This week on the podcast Kelly's chatting with Catherine Benfield, a mother and qualified teacher who's living with OCD.


Catherine, who was diagnosed with OCD after giving birth to her son, started a blog on her experience of living with OCD; how she dealt with it was to personify and externalise it in the form of cheeky character, Olivia!

Catherine bought her OCD to life in the form of Olivia, an incredibly stubborn hare/ alien. "Olivia takes the things that go through my mind, the types of things that go through EVERYBODY’S mind, and turns them into something they really don’t need to be. She takes anything from thoughts to images, to urges (for ease of writing in future I’ll refer to these under the umbrella term of ‘thoughts’) and runs with them. In fact, Olivia worries so much, that when she senses a thought she doesn’t like the look of, she investigates it straight away, and if she’s not sure about the findings of this investigation, she repeats it… and repeats it… and repeats it - she is nothing if not thorough!" Catherine Benfield.

www.tamingolivia.com

Cup only half full? Follow Tea with the Changemakers on TikTok, for behind-the-scenes content and clips from our episodes!