The Whimsy Chronicles

The power of levity to combat OCD/anxiety

I’m tempted to start this post with an apology for my Substack absence. I want to explain why I haven’t been consistent in my content creation. I want to tell you how at least one member of my little family has been sick every week for 7 out of the last 8 weeks (maybe more?). I want to justify my silence here by listing all of the grading and lesson planning that has occupied my time. I want to tell you about the student who received Title IX support measures and needed extended deadlines and excessive Zoom meetings and submitted a falsified doctor’s note. I want to lament the travails of teaching college composition in the age of ChatGPT and how I spent more time counseling students on the use of AI than grading the rest of my students’ original work.

Hi, hello, happy Friday! I am writing to you on my first official day of summer break. I submitted final grades for my university courses yesterday and I am delighted to spend my morning with you.

When I look out at my summer, instead of freedom, I sense dread. I can’t seem to turn off the internal drive to achieve, to check off tasks, to fill the margin with measures of productivity. A few hours into summer break and I already have a color-coded task list with projects and goals: writing, coaching, health and fitness, leading my church’s Impact Team. I must plot and plan so no task gets dropped, no opportunity wasted. No idea left behind.

What if I don’t maximize my time off work? What if I misuse, misspend, squander my time?

Squander. Now there’s a word that sends shivers down my spine.

I used to think I was so responsible for not wanting to squander my time. Responsible people make task lists, set rhythms, stick to schedules. I now know this fear, this dread, this pit in my stomach is actually my OCD. My internal obsession with productivity and maximizing and right choices.

Normal people may be able to make task lists and set rhythms and stick to schedules. I’m finally learning to admit, I am not normal, and my relationship to productivity is disordered.

What’s good for someone else, may not necessarily be good for me. (and I offer you that same disclaimer that what works for me, may not work for you).

In OCD recovery, the key is to disrupt the pattern of obsessions and compulsions. Often, this looks like identifying what OCD wants me to do, then doing the opposite.

So when OCD tells me to plan and schedule and produce. To work harder and rest less, to beat myself up for not living up to the arbitrary benchmarks I’ve established in my mind, I must choose the opposite. To work LESS efficiently and rest MORE, to be kind to myself when I don’t live up to OCD’s standards.

Early in my recovery, I thought this opposite approach meant I had to choose to be irresponsible on purpose. To produce shoddy work and drop deadlines for the sake of my recovery.

What I’m learning brings true freedom is not actively choosing to be irresponsible, but choosing to be playful instead.

My antidote to OCD is whimsy–letting myself feel joy, excitement, and frivolity. The question isn’t “How can I be irresponsible?” but “How can I put a fun twist on the responsibility?”

What actions will help me take myself less seriously? When confronted with my task list and bombarded by anxiety, what response is unexpected, frivolous even?

Here is an example:

This morning, I set my alarm for 5am hoping to get up and write and workout before my kids stirred. Writing and exercise are the two self-care activities I’ve determined are essential to my mental health. I treat them like my “daily prescription.” It gets tricky when choosing health requires a level of discipline and rigidity that I’m trying to let go of in many of the other areas of my life. But wisdom and experience has shown me it’s worth it to prioritize these activities every damn day, even when I’m tired or resentful or feel like I shouldn’t “have” to do these things to feel like a functional human.

Anyway, this morning my alarm buzzed, and I pressed Snooze. 7 minutes later, I snoozed again. By the time I rolled out of bed at 5:47am, I was not only groggy and tired, but I felt the pulse of OCD’s poison throbbing in my veins.

I’m up before 6 and failing already. I should have been done with my work out by now. I should have finished my morning pages. I’ve failed I’ve failed I’ve failed.

OCD taunted me to give up: you won’t have enough time to do the workout you wanted to do, so you might as well not do it at all.

Choosing not to let OCD win looked like doing a workout anyways. I value my mental health, and I value my commitment to myself to do things that help me feel good.

Even after making the choice to exercise and wrestling into my leggings and a sports bra, the anxiety still pulsed.

I knew it was time to do the opposite.

OCD wanted me to feel bad about my choices. To beat myself up for waking up late, cutting my workout short, rushing through my morning pages. The opposite didn’t mean NOT doing the workout or the writing. The opposite looked like ENJOYING the workout and the writing. But that felt impossible. How can I enjoy something when self-criticism is screaming so loudly?

This is where whimsy comes in. I had the power to choose something different, something whimsical and delightful, even when I didn’t FEEL light or carefree or in a mood to be delighted.

So I ditched my scheduled bootcamp workout and chose a short dance workout instead. I love dancing, moving my body, memorizing moves and letting muscle memory take over. True, the workout wasn’t as vigorous, I couldn’t track my progress with my weights or see my output on the app. But by the end of the dance sequence, I was breathless, sweaty, and shaking my rebellious butt at OCD.

Not this morning, but a wonderfully blurry pic of me dancing

I turned OCD’s lose-lose into a win with levity.

I could write so much more about how I’m learning to live my choices, to trust myself, and to outsmart OCD (and I will!). For now, I wanted to share this one win of whimsy and invite you to do the same.

How have you invited whimsy into your life this week? Did you put a fun twist on responsibility? If you haven’t, what’s one way you can think of to infuse your daily life and tasks with fun and frivolity?