For those of you new to the blog, I’ve spent the month of August participating in the Kick the Habit campaign by Freely Be, an initiative that encouraged participants to work at freeing themselves from some sort of bad habit. You can read about my experience in those three posts.
It’s been 31 days since I began my journey towards kicking my OCD tendencies and habits. This month has been a really interesting learning and growing process, so I thought I’d share some of my insights from all of this.
I decided to kick a habit that doesn’t always manifest itself in my life. The degree of my OCD varies based on a lot of factors, so “kicking this habit” may not have been a challenge on par with, say, giving up an addiction or something along those lines. However, when my OCD flares up, it has a tendency to take over my life in an unhealthy way. I didn’t have many OCD incidents this past month. Part of that may have been due to outside circumstances, but I think my mentality made a big difference as well. I had made up my mind ahead of time that I wanted to live freely, and I think that helped in my journey.
Though Kick the Habit may officially end today, I have every intention of keeping up my journey to kick my OCD tendencies. I’ve felt more free and less anxious this past month than usual, and that was a fantastic experience. OCD and anxiety don’t go away overnight (wouldn’t that be nice!), and I imagine that this will be a lifelong journey. However, if this past month was any indication, this is a journey certainly worth taking.
Have you freed yourself from a bad habit? What was the experience like for you?