A visceral visualisation of life with OCD

Directed by Jenny Amdi Sørensen through Bacon, this raw and affecting short film portrays the emotional distress experienced by those living with various mental health conditions. 

Initially created by the director to explore her experience of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), she soon realised that This Is How It Feels To Me could also encapsulate a wider range of emotions, such as anxiety, stress, sadness. 

The film, which contains footage from the director's archives and a two-day shoot in Denmark, splices together a montage of dark, human imagery with a quiet, yet intense, sensory soundtrack, to evoking the feelings of fear, panic, and emptiness associated with the conditions.

“How come physical pain is deemed acceptable to talk about, but emotional pain is not? We are completely fine telling someone we have a headache while it is much harder to share that we are sad. I think this is because most of us haven’t learned to handle ‘negative’ feelings and thus they become nearly impossible to handle in both ourselves and others,” the 28-year-old director says, adding:

“Perhaps we are afraid that if we let the feeling in, it will stay. But in actuality, we create a vicious spiral by pushing feelings away. I think that acknowledging and accepting this as well as talking about it is the first step towards understanding and healing.”