Week 7

I received my first completed workbook:

The content I got back from this participant was great, at this moment in time the key aspect that I will be analysing will be exercise 2. There does seem to be a trend with anxiety levels compared with diet and current activity.

I noticed:

- When participant is busy anxiety levels are lower

- Anxiety levels are highest first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Participant also explained that he often experiences nightmares and his thoughts spiral more at night time. (meditation could possible help this)

- Participant mentioned that a thought/worry was they were unaware what to eat for dinner, (shows a lack of knowledge)

- Anxiety levels seem to be high when eating certain food, salad for breakfast? anxiety level = 6

- Participant explains that they like to use journaling as a coping method and they try their best to 'move on to the next thing'

- Physical pain is seen in participants stomach/ gut. (a healthy gut could possible help this stress belly)

- Participant describes their head as 'scrambled'

- Participant explains that they are 'afraid of intrusive thoughts' and 'anxious about sleeping'

After I received the completed workbook, I conducted a short online interview to understand how the participants interacted with the booklet. I gathered that they enjoyed completing the day in the life chart the most. This is interesting even though it is a written exercise it is displayed in a way that is easy enough to write. Only short sharp answers are necessary in this method making it time convenient and sustainable.

I have also been using an application called Reddit, this app is new to me I heard about it on the OCD recovery page that I follow on Facebook. It is another social media platform but, on this site, you join groups specific to the topics that you are interested in. I have joined a Pure OCD recovery page. Scrolling this page is such an easy form of research, reading people’s post about their experiences is extremely insightful and just simply reading this information sparks ideas in my mind and gets me seeing from different perspectives.

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I went into uni today, it was good to be back in the building. It had a strange atmosphere to it but it was great to see some of my classmates. Andrew was there and had some pre-made exercises for us to part take in. We participated in a few idea generation activities, these were good because it made me expand my horizon which I needed to do. I thought outside of the box and came up with crazy ideas. At this moment in time I am really interested about sleep hygiene, anxiety appears excessively before bed or early in the morning so a calming agent may be an idea for me. The outcome of Andrew's exercises are displayed below: