[00:00:00] Speaker A: HEllo Authors.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: I'm Joanne Morell, children's and young adult fiction writer and author of short nonfiction for authors. Thanks for joining me for the Hybrid Author podcast, sharing interviews from industry professionals to help you forge a career as a hybrid author, both independently and traditionally publishing your book.
[00:00:18] Speaker C: You can get the show notes for.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Each episode and sign up for your free author pass over at the Hybrid Author website to discover your writing process, get tips on how to publish productively, and get comfortable promoting your books at www.hybridauthor.com au. Let's crack on with the episode.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Hello Authors.
[00:00:45] Speaker D: I hope you're all keeping well in whatever part of the world you reside and listen to the podcast in. Today's interview is with memoir prose poet and writer Cynthia Marie Hoffman, and we're Chatting. Mental Health and writers Cynthia shares her experiences of living with obsessive compulsive disorder OCD from a young age, her writing processes poems from exploding Head, her latest memoir prose poetry collection, how writing helps or hinders writers who suffer from mental health in creating and publishing their words, writing other people's mental health stories, and much more. This is a truly eye opening, powerful, personal, and aweinspiring interview.
So on my Author Adventure this week, I'm still very much finishing up the edits for my women's fiction novel, the writer, the Hairdresser, and the Nurse. I sifted the deadline to get the work across to my editor by next weekend. I most certainly want this work away before the school holiday starts, and for me, that's then. I've truly been battling myself this week, which is kind of fitting for the upcoming interview episode. I've really noticed that I've gone into a sort of self sabotage mode. I've really been throwing negative, unhelpful comments my way. These are what I call author fears, and they look like you'll never get this work finished on time. You're wasting your time. And the usual always. No one's going to read it, no one wants to buy it. And I think these come about because I'm going to be independently publishing the work. And you spend so much time, effort, and money. You put up money for publishing this work. And it's kind of like these fears come up because you've no guarantee for return on investment. Because at the moment I am two books into my self publishing career. And yeah, as I said, I am earning money from those, but it's not a full time income. And you just keep thinking. You just have all these thoughts that come up, but I feel like they're getting thrown at me hard and fast more than ever, because I'm almost at the end. So I'm almost at that finishing point where these thoughts always seem to emerge from me. So it's definitely my body's way of protecting me from taking risks, getting hurt. And it's really sad and scary to watch how my own self wants to keep me nice and preserved and pretty where I am. Nothing can touch you. You're nice and safe. It doesn't want me to progress and go into the scary unknown. Because if you've ever read, every writer has these thoughts, these self doubts, these author fears big names, and we must turn these scary thoughts, these author fears, on their head by challenging them. Well, what if my work, this book, is loved by all? What if it changes someone's life? What if it changes the world? What if it takes someone's pain away for just a moment, just a few pages? Because it's women's fiction, it's escapism, it's drama, it's a little comedy. And that's its purpose, to entertain and be enjoyed. What if I become someone's favorite author? What if this book becomes someone's favorite book? We never know until we try. And I'd rather try and face all the author fears that hold me back than not. Because if you don't try and you simply stop, this is never going to happen. Your goals are never going to happen. And I made the realization ages ago that I put so much time, money, energy, effort into this industry already, and I've still got such a long way to go in reaching my goals. As I said, I've just got the two nonfiction books out. I've written a fair few manuscripts, obviously out looking for traditional deal, which is still a goal of mine to get. So if I listen to these author fears, I'm never going to move forward. And they're not nice thoughts, and they don't feel good. They don't feel good. But not putting myself out there and not going for this feels even worse. I'm definitely on the path I'm supposed to be. As much as these viewers try and hold me back, there's been some days where they've succeeded and they've persuaded me and I've become super unfocused, or I've stopped and I've given in, but then I've proceeded the next day, and maybe I did need those days to take a break and just get back on the horse. I'm not sure, but I can say I'm happy to report I am on track for next week, and like I said, I really believe in the story. I love the characters, and I've done so much work on this novel, it's too much not to go ahead. So the upcoming episode, although definitely a light hearted chat between me and Cynthia, this topic is quite a heavy one. Cynthia nor myself are health professionals. We simply discuss Cynthia's experiences with her mental illness, which is obsessive compulsive disorder OCD. As such, I touch on my own mental health experience in author fears and how to Overcome Them, which is my nonfiction book that is out at the moment and have a couple of pages on mental health and writers, which, as I said, touches on anxiety and depression, and I just wanted to read a page from that. Now, as someone who has experienced both anxiety and depression through various stages of my life, I'm making mention of it here because I think it's important. As writers, we live inside our heads most of the time, and it can be very hard to deal with these fears and or negative thoughts which summon negative symptoms that can evolve from being a writer working in isolation. There are so many positive aspects about this industry that I choose to focus on instead. That's why I've written this book, to remind myself that I have felt these things and will inevitably feel them again. I faced them and kept going, and I'm so glad I did, and I hope others will too. Anxiety is a mental illness, and one I struggled with the most. There are different types. Once I realized what it was I was experiencing, which, according to my therapist at the time, was social and generalized anxiety, I was able to get help to understand what was happening to me physically because of my thoughts. Without even realizing it, my thoughts were triggering unpleasant reactions in my body, such as nausea, headaches, and the worst feeling, detachment. Because these physical sensations are so strong, overpowering, and unnatural, it was always hard not to think there was something medically wrong with me, that I must have a serious illness to feel this way, which, of course, only fueled these triggers more. For example, you have an unhealthy thought, and as a result of that thought, you experience physical symptoms. I've been on medication in the past, which has helped me to get a handle on anxiety long enough for me to completely understand it. Anxiety is normal natural energy, and that's all it is. Nervous energy, your fight or flight response kicking in. Once I realized this, I started to become aware of what triggered my anxiety and what made it worse for me. For example, mornings were generally stressful, having to organize kids to school and get to work on time, drinking coffee first thing had to go, although it's back up there again. As I noticed when I did have that morning cup, I wanted another, which led to about five cups a day, it made me short tempered and irritated, and by the time the afternoon came, I needed more caffeine and my anxiety was through the roof. It's all about balancing my life to live it healthier. Depression, unhappiness, and a feeling that there is no hope. Mental illness Although they say anxiety and depression go hand in hand, I don't feel like I have truly experienced depression as much as I have anxiety. Depression can render one immobile, stop caring, and be void of all emotion. To write with depression is an ongoing struggle for some. It can also work as catharsis to write out your feelings every day, to be able to express them in such a way that might provide some outlet or release of how low one is feeling. Although it's the struggles to have the motivation to write during depression, which is a problem in the first place, be aware of your feelings and realize that it's okay to feel this way. Take each day as it comes, accept how you are feeling, and realize that you will feel differently another day. Try to make sure you balance your writing life with writing, networking, and time for yourself as well as others in your life. Writing is good for the soul, but you need to work on your mind and body as well. They are equally important. It can be easy to stay indoors and in your writer world, but remember to step outside of it and socialize with other writers. Get out of your head and be present. So I just wanted to share a little bit of that there, just to add on to Cynthia's amazing interview. And she talks obviously about OCD, which is a mental illness that I have not had a lot to do with or as we speak about. I feel like she's maybe the first person I've met, but it's just a very interesting conversation and I just wanted to say that mental health, it's not a fun or very happy topic at all, but it's a really important one, and I urge you, if you are struggling to be kind to yourself, get the help you need when you need it, and try and gain perspective and understanding of what you are experiencing. You're not alone, and I just found.
[00:09:12] Speaker E: What I was going through.
[00:09:13] Speaker D: Once I understood it and why that was happening, it really lessened it a lot and gave me tools to be able to sort of work with it. Christmas time is full of joy for most, but with the way of the world. There's a lot of trauma, turmoil, suffering, and not just with mental health, but everybody else who's the wars that are currently going on, the hardships, financial hardships that everybody's facing with the interest rate hikes, health, people's health, deteriorating and just loss. It's a good to remember that this time of year people may be missing someone or they might be doing it tough inside and out. It's not just always about the Christmas cheer. We had that lovely Xmas Merry Xmas mash up the other week, and this is more of a more serious one, but equally important, I think enjoy the interview and here's the word from our.
[00:10:02] Speaker E: Sponsor.
[00:10:11] Speaker C: Thorn Creative, where beautiful websites for authors are brought to life. No matter what stage you're at with your writing, your stories deserve a dedicated space to shine. Whether you're just starting out or have a bookshelf full of bestsellers, your website is the hub of your author business, binding everything you and your books offer together, thorn creative can nurture all aspects of redesigning your old site or start afresh from the initial design. They can provide ongoing hosting and maintenance to marketing your books online, saving you time, money and stress trying to wrangle your site yourself. An author website built by Thorn Creative can easily direct readers to your favorite retailers, your publisher, or simply set you up to sell to them direct. The options are endless. Thorn Creative have worked with many authors across all genres and know what goes into good, functional, working author websites to sell books, head on over to thorncreative.com au slash Websites for authors to read, author and publisher testimonials and to see what they offer and some of the sites they've created.
[00:11:39] Speaker E: Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of four collections of poetry, all published with Persia Books. Her newest, Exploding Head, which is out in February 2024, is a memoir in prose poems about her lifelong journey with obsessive compulsive disorder, OCD. Her previous collections are Call me When you want to talk about the tombstones, paper doll, fetus, and sightseer. She's also published a chat book from Goldline Press called Her Human Costume, which is also a series of prose poems. Cynthia is the recipient of fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the Wisconsin Arts Board. Her poems have appeared in Electric literature, the Believer, the Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she joins us from now. Welcome to the Hybrid Author podcast, Cynthia.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:12:31] Speaker E: We are really honored and so pleased to have you join us. What a bio you've got. You've obviously been at this a while and you've had some really good success, but can you please tell us, how did you first get started in writing?
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. Going all the way back. Since I was really little, I always wrote poems and stories, but I never, as I grew up, considered it a career, especially since I tended toward poetry. So I started out majoring in photography in college, and I discovered over the couple of years that really, photography is also an art. So I really needed to choose which art I wanted to focus on. So I switched to English, ended up with a master's degree. I taught at the college level for a few years, but then I ended up getting a regular non academic desk job. It pays the bills, allows me time and energy to be creative on my own time. And I published my first poetry collection in 2011 with Persia Books. They fortunately have continued to like my work, so I am just about to publish my fourth collection with them now.
[00:13:32] Speaker E: Wow. That's amazing. Congratulations. And before this interview, we were chatting about your lovely photograph. So, yeah, you've obviously got skills in the photography side.
[00:13:43] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: It's always cheaper when you can do your own author photo yourself. Do you offer a tripod?
[00:13:49] Speaker E: Yeah. Is that a service you offer? Because you should, I think.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: No, thank you. Every once in a while, I do take author photos for my friends, so I do, but just. They don't pay me.
[00:14:01] Speaker E: Yeah, too modest. You should definitely look at branching out into that, I'm sure. But no, that's an incredible start there. Well, today's topic is on mental health in writers, and we're going to be chatting about your forthcoming publication, which is exploding head. And as mentioned in the bio, it's a memoir and prose poems relating to OCD. So can you tell us about the work and how it came to be?
[00:14:26] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So I started writing poems about OCD in about 2013, which now, looking back, is ten years ago. And I was already 38 years old at that time. And I had never really talked publicly about having obsessive compulsive disorder. It was something that I kept secret most of my life, and I really only shared bits of it with my closest friends. So when I started writing these poems, it was really the first time I was talking about OCD in detail and trying to communicate what goes on in my mind with someone other than my best friend or my husband. So it was tough at first, but I realized I was building a book, and I started to think of the book kind of as a memoir when I realized it really was the most personal thing I've ever written. And ultimately, I realized it would be shaped in a way that would just tell the story of OCD in my life. And it wasn't going to be an OCD story from a critical historical or cultural standpoint. It was just my personal story. So in that way, I sort of consider it more of a memoir type poetry collection than my previous books are.
[00:15:30] Speaker E: Yeah, I've obviously had a copy sent through, and I've read the poems in it, and they're super powerful. And your writing is amazing. But with your OCD, when did you become aware of it, and when did you get diagnosed?
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Well, first, thank you so much for the compliment on the writing. I think I was always aware that something weird was going on in my mind when I was very little. Counting things and looking at the window and counting the four sides of the window, it's a square, and just counting the four sides over and over. And it was kind of like an anxiety that I had running in me even as a young child. And I found that the counting kind of the compulsion kind of helps ease the anxiety. Until you do the compulsion so much, the compulsion becomes a problem. And therein lies the issue with OCD. I kind of self diagnosed when I was a teenager, and I discovered a book called the Boy who Couldn't Stop Washing. I forget the author's name at the moment, but it really shared some personal stories that resonated with me. And one of them in particular was the story of a man who thought he had perhaps hit someone with his car and had to keep stopping the car and looking in the ditch for the body, which is just nothing like anything else I had heard of prior in relation to OCD. Someone had to remind me that the character monk on television, which my parents loved that show, that he had OCD. But I thought, wow, I watched that show all those years with my parents in my own home, and I never felt like he represented that character, represented how I experienced OCD. It's not a germs thing. It's not things being organized in a certain way. There's a lot of misconceptions of what OCD is. So when I read that story about the man, I thought, wow, these obsessions that are really just shocking, intrusive thoughts, or perhaps even sometimes upsetting and violent thoughts can be a part of OCD. And that was really when I noticed I kind of self diagnosed myself with that.
[00:17:33] Speaker E: Wow.
It's not incredible, but it's super interesting. And OCD is not something I've looked into as much, but obviously, preparing for the interview, and I read about it, and like you said, there is a sort of stereotype around it for people who don't have OCD, that you think it's the cleaning thing and it's this and it's that, but it's obviously so much more. Did it turn out that had the guy actually hit somebody or. No, this was just his thoughts.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it was just his obsession that he had worried about. And that's something that I think, in general, we don't understand that OCD can take on so many themes in terms of the obsessions. Just almost anything can become an obsession. And there's a lot of stigma around many of these themes, so it doesn't get talked about as much as things like organization or fear of germs. So I think that a lot of that is hidden. And people might have OCD and they don't recognize it because they haven't seen a story that reflects how their OCD enacts itself in their mind. I hope at least, that my book shows another side of OCD that maybe isn't as often shown in TV or in books, that people who have OCD will connect with and resonate with. And I don't ever say in the poems OCD at all. I don't name that, but it was very important for me to name it on the back of the book to say, this is a collection of poems about OCD. Because I had an early reader who thought, oh, my goodness, you have schizophrenia. Or there was this moment of kind of being misdiagnosed by a reader. And I thought, wow, that really shows how much misunderstanding there is about OCD in popular culture. And also that I myself, writing about mental illness without stating the diagnosis outright, risk other people attempting to diagnose me. So I wanted to own that, at least in the back cover copy of the book.
[00:19:36] Speaker E: Yeah, that's it. Well, I think the OCD, stereotypical cleaning and all, not so much counting, but the germs and things, is maybe stereotypical because us as outsiders, can we see that? I suppose we see those behaviors rather than we can't see the internal struggle and the thoughts that people have. So your poetry shines through, obviously, maybe what you've gone through and what you're dealing with, and I bet that it will connect with so many people once it's out in the world and in the hands of readers. But, yeah, that's interesting that other people have, like you said, opened up to misdiagnosing you, which is not too good.
Yeah.
How has writing about it helped you? Has it helped you get.
[00:20:22] Speaker D: I don't know.
[00:20:22] Speaker E: How has it helped you, writing about what you deal with?
[00:20:25] Speaker A: I think it has definitely helped me feel more connected to a community. I have sought out other people who have OCD and found a lot of other people who had OCD that I never knew about, who are also poets and writers and creatives, and just knowing that that community was out there and available to me, but all those years that I was keeping it secret, I wasn't able to have that. I kind of feel like now I'm feeling more connected, and I'm hoping that me reaching out with this book not only helps me feel more connected, but will help others feel more connected as well. I think that it has helped me be able to just talk about it more, to find the language to talk about it. And sometimes just saying things out loud can really release the power that they hold over you. Just putting it down on paper and sharing it. As scary as that is, you think, oh, I feel more powerful over that thought. Now. That's kind of a really silly thought. Why did that scare me so much? So, yeah, it kind of gives me that step back and that perspective.
[00:21:30] Speaker E: Yeah, that's it. I think it is a strange thing to sort of write something down, and then you do get more clarity on it, I think, and more pathways are kind of open when you release something out through words, I find, anyway, for sure with OCD. So obviously, you recognized it and within yourself at quite a young age. Is it something that develops from a young age or can it come about from in adults and older life as well? Do you know much about that?
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that it can come about later in adult life, but I think primarily it's diagnosed in children, but I don't think growing up in the parents didn't probably know anything about OCD, and they wouldn't have recognized it in me because a lot of my. I wouldn't say behaviors, my compulsions were really all internal.
I can count. I can look at things. Nobody would know. No one wouldn't know, which is a blessing and a curse because I avoided stigma. I didn't have to share it with anyone. No one ever made fun of me because I had OCD because they didn't know. But also, I didn't get any help because no one knew. I hid it. I kept it to myself. I didn't have a lot of outward compulsions that people noticed. I do have one poem in the book that talks about blinking, and it is something that I used to do when I was quite young, and I noticed that other people were noticing it and I was able to, fortunately or unfortunately, I was able to replace it with something else that was more internal. So. Oh, I don't want anyone to know that I'm blinking. So I have to stop. I'll do counting instead or something else.
[00:23:14] Speaker E: So did someone say, oh, you blink a little. Why is that? Or something, or just drew it to your attention?
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Yes. Actually, the poem is called the Face has seven holes.
I mean, it's kind of funny. It's not funny when you're experiencing it as a child and it's traumatic, but when you think about it now, it's like seven holes. And if you look at them in a certain pattern, it creates an upside down star. And so that's what I was doing when I was a child. I was essentially drawing stars on people's faces when they were talking to me in kind of an obsessive counting way in a certain pattern. 1234, 567-123-4567 it's hard to listen to someone when they're talking to you and you're counting stars on their faces. And one time in gym class, a volleyball hit me in the face and my eye swelled. And since my eye was swollen, people were looking at my eye so much. The nurse, my mom, and someone, I can't even remember if it was a nurse or a parent said, is that why you're blinking so much? And that was my first clue that other people could see that I was blinking, that my behavior was visible from others to others. And it scared me as a child. I wanted to conceal it and I was able to stop it. So I started just drawing these stars without blinking. Without blinking seven times when I looked at people. So when you're able to. I guess it's good that I had a level of control over it in a way. But also, had I shared that all of this was going on and gotten treatment, life might have been a little easier.
[00:24:47] Speaker E: Now, looking back on it, it's hard, though.
I would imagine it would be hard to share something like that. And you'd be worried about how you be perceived, especially. Yeah. Like you said, growing up in those times, my parents always say, now, oh, everybody's got so many problems these days. It wasn't like that when we were younger. And I was like, well, because when you were younger, it wasn't talked about or it wasn't identified. It wasn't a thing.
[00:25:11] Speaker D: And now it is.
[00:25:12] Speaker E: That's why talking about all mental illnesses as well. So true, I know, but they don't seem to get that. They just think everyone puts their hands up. But no, I like that mental health is getting more talked about these days, and there is more resources for, like you said, young children to reach out or feel comfortable to put their hands up if they're struggling. But obviously, there is still a lot of people out there who don't, which is something that we want to change. So you've talked about how writing OCD has helped you. What do you believe sort of hinders writers who suffer from mental health in creating and publishing because of what they experience. Do you think there's roadblocks that stop them from putting themselves out there creatively?
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Well, I can only speak from my personal experience. I don't know what others. I can only guess, but I know that for me, stigma was definitely a big roadblock, and it was a roadblock for me as a child in sharing what was going on in my mind because it scared me. I didn't understand it. I didn't think others would understand it. And a lot of the things that I thought about were like the stars on people's faces. They're just really silly. And so it's hard to express, especially when you're a child, how challenging and hard that is to be experiencing something that sounds so silly when you say it outright. So I think stigma is definitely a big roadblock. And I think also, if you're writing about mental health, I think the main thing to remember is that you can release yourself of any pressure of thinking that you need to be a singular representative of that mental illness, or a spokesperson or even an expert on it. You only know your own experience. And if you write directly from your personal experience with that mental illness, that is what will connect with readers.
[00:27:07] Speaker E: Yeah, I think that's a good point there, because mental illness, although there's probably, like you said, well, in OCD, there's lots of different things. It's probably, what's the word? Not represents, but comes through each of us differently, rather, like you said, it's your own experiences. So what about if someone wanted to write about mental health from someone else's experiences? Do you think that can be done or it's more powerful from people lived experience?
[00:27:33] Speaker A: I think that if you're writing about someone else's experience, it depends in what way you're doing that. If you are telling someone else's story, then do you have permission to do so? Is it like, are you a journalist? Is it a reporting type position, or if you're writing something that is a personal essay or a memoir, but involves someone else who has played an important role in your life, who suffers from mental illness, I think the most important thing to remember is to tell your story. And you're not voicing someone else's story in order to replace their ability to tell their own story, but you're talking about, from your position, how what that person went through affected you. So as long as you maintain that point of view and keep it organic to your own story and central to your own story, just have to avoid speaking for others in that way.
[00:28:29] Speaker E: Yeah, no, that's absolutely good points there. Back to your work. Exploding head. What was your process there?
Did it just come quite organically and you just had to sit down and write out your feelings and things like that, or do you have a certain process that you had to follow with your writing?
[00:28:47] Speaker A: I think that I tend to write what you would call. In the poetry world, we call them project books. So that's essentially, it's kind of like a novel or a collection of short stories or something that's all on the same theme or has something that's formally cohesive about them, about all the poems, so that they stick together. And all of my collections seem to be that way. And I think that it's because I get obsessive about things, not just because of OCD, but I tend to want to really dive down into a particular topic and sit with it for a long period of time and write more than just one poem about it. So I tend to come up with these big ideas before I've even started. And I think I'm going to write a book about X. It's never, I'm going to write a poem. It's always, I'm writing a book.
And either the book, I can write 40 poems, and the book fails. That's the risk of the project book. But the same thing happened with this idea. I. I wanted to write about OCD, and I. And I knew it would. I would try to write it as a book, and I. I honestly can't remember why I wrote the first poem as a prose poem. A prose poem is essentially a little paragraph. There aren't any line breaks. It just looks like a little paragraph on the page. And I feel like it matched the way I felt when I was in my OCD mind. It's like a little box. Everything is very compressed and tight, and also anything can happen in that box. It also felt like a safe space where I could hide little things that felt scary to me. Nothing was kind of hanging off the end in a line break with white space.
Poems that have, like, line breaks and white space, to me, felt too exposed when I was talking about something that had been a secret for so long. So I felt comfortable in this form of just these little paragraphs. And I wrote the first one. I brought it to poetry group, and I said, I don't want to talk about what this is about, but I want to start writing these poems. My poetry group was just very supportive and helped me believe that I could write these poems and didn't ask too much about what it was about, and just helped me very slowly reveal at my own pace what I wanted to reveal. Yeah, that was a very supportive environment in which to be writing this project.
[00:31:02] Speaker E: Amazing. And were they aware that you have OCD?
[00:31:06] Speaker A: I don't think that they were aware initially, because I just wasn't need to talk about it. I think that I wanted to say the perfect thing. The poetry is a way of refining and saying the perfect thing exactly as I wanted it. So it helped me to present the things in a crafted form that then opened a door for me to be more informal about sharing my personal experience. So after a few poems, I'm sure we started talking about it.
[00:31:39] Speaker E: Yeah, that's amazing. It does feel really underrepresented, I think. OCD, it's maybe, as I said, I don't know, actually, you're probably the first person I've met with OCD. And maybe because, I don't know, you found it's less common in people. That's why it's underrepresented so much, say, alongside anxiety and depression, which has high numbers in the population.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: Yes, perhaps. I mean, I think. Just did a quick search here. It says, Google says OCD prevalence is about 2% of the world's population.
[00:32:15] Speaker E: Wow.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: It's a lot of people when you think if it's 70 million people, but 2% is not a lot. So if two out of every 100 people, a lot of people might have OCD, but you don't notice or you don't know or realize, but it can be a very debilitating illness, and it can cause people to not be able to leave their homes or not be productive in any way because they're trapped in a cycle of obsessions and compulsions that is very hard to break through.
[00:32:50] Speaker E: Yeah, it sounds really scary, and I definitely have big empathy there. How have you helped? Can you overcome? Do you have tools to help you through these obsessive, you keep saying sort of period. So I take it comes and goes, yeah.
[00:33:06] Speaker A: I think the compulsions are sort of always with me. I just live with them. They're my little friends.
I count anything that's a square or a rectangle in my field of vision. I'm just constantly counting it in my mind. I'm doing it right now.
It's just a part of my. It's kind of like a low level irritation that's always there. And I would love for it to be gone, but I've come so late. I feel like I've come so late to treatment in a way that other forms of treatment have helped me over the years to not give the intrusive thoughts, which can sometimes be quite scary and upsetting, to give them much power. And I'm able to just let the thought go through, like, okay, that's just a thought. You can't control a thought coming into your mind. You can just not give it power. Try to resist doing the compulsion, whatever it is that you feel the need to do, to reduce that anxiety you feel. And that's essentially like a self made form of exposure response prevention therapy, which is when you expose yourself to something that's upsetting your obsessive item, and then you try to prevent yourself from doing the response, the compulsive response. So I think that I've kind of just managed to just get through my life for so long, and writing about it has helped quite a bit. But it also, because sometimes when I'm writing about certain things, it causes me to look long and hard at those things because I'm making a poem about them, that I am granting those ideas more power than I normally would if I were going to get through my day without a lot of upset. So it can be upsetting and triggering to write about your mental illness.
[00:34:54] Speaker E: Wow. Yeah. In my mind, I would have thought, as you said, you're focusing on it, so that's maybe giving it power. I thought that would be maybe helping sort it through or releasing it. But would you say it's been recognizing, obviously recognizing these traits and then accepting them as well, that's helped you get through as well as the writing?
[00:35:15] Speaker A: I think so. I think that I've always sort of found a way to recognize. What about my personal experience with OCD is creative. Like, I can work as a creative person in partnership with my particular mental illness. For example, I talked a little bit about photography. I always was very interested in taking photographs up close of shapes and forms, and I did a lot of traveling and all my photographs were just up close, architecture, corners of buildings and shapes. And I think that I never would have been, as have such a heightened awareness of the beauty of those shapes and forms if my OCD wasn't constantly making me look for squares and rectangles and counting the sides of things. And so in a lot of ways, it has helped me see beauty in the world that I think I wouldn't have otherwise seen. And I think it's the same way with language. I have another poem in exploding head called let's See. The music of language is clamping down hard. And another line in the poem is the music of language is opening up for you. And there's a way in which as a child, and still today, I tend to hear numbers and counting in phrases. So if someone says something that I hit on a six syllable sound and I can look at a square and count the four sides and draw an X through the middle, then that's six lines, and I can't turn it off. I'm just attuned to the musicality of language, and I'm sure that I've been able to tap into that. And that's why I love poetry so much. That's why I love language. It both irritates me and inspires me.
[00:37:03] Speaker E: Yeah, you absolutely have. Your exploding head is just absolutely stunning work. Is there any of your work you would like to read just now?
[00:37:14] Speaker A: Oh, like a little poem? Yeah.
[00:37:16] Speaker E: Do you have a favorite one?
[00:37:18] Speaker A: Oh, goodness.
[00:37:20] Speaker E: All of them? Let me put you on the spot. I know, but I think it's quite fitting for you to share one, I think.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: Sure, I can share. Well, why don't I share? The face has seven holes. Yeah, because this is the poem in which I'm getting hit in the face by a volleyball. I'm learning to no longer blink. So this is sort of my internal thought process in these poems. I want to bring the readers into what it's like inside my brain. So this poem is, the face has seven holes. Someone is talking to you. Look at her face when she's talking to you. Draw a star. Start with the right nostril. Draw a line to the left ear, up to the right eye, down to the mouth. Left eye, right ear, left nostril. The face has seven holes. Blink on it. Seven blinks. Her deep black eyes. 1234. Moving mouth. Five, six, seven. In gym class, a volleyball hits you in the face. Your eyes swells. Is that why you're blinking so much? Someone says she leans her face in. 714, 21, 28. This behavior is evident. You look like an idiot. 35. 42. 49. Her moving Lips. 56. 63. Her face has seven holes. 70. Did she say something? Draw a star. Blink on it.
[00:38:45] Speaker E: Wow. That is so incredibly powerful. And you are drawn in and you feel like you're right there as well as we know all the backstory of that story as well. So well done.
[00:38:55] Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah, I'm trying to create, especially in that poem, not all the poems are that way, but that one in particular, I think I was trying to just sort of say to anyone who would read it, hey, this is what it's like in my brain. It's so frustrating. It's hard to listen sometimes. All this extra stuff is going on.
[00:39:13] Speaker E: Yeah, I bet. And I think that you're going to really connect with a lot of other people through your work as well. Have you ever considered writing? So not poetry, but just like a long form story?
[00:39:24] Speaker A: This year, actually, my goal for 2023 was to learn to write essays. I used to write personal essays many years ago, and I don't know why. Speaking of the hybrid writer, I don't know why I thought, I've shut a door and I just am in the poetry room. Why can't I also write memoir, right? All of these other forms, there's no reason that I need to be one type of writer. So I really have come back to my roots, and where I started was always, I loved storytelling and especially personal essays. Personal storytelling. So I have started writing essays this year, and I'm hoping some of them will be published soon, hopefully along with the publication of Exploding Head in February. And we'll see where that takes.
[00:40:11] Speaker E: Amazing. Oh, well, thank you so much, Cynthia, for your time and expertise. It's been really eye opening and just very inspiring talking to you. Can you share with our listeners where they are going to discover you, your books on and offline?
[00:40:25] Speaker A: Yes. You can visit my website at Ww cynthiamariehoffman.com. And the book is called Exploding Head, and you can find
[email protected] Persiabooks or Amazon. Lots of sellers.
[00:40:41] Speaker E: Oh, well, thank you, Cynthia. That was amazing.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.
[00:40:53] Speaker D: So there you have it, folks. Cynthia Marie Hoffman, such a gorgeous, gorgeous soul. And I urge everyone to go out and buy a copy of Cynthia's poetry collection, exploding head out in February. It's one of the most beautiful, well crafted books that I have had the pleasure of reading. It gives you such an insight, as you heard from what Cynthia just shared there, into a world that I personally have felt misunderstood. About next time on the Hybrid Author podcast, we have Andrea Puting, author and visionary entrepreneur, chatting from manuscript to bestseller. The transformative power of Professional Guidance. I wish you well in your author adventure this next week. That's it from me. Bye for now.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: That's the end for now, authors. I hope you are further forward in your author adventure after listening. And I hope you'll listen next time. Remember to head on over to the hybrid Author
[email protected] Dot au to get your free author pass. It's bye for now.
