"Empathy has more to do with listening than with understanding."

In this testimony, pianist and composer Clara Peya shares, as part of #YoCambioTodo , the awareness project of San Juan de Dios through the Instagram channel @yocambiotodo , how she has learned to understand and live with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Clara was diagnosed with OCD at 21. "We put a name to it at that age," she tells us, "but my childhood memories are full of obsessions and fears." A time when the suffering made it difficult for young Clara to sleep or concentrate, and she was always anxious, as she herself explains.

It wasn't until a decade after learning that what she was experiencing had a name and could be treated that she confronted the implications of this mental health disorder on her life. She did so through the show Suite TOC No. 6 and with the company she's part of, Les Impuxibles. It's a way to shed light on the topic of mental health and fight the taboo surrounding it.

For the artist, empathy has more to do with listening and knowing how to accompany someone than with understanding: "It's very difficult to understand the degree of suffering of another person." "What we need is for the stigma to be removed," she explains, "since I started sharing my diagnosis, I feel like I have nothing to hide and that I'm not different either. I feel better about myself, and it's been very liberating."