ideal creative life, I have hours upon hours to usher the words in my head onto the page. The words flow like milk and honey and my inner critic keeps her mouth shut. I write gripping, achingly beautiful stories with ease. 

In the real version of my creative life, the only thing gripping is my anxiety. As soon as I unfold my laptop or pull out a pen, the dread seizes and my thoughts race. 

What if all my best words and works are behind me? What if my message falls flat? What if my ideas are stupid, cheesy, even worse, cliche? What if the words on the page don’t match up to the ideas in my head? 

I know all artists worry about these possibilities from time to time. But for me, the questions keep looping, screaming, growing, taunting. 

The questions become convictions. I am failing I am failing I am failing. 

Each sentence is an opportunity for my inner critic to ridicule. You call that writing? You’re an idiot. You might as well stop now. 

Each idea I don’t turn into a fully polished post haunts me. The oppression of the unfinished blankets me with guilt. You’re not stewarding your words. You’re squandering your creative gifts. 

Each time my cursor blinks across a blank Word document, I feel the flush of heat in my cheeks, a sinking spiral behind my sternum. Like I’ve been caught in a secret sin, found out, inspiration-less and ashamed. 

So I stopped opening the laptop. I put away my pen. I quit my writing job and didn’t apply for a new one. I went to grad school to teach English instead. 

***

I was 35 when I discovered my inner critic was actually Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Like most people, I only had stereotypical knowledge of OCD. I pictured people obsessed with hand washing, checking the stove, achieving perfect symmetry; a quick look into the disorganization of my car told me that couldn’t be me. 

It turns out that OCD can latch onto any obsession, not just cleanliness, order, or germs. For me, I was obsessed with making the right choice in all situations: morally with not committing a sin, logistically with planning out the perfectly ordered day for maximum productivity, and artistically with not squandering my gift as a writer. 

I could understand the obsessions, but what about the compulsions, the second part of the disorder? I wasn’t doing anything compulsively, was I?

That’s what I thought until I learned that compulsions can take place in your internal world, not just in observable actions. Rumination, mental review, self-punishment, and avoidance can be compulsions.

I would ruminate for hours over each essay, Instagram post, or grant proposal, examining them from every angle trying to “solve” what needed fixing. The finished product was never good enough.

I’d try to fight back against the inner critic, replacing the lies with truths, as my past counselors (and many church friends) had advised me to do. I can’t be a failure, what about that grant we won? What about that post that people shared? What about that time I was published? 

If I could just list all of my artistic accomplishments and accolades, the voice of doubt would get quieter, wouldn’t it? 

Wouldn’t it? 

Why isn’t it? 

My inability to believe in my own creative gifts became a new failing to obsess over. Why can’t I just believe I’m good enough? 

I moved into self-punishment, preemptively sabotaging my efforts, procrastinating to the point that I couldn’t possibly produce quality work. I would drink so much that I’d be hungover the days I was supposed to write. I felt awful, but at least I knew why. A known failure felt safer than a surprise mistake. 

I mostly stopped writing. I hid my journals so they wouldn’t taunt me. I gave up. 

In OCD recovery, I have learned that the reason I didn’t feel better, the reason the doubt didn’t get quieter, is because I was actually performing mental compulsions that fueled the OCD cycle and kept me stuck. 

The irony is that I tried so hard to prevent my fear from coming true (squandering my creative gifts) that I actually did squander them. 

When I learned what OCD had taken from me, I grieved. I also felt a glimmer of hope; OCD is treatable. 

***

The treatment for OCD is counterintuitive. The gold standard approach is a behavioral therapy technique called Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP for short). 

Here’s how it worked for me:

Instead of continuing the cycle of avoidance, rumination, self-sabotage, and doing everything I could do to escape my fear and anxiety, ERP forced me to move into the fear without resisting–on purpose. 

Yes, on purpose. This is the exposure part of ERP.  

Practically, this looked like writing out my fears, naming them, and saying them out loud. Instead of avoiding, tamping down, resisting or tiptoeing around the fear, I practiced welcoming it. 

The Response Prevention means once I said them, I couldn’t refute the fears or reassure myself that the worst wasn’t true. I had to sit with the possibility that I was a failure, I had failed, I would continue to fail. 

I am a failed writer. Maybe, maybe not. 

My writing is terrible. Maybe, maybe not. 

I know this sounds harsh, cruel even. As I listed my fears and spoke them out loud, a peace came over me. There’s science to explain this, but all I know is that it worked. 

It’s as if the fears unclenched their grip as I uttered them. I could finally see them for the lies they were. I could finally breathe.

***

I started to write again. I started to make decisions based on my values (creativity, integrity, gratitude) instead of fear. After years of not writing regularly, I committed to a monthly newsletter. The idea of promising something so specific that could result in an observable failure terrified me. I committed anyway. 

Almost a year later, I’m still writing. I started a new OCD advocacy Instagram account and this OCD-themed Substack. 

My inner critic is not gone. In OCD terms, I still get intrusive thoughts or obsessions.

Sheesh, on this post alone my OCD shouted: “you’re so self-centered.  You’re misrepresenting OCD. You’re an imposter, you’re not really in recovery, why would anyone listen to you?’

I know how to respond now: 

“Oh hi, OCD (or Poison or anxiety or doubt or [insert name of unsavory ex-boyfriend here]). Thanks for sharing. I’m going to finish this post anyway even if I’m a selfish imposter with no credibility. I’m committed to writing even if it’s terrible, even if I’m anxious, even if I’m scared of getting it wrong.”

I name the fears. I don’t try to fix or solve them. I don’t refute them. I accept that I cannot control when they pop in. 

I recently heard that the acceptance required to persevere in OCD recovery can feel like choosing a “second best life.¹” 

In my first best creative life, I don’t have OCD. I don’t get anxious when I boot up my laptop or second guess my every word. 

In my first best life, affirmations and reassurance would be enough. General mental health advice would bring relief. I could ask my friend to tell me I’m a good writer and I would believe it. I wouldn’t battle resistance thick as mud or anxiety that suffocates every time I try to create something beautiful. 

However, my first best life does not exist. 

(Yours probably doesn’t either. People with OCD have a “glitch in the good enough system,” and I imagine a lot of artists have that, too. We want beauty and excellence and ease and reality never feels “good enough.”)

I’m choosing the second best option: creating/living/risking anyway. 

My second-best life takes concerted effort and intention. 

My second-best life looks like a 90% success rate with morning pages (sometimes afternoon or evening pages). I don’t text my friend asking if it’s good enough. I do not proofread for the 15th time or re-read until I have the piece memorized. I write out ALL of my ideas even though I don’t have enough time to follow through with them. I let ideas fade into obsolescence. I post inconsistently. 

I create anyway. 

And this second-best life, to quote a favorite movie, Bring it On (and expose myself to my fear of being cheesy), “feels like first.” 

***

My son shudders and shrieks and crumples the drawing he’d been creating. Fat tears roll down his cheeks.

“I’m not drawing ever again!” he shouts. Then he lets out one piercing scream at the top of his lungs. 

Encouragement fails. “I think it looks great,” I offer, to which he growls and throws a marker off the table. 

I don’t know if my son has OCD, but I know both nature and nurture are stacked against him and I see myself in his frustration.

I turn to the counterintuitive approach that has helped me so much in my adult recovery.

“Hmm. You’re right, your drawing is terrible. And the next one might be terrible, too.”

“Don’t say that!” he responds and continues to seethe. 

 “Actually, I want you to say that,” I tell him. “Can you say, ‘my drawing might be terrible’?”

He stomps for a minute then stills, walks over to my chair and whispers in my ear. 

---

Disclaimer: this is my personal story and experience with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, this is not therapy or personal advice. If you would like more information about OCD, please check out my OCD resource page here and feel free to reach out to me with any questions. 

If you resonate specifically with feeling stuck in a repetitive thought loop (OCD can be present with no observable/physical compulsions like handwashing and can be on any theme, not just cleanliness or germs,) you might consider looking into OCD. Finding proper treatment has brought me so much relief and healing. 

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Create Anyway".

1.  I heard “Second Best Life” mentioned in the AMAZING masterclass, “Get Empowered! Approaching Anxiety Courageously” by Jenna Overbaugh and Drew Insalata who attributed the phrase to Dr. Jon Grayson. When I Googled the phrase, I found this (also amazing) podcast episode on Managing Mental Compulsions with Kimberly Quinlan and Dr. Grayson.