CREATIVE
SPACE
CREATING A CHARACTER
can help us represent our big feelings, worries or experiences with a mental health condition because:
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It encourages us to see them as something separate from us!
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It allows us to practice skills that help us feel better, such as compassion, patience and self-love!
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By giving feelings a name, a look, and even a story, we can begin to understand them with curiosity rather than fear.
ME AND OLIVIA
I first created Olivia in 2016 when I was really struggling with OCD. OCD made me feel like I was a bad person, it made me feel sad, lonely and sometimes very frightened. Creating Olivia to represent my OCD allowed me to realise that I wasn’t a bad person. It taught me that OCD was something I HAD, not something I WAS. It helped me realise that I was a whole person separate to OCD And knowing that helped me feel much better.
Having Olivia also helped me practice self-kindness and self-compassion. When my OCD was bad, or I had upsetting thoughts, I tried to imagine it was Olivia who was struggling and thought about what I’d say to her to help her feel better. I used what I’d learned with Olivia to practise showing myself compassion and it really helped my recovery!
We now draw on an ipad to create Olivia now but she used to be hand drawn, here’s what she looked like in her first drawing up to now. As you can see she has changed a lot over the years!
If you’d like to meet Olivia in more detail please check this out!
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I created an Olivia for everyday OCD symptoms, this is the Olivia you
can see holding the pencil, but I also created a different version, one that
represented my very upsetting and frightening OCD symptoms. You can see this version of Olivia in the black hoodie above. This version of Olivia allowed me to practise showing compassion to something that didn’t look cute and that frightened me a little.
DESIGNING YOUR OWN CHARACTER
We know everyone’s creativity looks different - some of us love to write, and some of us love to draw.
So we’ve created a Create a Character pack for each!
If you’d like to take your character on an adverture AND you love comics, there’s also a Create a Comic pack, so you can bring your character to life and tell their story in your own unique way.
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