#I don't have. rituals? to prevent the things? but oh boy if i have Bad thought it sure is hard to not. obsess. over trying to Do Better

[dragonlights]

Are. Are semi-frequent bouts of intense self doubt about your gender, sexuality, and feelings about people in your life not normal anxiety things?

... What about the intense anxiety of seeing creepy things in mirrors. This is all just overlap with anxiety right? Right?????

[gentil-minou]

Random but do you ever see any OCD traits in mlb characters? I’m diagnosed with it and was wondering…

also I LOVE your content 💕

Thank you for your kind words!!! And sorry it's taken so long to respond to this. I have to admit, I don't do as much work with OCD (my specialty is Anxiety, Depression, and PTSD and working on getting better at ADHD) so I wanted to make sure I was informed well enough to talk about this topic.

OCD tends to be tougher to diagnose (for me at least) because it is characterized by intrusive thoughts leading to obsessions and compulsive behavior, often resulting in rituals to avoid any anxiety associated with it. It's an anxiety disorder, so there is a lot of overlap between them which is where I kind of struggle a bit with because anxious thoughts are a bit hard for me to distinguish from intrusive thoughts.

The challenge with ML is that we cannot hear the charcter's thought often enough to see "oh this is OCD and not general anxiety." Typically if I had a client in session we would go through a serious of questions and discussion to figure out what is going. Since we can't do that, we have to rely on what we see in the show.

The first person who came to mind was Gabe, especially in Backwarder with his aversion to human contact and also maybe his near disdain for being outside amongst people. The issue is we don't know what his thoughts are, so it could be because he's got OCD or because he's a dick. Plus he sucks so asfjhdjkf

I didn't like that answer so I asked for someone else's opinion and @galahadwilder mentioned Marinette also has some OCD tendencies!!!!

He made a good point that OCD is also characterized by "an extreme form of anxiety that leads to performing irrational rituals in order to prevent perceived bad outcomes"

And he also pointed out that Marinette's obsession might be Chat Blanc and that led me to think that Marinette's need to be in control of every situation, miraculous or not could be attributed to OCD.

For instance, her 1001 ways to care for your cat boy could have been played up for laughs but also could have been her need to keep thing in control or in check. Keeping track of important dates in a calendar, preparing for all of Adrien's birthdays, bringing as many things as possible to be prepared for any situation, and even the near paranoia in Mr Pigeon 72 could all be as a result of an intrusive thought like, "If I don't have control of everything or if I'm not prepared something is going to terribly wrong"

So Mari has some interesting presentations that could be attributed to OCD, but they could also be due to GAD, PTSD, ADHD, ASD, etc. because the joy of therapy is all the overlap (read: sarcasm xD)

That's part of what makes her such a fun character to explore!!!! She has so many multi-dimensional facets that make it so much fun to explore her character and mindset. And although we might not get concrete evidence to support any diagnosis, we can headcanon anything we want hehe :)

Hope that is somewhat satisfactory!!! Again, OCD is not my expertise but if you have any other thoughts or want to share your experience I'd love to hear and learn! And @galahadwilder please add if there's anything else you think I missed or correct me if I made any mistakes!!!!

[dungeonsandblorbos]

my CoS campaign has been on haitus for a bit because ~life stuff~ so i haven't thought about my boy Cerris in awhile but oh man this made me have some Thoughts about him

cause his relationship with his god is Not This At All but also it Totally Is at the same time, and faith and devotion are absolutely major themes in his arc but not in the way they perhaps should be for a cleric. which is a really fun thing to do in a gothic horror campaign

so, Cerris's god Percun is a regional storm god who is so known for being temperamental that his primary epithet is The Tempest. Percun is also a god of fertility and war and law and justice, and he's married to the Sun (the most important deity in the local pantheon), so he's kind of a big deal. in conclusion, you really don't want to get on his bad side. indeed, people in the region typically refuse to say his name outside of ritual and prayer, instead referring to him with any number of epithets or euphemisms, as a way to avoid drawing his attention and accidentally upsetting him, that's how scared they are of his wrath

anyway Cerris was born during the worst storm his community had ever seen

understandably, his mom and her midwife thought this was a bad omen, that if the baby even survived infancy, they'd forever be cursed by He Who Strikes. so, mom and midwife began preparing a ritual offering to The Tempest in hopes of appeasing him and preventing him from being mad at the baby. unfortunately, the ritual was interrupted by, you know, the baby being born, so the planned offering was never actually given up to him. instead, from the gods' perspective, the baby itself became the offering—a sort of, 'keep him safe through childhood and he'll be your servant as an adult' kind of deal. and being a god of law and justice, Percun kinda had to take this deal very seriously, or else the other gods would all look at him funny he'd be seen as not fulfilling his own domain.

and so, Cerris has literally always felt his god's presence, from the moment he was born. he takes solace in stormy weather, knowing it will not—cannot—hurt him, and freely refers to Percun by name, knowing he already always has the god's attention. he takes all of his god's ire and bitchiness and throws it right back at him, with little fear of consequence, because the way they are bound to each other means Percun cannot intentionally hurt him. for his part, Percun sees Cerris as something between a burden and a potential tool. when he decides to grant Cerris a sliver of divine power, he does so with the intent to a) use Cerris for his own purposes, and b) enable him to defend himself so that he can safely ignore him without infringing on the deal to protect him.

frankly, neither of them is very happy about the arrangement. in fact, their relationship is less like master and servant and more like extremely distant father and petulant bratty child

and then Cerris finds himself in Barovia, and suddenly everything has changed. for the first time in his life, Cerris cannot feel Percun's presence, and the sudden absence of something that he took for granted as always there nearly sends him into a panic attack. and as he forms new mortal relationships with the people around him—friendships with his traveling companions, a budding romance with Ireena, a protective paternal bond with the child Milo—he is forced to reckon with the fact that yeah, actually, getting pissy with his god does have consequences. his magic, his power, comes from Percun, and if Percun is upset with him, well, there goes his ability to protect the people he cares about until he does something to make amends

so now Cerris, who was never a very religious or superstitious person, is praying regularly and making offerings and promises and committing himself to his god's ideals, not out of devotion and love for his god, but out of devotion and love for the people around him. and in turn, Percun is granting him increasingly greater power

it's just such a fascinating dynamic to me, especially when set side by side with the religious journey of the other PC, a paladin of a horrific cult who is having to confront the evils of the faith he was raised in and learn how to distance himself from his god (so far it's going terribly but that's a story for another post). parallel but opposite journeys, in a way

I just love clerics. I just love explorations of faith and devotion in a world where gods are provably real and also provably not omnipotent. I love obsession I love devotion I love giving your everything for an ideal or the approval of a higher being who can't or won't be devoted to you in return