Intrusive Thoughts

The piece delineates my struggle with intrusive thoughts as a person diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Intrusive thoughts are unwanted and involuntary thoughts that are disturbing in nature. I have frequently found myself actively combatting and suppressing them to the point that drives me to experience a perturbing outburst of them, which is what I try to depict in the piece.

In the illustration, the figure can be seen in a trance, horrified, with objects bursting from its left side. These objects represent the thoughts; the figure can materialize its thoughts. The theme of “Stop” is conveyed in several different facets. The shocked expression of the figure is meant to convey the pervasive longing for the thoughts to stop that I’ve felt in dealing with them. The spirals in the background are a metaphor for how O.C.D induces never-ending cycles in dealing with intrusive thoughts. The figure is still, it has stopped – another state I’ve experienced as I found myself debilitated with anxiety. And most of all, I hope the unsettling composition of the drawing evokes the desire within the viewer that whatever is happening in the illustration stops.