B (3:48)

Sure, yeah. Which is pretty cool. I, I, it's always fun to meet with people who have gone through their OCD experience and now want to give back what led to you decide that that was really what you wanted to do. Obviously, you, you get to still learn great things that are helpful to yourself. But tell me about that other part of it, of want others with ocd.

A (4:13)

I, the liberation that I was able to feel from loosening OCD's grip on my own psyche is such a profound shift in living. I have, I have suffered with OCD since the time I was about 11 and going through theme by theme, by theme, you name it, I've had it. And when I was really able to experience profound and lasting relief from ocd, I just, I couldn't imagine knowing what I know and not sharing that with others. It made me so passionate to be able to let people know that you can recover and you can liberate yourself from this cycle, and there is a real way, and I'm so passionate about sharing that.

B (5:10)

Sure. How did OCD start for you? What were your initial experiences with it?

A (5:16)

Yeah, my first theme, I think I said, yeah, I was about 10 or 11. I learned about what suicide was. And then the intrusive thought, what if I did that? What if I. Oh, my gosh. Then everything around me became a means to harm myself. And then from there, I've had other, various other forms of harm. Contamination, sexual orientation, existential. I mean, to an nth degree, it can't even. That one still still comes up sometimes in a different way, though. I mean, the way that I experience intrusive thoughts now, where they once affected me like a lightning bolt and an earthquake, are now like passing clouds and some wind. In the way that I've been able to kind of thoroughly introduce uncertainty into my psyche and to such a, such a profound degree that it has changed the way that my nervous system reacts with intrusive thoughts.

B (6:23)

Sure. And a big part of that for you was treatment. So what was your treatment experience like?

A (6:30)

Yeah, so I went through no CD twice. I did two rounds of erp. And I mean, there, it's so, it's, there's no words to describe the courage and the bravery that it takes to do exposures and scripts when you are essentially admitting to, you're fully surrendering to the things that you fear most with harm themes. Writing out the gruesome, gory details of how you might harm someone is unimaginably difficult. And so as I did get some improvement my first round, I don't think I was, I didn't, I wasn't able to, to stay up on the exposures as much as I needed to. You know, I kind of moved the needle and I was like, oh, I kind of reached a plateau and then didn't continue. Where that's such an important element to recovery is to keep pushing through even when you have plateaued and when you feel better. And that's what I tell my clients now all the time. Even though you're having a good week, we still need to do the scripts, do the exposures. But actually philosophically, I came to a different conceptualization of OCD that completely changed the game for me. That really offered me profound and lasting relief to where it doesn't, it doesn't, I don't, I don't engage with OCD in the same way that I did. And that came from a kind of a larger understanding of what, how, how that, how I, how OCD manifested for me. And I was able to really unpack that and really deeply liberate from ocd.

B (8:41)

What were your discoveries in that area? How did that happen for you?

A (8:45)

Yeah, so I kind of, I came to this hypothesis and this came from my own subjective experience and sitting with my clients where this question kept coming up. How do I tell the difference between OCD and God? How do I tell the difference between OCD and my intuition? Because they, they. And I came to this realization that for me, and kind of what I was seeing is that they kind of come from the same place. And that as we start to conceptualize our belief system and whether that's religious or not, whether it's a belief and no belief or this kind of third party authority, what we get from our parents, our community, our conditioning, we gather this bundle of belief and for those with ocd, there's kind of this mutation where there's this malignant tumor almost that OCD then attacks, is like the shadow aspect of all of those beliefs. So whatever I value most, there's a belief in that came behind that value. And all of my themes are directly kind of correlated back to this belief system that I held. So when I really came into, like a deep and profound understanding of uncertainty and agnosticism, a lot of that, the fuel that OCD had just kind of dissipated. Where almost every one of my themes had a deeper existential tie back into these questions of am I good? Am I pleasing the universe? Am I, you know, going to reach enlightenment or go to heaven? All of those, they tied back into this existential question.

B (10:45)

Sure.

A (10:46)

And when I came into more agnosticism, philosophically of I'll never know, it really just took the air out of the tires of, like, so many of my themes.

B (11:01)

Yeah, that's really interesting because that is ultimately the goal in treatment. Right. To be able to say, I'm never going to get an answer that's going to be satisfying to ocd, but I can have a satisfying answer. Right?

A (11:18)

Correct. Right.

B (11:19)

Yeah. And they're two very different answers because the OCD answer is kind of the Sisyphus answer, the one that you never quite get to the top of the hill with. Right. To bring more mythology into the experience there. In your years of trying to satisfy OCD with an answer, what did you get?

A (11:42)

Oh, my gosh. Okay. I realized I was so supernaturally codependent, if that makes sense. Where I grew up in a very New Age culture. So I was on a perpetual quest to rid myself of ocd, even though I didn't know it was OCD at the time. So I was bouncing from retreat to retreat and extreme cleansing, fasting, sitting at temples. You know, I was in that way, trying to gain certainty, purity, cleanliness from, you know, these supernatural pursuits of. Of pleasing the universe and being a good, good person and, you know, meditation and what have you, to where I realized that that entire journey wasn't itself an obsession and compulsion, because it was always an if, that if I go to this retreat, then I'll, you know, finally be pure and. And good and if I, you know, do this, cleanse and pass. So OCD itself was kind of the propeller of that journey, and I was trying to find a cure for something that was putting. Propelling me down that journey in the first place.

B (13:09)

I like how you said, you know, coming from this maybe New Age kind of culture. Right. Where. And that's an interesting discussion because most people that we talk to have a very specific faith system. You know, they're Islamic, they're, they're Christian, Hindu, Jewish. And yet when you, you take it to a broader, from what you're describing, even to the existential kind of experience, that's not something that we've had a lot of discussions on. So I'm wondering, could you elaborate, like, what were some of those deep questions about the universe and the meaning you had in it? What, what were those like? And how were you trying to find answers to scratch the itch that was unscratchable? You know, I, I, I, you said you were going to the retreats and things too, but that had to just take up so much time of your life.

A (14:07)

I'm thinking, oh, my goodness, absolutely. Like I said, I found, I use the term supernatural codependence because I was codependent on my conceptualization of the universe, which was this more mystical kind of spiritual force that was more dependent on karma. And, you know, if I do, if I'm, if I do this yoga practice and this meditation and this, and this clear and clean in my body, then I will then attract, you know, this fortune or this good thing that is going to happen to me. So it's very magical in quality and fantastical, but not unlike a more traditional Abrahamic religion like Christianity, Judaism, where there is this relationship to this third party, this other, this other entity that has some force or influence in my life and that when you have ocd, can get hijacked.

B (15:21)

Sure.

A (15:22)

And turn into this more maladaptive divine, where I'm then doing mental gymnastics to try to please this third party that ultimately exists in my own head that I created. Because we will never know for sure or we will never necessarily have a direct experience. We'll only have what exists in our mind of what that divine is. So that's when I use the malignant tumor on the divine. That is sort of my idea of what happens with ocd. Like, we have this idea of this divine thing and then the OCD kind of has this malignant twist on. Let me then show you every shadow aspect of that. And with my Christian clients, this is a very, like, provocative example, but with their intrusive thoughts, I'm almost like, whoa, that's like your own little Antichrist in your head.

B (16:25)

Yeah.

A (16:28)

Like, it kind of just goes. It picks out all of the worst fears and, you know, manipulates them into what if you did this? And what if. To this as the kind of anti. Of the belief itself.

B (16:46)

And, and OCD is interesting to me because OCD says you can know everything, and yet I've Never met anyone in all their research who's figured everything out in the way that OCD wants it figured out.

A (17:05)

The. It's. That's why it's so existentially fascinating because the only cure and not saying that there's a cure is complete surrender to uncertainty and agnosticism, if you will. Like, I just don't know. I will never know. And that had to, that had to go there in my own beliefs and my own questing to rest in. I will never truly know. And that was really when it just all kind of shifted because there was no, There wasn't as much fuel anymore, if you will, for OCD to, to get, to get at me.

B (17:45)

Right. And I think that can frighten people a bit too because accepting that you don't know something doesn't, and I'm going to use your term, doesn't mean you're an agnostic. You, you can be a very faithful person.

A (18:00)

Sure.

B (18:01)

And still say but I don't know everything versus what you're describing about this agnostic to or experience of the philosophy of it being being able to say it's okay to not know for sure. There's, there's nothing wrong with that. And you're not a bad person in your faith or in your practice because you don't have all the answers. In fact, you're exhibiting your humanness by not knowing all of the answers in this experience.

A (18:28)

You're right. It is terrifying because then that can fly in the face of someone's identity. Their identity is really wrapped in their religion and their community and it's, and it's very important to them. Unfortunately, that is the ground in which OCD thrives when you're really invested in something and it's really important to you. So of course it's terrifying to sit in the space of not knowing around that but holding to having a rational, reasonable, realistic relationship to religion of I, you know, I, I believe this and I hold space for I don't know.

B (19:11)

Yeah.

A (19:12)

And that's. That is. There's a very hard, that's a very hard road to traverse. And even in people with eight, even atheists who are very bound and there is no God, you know, there's void there that. Then that can be a place of intrusive thoughts clinging to what if there is.

B (19:32)

Yes, absolutely.

A (19:33)

So even the atheist. Can we. We all kind of just need to come into the, in this space of philosophical agnosticism at least is how I have found like the deepest relief.

B (19:49)

Gotcha. And I'll go back to what you had said earlier too, that, that idea of sticking with treatment because you're right, sometimes you plateau, right? Sometimes you get to the point where OCD and you are doing this dance a little bit back and forth and how important it is to keep pushing forward. So sure, you take what you've learned in ERP and now you're really applying it to yourself. So what did that look like? How did you, what did you really learn that in that experience? And how did that really kind of get you over the, the hump of where of that plateau.

A (20:29)

I just became more diligent in just noticing the things that I was resistant to because I was resistant to a lot of nuanced things because of my confusion about my new age upbringing where like, oh, something's bad vibration or you know, that's, that's, that's gonna put me in a bad mood or an uncomfortable. So even things like scary movies that had harm themes I would resist because then it, you know, because it's. One part of me is saying like, oh, well, that's a bad vibration. So like when I was noticing the places in which I didn't realize were ocd, I would then push through. So I was, you know, I'd make myself watch media that I had been resistant to before scripting when I would just notice the more subtle kind of sneaky, magical thinky things that I started to become aware of. And at this point, I mean, I was seeing clients too, so. So working through people's own hierarchies and doing exposures and scripting I feel like is really helpful to kind of do it. It's like just to continue. It's kind of keeping me continuously up on exposures myself, just working with people through theirs. I love, I feel like it's so helpful to keep me sharp on my own exposures to.

B (22:11)

So you have this childhood, you have these kind of existential crises, faith experiences where you're going to go, where are you at now? What, what's your level? Where's your comfort at? And, and how do you incorporate the I will never fully have an answer mentality into dealing with that also? And just into your day to day life and into your therapy, providing life as well.

A (22:39)

How do I incorporate that? Never knowing. I feel I've arrived at a place of pretty profound peace, I would say pretty, pretty grounded for the first time in my life. And that is from ERP and OCD recovery and my own kind of philosophical understanding of OCD and the nature of belief and doing meaningful work with Other people and helping people recover and come up against these, their own. You know, under. Doing a hierarchy with someone and unpacking it and getting them back to living their life again is just the most rewarding thing. I mean, I, I'm so profoundly in love with the work that I do and watching people reclaim their life again and coming up against these exposures and facing their fears and within my own life philosophy, I guess the philosophical agnosticism, you'll call it, I just, I just, that's just how I move in the world now. Where once there was so much, you know, dancing around and mental acrobatics, I just, just reality, logic, reason. The same thing you do with intrusive thoughts, you know, just meeting it with uncertainty.

B (24:26)

Is. I think I know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask it for our audience. Is it actually more peaceful to live now than it was trying to find the answers all the time?

A (24:36)

Oh, a hundred percent. I can't. I mean, there are no words where. I mean, where belief seeks meaning, OCD demands certainty. And not living a life under the thumb of this force that's demanding certainty in an uncertain world is such a liberating experience. It does feel kind of like waking up from a bad dream, you know, it really does. Recovering from OCD and just kind of extricating yourself out of this like one person culture almost.

B (25:17)

Yeah, right. It's the worst cult ever, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. That's got to mean a better relationship with your family and everything as well, right?

A (25:30)

Yeah, and just, yeah, just, just more ease and less anxiety and I mean, my body feels different, like my nervous system feels different. I'm not constantly in and out of these fight or flight episodes where I was, you know, shaky and my stomach was upset and I wasn't sleeping well. I mean, I lived like that for a good 20 something years. I was 11 or 12. The first intrusive thought that ever struck into my brain. And then it just went from there.

B (26:12)

And how do other people experience you? I think this is an interesting question, both from you having OCD and being a therapist. But, you know, sometimes everyone else around you when you have ocd, seems to walk on eggshells around you. They don't want to be triggering to you. They. They don't want to say the wrong thing or anger you.

A (26:36)

How.

B (26:36)

How do other people interact with you differently?

A (26:38)

Now I have gotten a lot of feedback from my family that I just seem more grounded, more stable, more calm. Yeah. And I love that you brought up the triggering Thing because that's what I love about people with ocd. I love that when you get to the other side, you have such a huge capacity for the human experience, like these horrifying, disturbing, distressing, triggering things that you just have so much tolerance and acceptance for having had. Having had to do exposures. It just makes you such a richer, more compassionate person. And these things that really scare a lot of people, people with OCD are like, oh, it's just thought not a million of them and it just makes for just like. I just, I love people with ocd. I just. They're just such rich, complex, beautiful individuals.

B (27:47)

Yeah. Is it hard to think of yourself that way, though? Because sometimes, you know, when you start thinking nice about yourself, OCD says, well, you're being narcissistic. And what's it like to look at yourself now as a wonderful, complex, contributing human being versus what OCD sometimes says is you're, you're kind of a piece of crap and you suck. And, and until you figure all this out, you're not worth much.

A (28:16)

Yeah, no, I totally hear that. And I, I don't think I would have been able to view myself that way had I not covered. Because that voice that you're talking about, that kind of third party OCD voice that has really changed for me in the way that it's. I just don't believe it as much and it's not even as loud anymore, and it's kind of integrated itself into my whole experience in a much healthier way. So I feel like. Yeah, those thoughts don't really, just, just. They don't really stick much anymore. Like they would have and they. Like they did. Like they really did.

B (29:04)

Sure. So you live in a world now of uncertainty like we always did, but we're denying almost, right? Yeah.

A (29:17)

Yeah. I don't know if I'm going to go insane in front of my next client. That's an intrusive thought that pops up sometimes. That's a good one. I don't know if my daughter's gonna come home from school alive. That was, that was a really hard one. Yeah. I don't know if I have cancer right now and I don't know it. That one comes up. So, yes, they, I, they are certainly there. They're just so much gentler and more and just more easy and just, just okay. I'm just a lot more okay with having those thoughts because they.

B (30:05)

What is it like? And this, I think, will resonate with a lot of people who struggle with this, but what is it Like. Or what's the freeing aspect even of just being okay with not knowing an answer to something?

A (30:29)

I. It's. I think that that's the essence of liberation. Right. Because I'm not tied to give an answer to. To. To someone or something, and my existence isn't tied to. Or my goodness or badness isn't tethered into having to know for sure. Because then it's just. Then I can just rest in this experience of life itself, which we just have no idea what consciousness is or what happens after we die or if we're gonna make it home for dinner tonight and living out of that tear and just surrendering to just. I'm trapped in a body in this timeline, on this planet, and that's as much as I got. Yeah. Like, that's pretty much it.

B (31:31)

Yeah. And. And I think that that, again, that can be so hard for people to accept. You know, OCD always wants things to be bigger and better, and. And sometimes we accept what is, and we also accept not knowing what isn't. In the physical or research world. Could there be other things out there? Sure, there could be plenty of things. And it is okay to not know the answer to it, even though OCD says that that's not acceptable.

A (32:09)

Yeah, that is. I think the hardest thing that we do in life is coming to that place of uncertainty. So it's almost like OCD sufferers have this Dharma Bell of, you know, coming back into the present moment, which is completely uncertain. And I don't know if you've found this parallel, but it does feel like a lot of the treatment for OCD is kind of like Zen Buddhist in nature. Like, being present, accepting uncertainty. Like, just a lot of. I just. Yeah. Found a lot of parallels in my own research of. Wow, this is actually quite Buddhist.

B (32:57)

Yeah. We. You know, you're not here to challenge your thoughts. You can just allow them to be there. Right.

A (33:02)

Yeah.

B (33:03)

And let them go. What is it like for you now to teach other people how to do this and to watch them open up to the possibility that they don't have to have answers to everything?

A (33:15)

It's the best. It's the best thing. I. I love it so much. It's. There's nothing more rewarding. I have a diverse caseload, but when I have my OCD clients, I. I just light up. I feel so much passion and connection in identifying, you know, the. Just building the hierarchy, identifying the intrusive thoughts, finding the sneaky intrusive thoughts, building exposures, watching people confront these shadows. You know, it's really a shadow side of a belief that they hold. And designing effective exposures together and watching people reclaim their life and have these aha moments that only come from doing this brave and courageous work of exposure and response prevention. And I do often, I do like to go a little deeper sometimes into some, you know, unpacking some of these really rigid and fixed beliefs and like, well, where did you learn that from? And how true is that now? Especially with contamination, I'll find people have a lot of pseudoscience that they've gathered about germs and things and you know, kind of like, what's that source? And can we prove that? And myth busting sometimes in treatment can be effective.

B (34:52)

Oh, there's a lot of that, isn't there?

A (34:53)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. It's the, I mean, I couldn't imagine anything more rewarding. It's, it's just the best and I hope to do it forever.

B (35:09)

So there's people out there right now maybe listening to this who are on the fence, doing therapy, not doing therapy. Will this violate my values or things of that nature? How do you, as someone who's gone through this now yourself and had those concerns, what's the advice you give someone who is where you might have been years ago before treatment?

A (35:36)

Yeah, I would say, well, OCD doesn't need enlightenment or atonement, it needs treatment. So if there's a part of you that's telling you that you need to fix it through religious framework or a belief, you know, if it, if there's that that's holding you back around the values, that's probably more evidence that OCD needs treatment and exposure and response. Prevention is the gold standard. It works the way that it works with the brain. You know, habituation, systematic desensitization, exposing ourselves so that these thoughts don't bug us anymore, that is, it's real and it works. And it's different from traditional therapy. So make sure that you have a specialist that knows exactly how to build exposures and not give reassurance and really flex your muscles of uncertainty and allow it to seep in maybe deeper than you thought. Like allow that uncertainty to take hold in, in your roots. Because really the, the root of life is uncertain. And if we're really going to recover from ocd, it does require that surrender.

B (37:00)

Yeah, I think that's our tagline. OCD doesn't need enlightenment or atonement, it needs treatment. I really like that. That's really, really good. And what are the lessons that you now share with the people you're working with that you've learned along the way.

A (37:20)

I. I do offer self disclosure. I think that's really helped people build a therapeutic alliance. I do let them know, hey, I have been an OCD sufferer for decades. I. I get it. You know, not. There's a fine line because, you know, we're not reassuring, but just making that connection and letting them know that recovery is real and you can get there. And I, as I have said over and over, I really echo uncertainty, Surrendering to uncertainty, facing these fears one by one, doing the brave and courageous work of exposing ourselves to these, you know, unimaginably torturous thoughts that we have. And it's okay, and we're gonna. You can recover. It's real and it's possible. And it. I lived it, and I'm on the other side. And maybe I won't, you know, maybe that's. That's an intrusive thought that I work with. What if I have another CD episode?

B (38:34)

You may.

A (38:35)

Well, yeah, I might. I may be back on the couch.

B (38:39)

Next week and you'll learn how to handle that, too.

A (38:44)

Yep. Yep. So just everything. Everything. Just withholding it. Holding that space of uncertainty through all of. Through all of life.

B (38:56)

Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you, Jacqueline, for joining today. I really appreciate the work you've done, and congrats on your career and what you're coming into. I can tell you, doing this for 25 years now, it is an amazingly fulfilling job and experience to get to do this on a daily basis. So I hope you love it as much as I do.

A (39:19)

I absolutely do. And thank you so much for being a part of my recovery journey, too, and offer. I mean, no CD is such a valuable resource, and I recommend it to everyone. And thank you for what you do.

B (39:36)

Thank you. And thank all of you for watching. This has been the get to Know OCD podcast. If you liked it, well, subscribe to our NOCD YouTube channel. And if you're looking for help for OCD or related conditions, you could check us out at nocd. Com. That's nocd. Com. We'll see you again in the future for another episode. And make it a great day, everybody. Talk to you later.