Winnipeg OCD

05/25/2025

05/22/2024

04/24/2024

STRAW POLL! Your honest feedback is required. Does this artwork remind you of OCD? Yes or no?

I'm thinking of using this artwork for the website of my project, OCD Peers Together, and I was inspired by the imagery in "Stuff That's Loud: a teen's guide to unspiraling when OCD gets loud" by Ben Sedley and Lisa Coyne. Does this work? Be honest!

04/17/2024

Starting a new project to connect OCD peer support groups in Canada. Visit on Instagram!

# ocdcanada

03/31/2024

I was never this snarky in treatment. Nope. Nunh-hunh. Never.

03/19/2024

Everyone has painful thoughts and feelings, and our lives are often shaped by how we cope with them. For those of us with OCD, the rituals and compulsions which are our coping mechanism can completely consume our lives. We literally become our thoughts and our pain, and it can be devastating.

Learning in OCD treatment to change my relationship to my thoughts was key. I used to think of my compulsions, which included self-harm, as life saving. It was terrifying and confusing to be told I needed to let go of them. Learning how to do this changed the course of my treatment.

This skill is still very difficult. I feel emotions very intensely and they still want to dictate how I live my life. I'd been working on this series for a while, when I got some upsetting news that shook me and made me question my self-worth. I wanted to tear up my plans, hide in bed, and binge-watch the latest Netflix thing. After giving myself time to let these thoughts and all that pain wash over me, I came back to finish these drawings. I sat in front of my computer with tears running down my face, but still drawing.

Being with my pain, but not becoming it or allowing it to dictate my life to me, continues to one of the hardest but most relevent things I learned in treatment for OCD. This is my new life-saver.

02/19/2024

I started residential treatment 11 years ago today. ERP was a nightmare in which I was the monster. I learned to stop fighting with that idea— which doesn’t mean I think I’m a monster, or not one. It means the question itself is unimportant.

02/05/2024

Do not - I repeat, DO NOT - be like Squish Cat

02/04/2024

Posting this with this with gratitude for a good friend.

11/23/2023

My new OCD theme. Thanks for nothing, NatlParkService.

10/21/2023

I've often talked of how much I wanted to die by the time I found my way to intensive residential treatment at the OCD Institute in 2013, so much so that it has lost some of its power to me. This puts it in perspective, though: I remembered just this morning that in my first session with my behaviour therapist, he had me tell him where I would go if I was going to kill myself, just in case they had to go looking for me.

I struggled hard to engage in treatment, but I was in tremendous pain and all my exposures triggered flashbacks of abuse. I pushed back against my team who were urging me to accept the pain and move toward a life that meant something to me. One of the stupid things I did resulted in a trip to the hospital after I hurt my shoulder.

At that point, the staff pretty much thought they had done all they could for me. In their shoes, I likely would have concluded the same thing. However, Dr Jenike, who was my psychiatrist, wanted me to have one last chance. I got it, and through more weeks of struggle, learned to turn away from self-hatred and toward self-compassion.

There were several critical moments during my time with OCD that might have been the end of my story. This was one of them. Michael's longtime friend and colleague, Diane Baney Davey tells me he refused to give up on anyone. I’m alive today because he refused to give up on me.

It is with great sadness that we share that our longtime board member and dear friend Dr. Michael Jenike has passed away.

Mike was a pioneer in the field of OCD and related disorders, and his contributions to the IOCDF and the OCD community are immeasurable.

As a celebration of Mike’s life and legacy, we have written a blog about him and his impact on our organization and community https://bit.ly/46Q0E9m.

We invite you to join us as we process and encourage everyone to leave thoughts and memories in the comments below.