Jacob Tilton is the Director of Music Ministries at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in San Antonio, TX. This is his second article with justinkhughes.com, shedding insight into both personal experience with OCD and Anxiety while walking the road of following Jesus.

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OCD and the Creative Act

By Jacob Tilton

For the OCD sufferer, it is hard to imagine anything worse to go through. All that you want to do is eliminate the problem. The only thing is, the problem is your brain and how it tends to operate. In the hardest seasons of OCD, the sufferer finds him or herself in a mental prison that they accidentally built. It is hard to believe that a condition like this could ever become something which you actually befriend. But seeing your OCD mind as a part of who you are and your story can help the sufferer move from a place of despair toward one of creativity.        Whenever anyone sets out to create something new, an imaginative act has to first take place. Whether you are writing a song, sculpting a statue, cooking a recipe, or even writing a blog post, you first have to imagine a future in which that new thing is real and then bring it to fruition. As a church musician, I spend a lot of my time writing and arranging music. When I am sitting down trying to write a piece of music, I first start with an idea or maybe even a feeling. I have to then, in a sense, hold up that idea on a pedestal in my mind and see if there is anything there that I want to continue to imagine until it becomes a thing in reality.  Jerry Seinfeld wrote a book about comedy and the process by which comedians come up with and work on new material. The title of the book is “Is This Anything?” This same question is eerily similar to what it feels like in the mind of someone who suffers from OCD.

In 2014, I unknowingly entered into a season of OCD that led to a debilitating depression. My mind was continually setting forth the question, “Am I in danger of committing an act or acts that I happen to be morally against and find utterly detestable?” I entered into a cyclical pattern of checking my heart’s desires and seeking to eliminate any traces of doubt and disturbance. This cyclical checking only served to tunnel down into a deeper and deeper hole of anxiety and depression as I asked myself the same questions time and time again: “Is this anything? How about now? Is THIS anything?”

Later, after I got some help and clarity, it occurred to me that the process that I was engaging in was one that I was already familiar with as an artist. But instead of producing a work of art, I was producing a work of fear. With great attention to detail, this work of fear was looked at from every angle until every curve and line represented my worst nightmare. It was beautifully horrific. But the tools of imagination that I was using to create something so hideous in my mind were the same tools of imagination that I use almost every day in my music. These tools are ones that bring me some of the greatest joys of my life. When I began to learn that I had OCD, it explained so many of the struggles in my life up to that point. It also helped to explain why I have always obsessed over music. I think my ability to recall and play so many dumb songs from the 80s and 90s owes a lot to my OCD sticky brain. So, would I trade the suffering away if my joy of music had to go as well? I don’t think so.

In his book, “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”, Rick Rubin writes, “The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm, a longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding.” If we are intentional, we can enter into that mysterious realm of uncertainty with hope instead of fear. If you suffer from OCD, chances are, you just might be a pretty fun person to be around. Yeah, you might overthink some things (everything?), but there’s a good chance that you are the one that picks up on someone else’s loneliness in the room. Or maybe the same mind that can sometimes be so afraid to not be perfect, also can allow you to be compassionate towards others who fail miserably in different kinds of ways. Maybe you don’t think of yourself as an “artist”, but imagining the suffering of another human being and moving towards them in compassion is a creative act of beauty.  While our “inner landscape” might be so frightening at times, it can also become fertile soil that brings forth real fellowship and community. There is nothing more artistic.

Creativity and perfectionism are arch enemies because beauty always and necessarily contains brokenness. Your and my suffering with OCD, while at times excruciating, can become one of the chief ways that we can bring beauty into the world. It can become our gift to those around us. With time and grace, we can move from being afraid of the question, “Is this anything?” to answering it with a smile.

~Jacob Tilton