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Hi, everyone. Dr. Patrick mcgrath, chief clinical officer here at nocd. When people talk about ocd, they don't often talk about the price of ocd. But living with ocd can cost a lot and more than you recognize. It can cost you time. The amount of time people spend doing all these compulsions or time with the obsessions, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that we use, that helps us to define what OCD is and to see if somebody meets the criteria for it, says it's an hour more of your day. I've met people that it's almost all of their day is spent either in obsessions or doing compulsions to try to neutralize those obsessions. It puts a strain on jobs, on school, on relationships. It deprives us of quality time in our life. It can cost a ton of money. The amount of things that people could buy to deal with OCD might be huge, right? We may buy things like super soap and cleaners and decontaminants. There could be unnecessary medical appointments that people keep making over and over again to get more reassurance from a doctor, even though they've been told time and time again your test results were negative, there's nothing to be concerned about, but they want to keep hearing about. Could be that you keep ordering things and delivering things to your home because maybe you think this one got contaminated so I need a new one. And though then that one got, so now I need another new one. And I bought 50, 50 of these things because these old ones keep getting contaminated. I have to keep throwing them away. And because of that, we spent tons of money just in ordering stuff. There could be even feeling like you can't drive, right? Because of a fear of what if I hit someone? So now you're using ride shares to be able to get yourself to places instead of driving yourself. And that gets to be costly after a while too. You can lose out on opportunities, right? Maybe you don't join clubs and schools or things because after school you want to get home right away so you can decontaminate. Or maybe you lose out on opportunities with your family because you're so afraid that maybe you won't do something well enough at work that you go into work early and you stay at work late and you pull that time away from your family and you might be able to convince yourself, well, I have to keep this job because we have to have a home and we have to pay the bills and things. But at what cost is that happening? With your spouse potentially being very frustrated with you, your Children, maybe at some point kind of the cat's in the cradle, right? Not even want to talk to you anymore, like that song says. Because they just are like, well, they're not in my life, why should I be in their life, right? And we can even start to lose confidence in our own independence. We might need so much reassurance from others that we start hounding people to the point that people don't even want to talk to us anymore because it's just going to be us seeking reassurance from them. And it's all about me in that conversation and not ever asking, oh, how are you? By the way. There can be huge costs to health, right? The stress that OCD can put onto people can be big. People can turn to substance use as a way to try to manage some of these thoughts and images and urges that they're having. And when that happens, well, that can affect all sorts of things. School performance, work performance, driving even. You could get a driving while intoxicated if that's the case. If you're using alcohol or drugs as a way to try to manage some of the stressors going on, you might not eat properly because of contamination fears, and so your nutrition might suffer. You might not go outside anymore because you're afraid of encountering a child. If there's a pedophilic ocd. And we know being in the sun and vitamin D and all these things can be very helpful to people. Wear your sunscreen, of course, but you know, that's the kind of stuff that is just important to recognize. Or maybe we don't even exercise because we have this fear. What if I hurt myself? What if I cause a heart attack or something like that? And because of this we suffer, right? There's also the cost maybe of going to see a therapist who doesn't specialize in OCD and spending all sorts of time and energy and money on that without getting much back from it whatsoever. This is why it's important to make sure that we really spend time finding a specialist. And that's what we offer here at nocd. A network of people who are trained in OCD and, and do specialized treatment of ocd, which is exposure and response prevention. We know that you can regain the skills that you want in your life. You could go back to living the life you want to live and not living the life that OCD wants you to live. And if you're ready for that and you want some help of that, well, we're ready here at OCD to help. You know this. We're not going to throw you in the deep end of the pool. We're going to stick a toe in the water, see how it feels, and build up from there. Our therapists are going to work with you to assure you that we're going to get you to where you want to be, but in a manageable way. We're ready to talk to you@www.nocd.com. check us out. We'll book a free call with you. We'll make sure we get you set up with a therapist who is right for you, takes your insurance, if that's what you need. And we'll get started on building some rapport with you. Get to know you, you get to know us. And then let's get going on that ERP work. Remember, live the life you want to live, not the life that OCD wants you to live. We look forward to seeing you soon.