Okay. It's great. So first of all, thanks. Thanks again. You know, it's interesting I. I look back, such a crazy life that I've had and you know, I guess I should have thought something was going to be interesting when I was born because I was actually born sound asleep. My mom was. My mom was taking medication for her pain and I had all the pictures of me just afterward I was, I was sound asleep. But you know As I, as an infant and first couple years of life, I had some significant illnesses. I had pneumonia like three times, and I had a cyst in my neck, and I had a thing with my tongue that I was born with that they had to do surgery on. So, you know, those of us who have ocd, we often look back and wonder, geez, did this have anything to do with it? Right. We never know. Right. So it was interesting because my, My upbringing was, Was pretty dysfunctional. My mom suffered from obsessive compulsive personality disorder. And how that kind of manifested with myself and my two sisters was everything had to be perfect. We. We couldn't have friends over. We had to. The house had to be perfect. It would take her, I remember being a kid, just, we'd be going somewhere and it would take her like two hours to get ready to go out. And I just remember as a child, just, Just waiting for my mom, not really understanding what was going on, but, you know, knowing it. And she was actually a, A music major. And so at the age of five, she had my sister and I performing. I was in it had dance lessons and singing and doing shows and that kind of thing. And. But the challenge looking back is we. It always had to be perfect. Right? And not knowing as a kid what was going on, but just, just having that, having that out there, I think maybe affected me later on. So what happened was the big challenge, I think, was that my father, he always wanted to keep our family together, and so he didn't ever push it with her, and she was always right. And so I kind of had this resentment towards my dad not knowing that actually it was my mom that had the disorder. I didn't find that out until later when I moved out of the house. So probably in third grade. I remember just kind of being. And looking back now, kind of being anxious. And I remember I. I started to have some, like, minor, like, body dysmorphic disorder issues. Like, I remember, I remember in third grade, like, my hair had to be perfect. I remember I had super long hair back then. It was a long time ago. And I remember my mom cut it one time. And I remember just looking in the mirror and crying at, at my hair because I knew I had to go to school, I needed to be made fun of. And so. So from a young age, I kind of remember having that. And then I probably was. It was probably middle school when the, the BDD starting to get a little worse. I remember, you know, just spending a lot of time in front of the mirror. You're looking at myself. I remember middle school, you know, saying, trying to see my reflection on the. On the windows and at my school, things like that. Again, not knowing what it was and just being anxious, anxious about that. So what happened was in. In high school seemed to get worse. And then I became. I started to get obsessions over. When I'd have a conversation with somebody, I. I'd start to think about what I said. Did I come across as, you know, some strange person? Did I say the right thing? And. And that kind of manifested. And so again, just looking back now, there was these things again, not understanding. And it wasn't until I graduated from high school and went to college that I realized that my upbringing was different and that my. That there was something different about my mom. And again, it wasn't until later when I looked back and moved out of the house. So I graduated and I high school and went away to college. And body's a smart disorder. Started to get worse. I remember just, again, it was. It was really the hair. Looking at imperfections in my face, looking at the reflections. And I. No one really noticed, but I did remember one time there was a guy that said something to another guy and they both looked at me because I was looking at myself in the reflection. And I remember seeing that and like, oh my gosh, I'm outed. They caught me. And I remember getting super anxious. So, interesting thing happened my sophomore year, which really brought on maybe the severe anxiety, I think, at that time, and kind of the OCD more. So is that my freshman year or my sophomore year? I decided the first quarter I was going to get great grades. And so I decided to again, this perfectionism thing. So I don't just go after things a little bit. I go after them a lot. And so I remember just staying up late and studying all day. And because I was determined I was going to get in, not getting any sleep, but I was still, you know, going to parties and stuff like that, just kind of, kind of abusing my body in a way. And for. For, I remember for, you know, 10 weeks. And then I started getting these rashes and I break out in prickly heat and not knowing what that was. So then I went home for the quarter. For winter quarter. And I woke up one morning and I had this headache. It was over my. In my right eye and it wouldn't go away. And it got worse and worse and it got so bad that we had to go to the emergency room. My parents took me because it just. It wouldn't go Away. And so for the next two weeks, we saw probably six or seven doctors medication. And this thing would not go away. I still remember it over my eye just was so painful. Two weeks during the quarter. And did I mention two weeks? Anyway, so it was probably two days before I was to go back to UC Santa Barbara. My parents. My parents were telling me, you know, maybe you should take the quarter off. And there was no way I was going to do that. And I remember getting up and I got a phone call and I was finished the phone calls, walking back to my room and I had my first ever panic attack. And it was. It was something that I had never experienced. And as those of us who have had our first panic attack, none of them are good, but particularly the first one, it was so scary. And I thought I was gonna. Gonna die. I thought I was gonna go crazy. And it was. And I still can look back and just. And picture it. And what's interesting though, Stuart, is after that panic attack, my headache went away. And I don't. I still can't explain it to this day. I mean, things are strange, right? And how things went away. But then. And I ended up going back to college after two weeks of headaches. But now I had panic disorder. And I remember my sophomore year just having panic attacks. And I'd wake up in the morning being just severely anxious. My. My chest was tight, my throat was tight. And never told anybody. I. I was so proud and. And just. I could have no defects and I didn't want anybody to know that there was something wrong. Never, never told anyone about it and suffered. I remember suffering through my. My three. Last year, three of college, last three years. And with these panic attacks and this anxiety and made it through and panic attacks. Panic attacks kind of went away. But then I. Every morning I would wake up and it was a generalizing anxiety disorder. Just being anxious and anxious all day. So back then, graduated and started dating. Met my wife and still did. I didn't tell her we were dating at the time. And. But what was interesting is she still remembers. This is. We'd go like to a bookstore and I would always go to the psychology section because I'd want to look at the books to try to find out what was wrong with me. This was before Internet. This was before you could look this stuff up. You needed to go to the library. You need to go to books and things like that. Didn't want to go to the library. Always ask me, why do you always go to the psychology section? You know, why. Why are you always looking at those books, looking back now. And I. So I finally came out and I told her, I said, I said I had this thing, I'm anxious all the time. I kind of told her about my history in college and the headaches and that kind of thing, and she was very understanding. And it was at that time that I decided to finally, through my insurance and my job, reach out and try to find out what I had, what was going on with me. But again, if you can imagine, just every day, and you probably can, just being anxious, it was looking back, I. I still don't know how I did it. But anyway, so I, I talked to some therapists and somebody put me on medication. It didn't, it didn't really work and just didn't have a good experience with therapy. It was, it was talk therapy, you know, and, you know, talked about my childhood and obviously there was some dysfunction there, but. But really, really didn't do anything. So I stopped therapy and continued to be anxious. You know, my wife knew about it. The only reprieve I would really get is I began running and I would run every day and that would give me a little break from, from this anxiety. So kind of fast forwarding a few years when I was working where the OCD started to really come out. I remember sitting in my office and I started thinking about my collar touching my neck. And I know that now this hyper awareness center motor ocd, right? And I couldn't think of anything. It was always in the back of my mind. I remember going to Disneyland with my wife and I had kids now and just had this thought about my collar. So I try not to wear collars, shirts with collars, or wear T shirts. That manifested into one day when I went for a run. I came back and I was wiping the sweat from my eyes and I noticed my blinking. And that was the start of my ocd. And the now became the main focus of my OCD and just kind of everything. So it was hyper awareness, ocd, sensory motor. It was really bad. And again, I reached out. This was before erp. This is before, you know, this is the prehistoric days, right? And so, you know, you go to these therapists and you tell, man, I'm thinking about my blinking all the time, you know, and it's like they didn't know what to do. I remember the Internet kind of came around and I would, I would put in, you know, thinking about my blinking all the time. I wouldn't get any, I wouldn't get any hits. Okay, now there's Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hits. But back then there wasn't. And so I finally did some research and found out this is probably ocd. But the challenge was it wasn't really recognized by any therapists as ocd. And so I dealt with it myself for a couple of years, maybe doing some talk therapy until I met a gentleman who, his name was Paul Munford and he was doing exposure response prevention in the Sacramento area where I lived. I went, I met with them and he had me listen to loop tape saying, you know, because a big fear with hyper awareness OCD is that you're always going to have it and that you project out into the future that you're, you're going to be thinking about your blinking the rest of your life and you're never going to be able to enjoy anything. And it's, that's really where it's kind of manifested. So if you haven't listened to, to these tapes, and they didn't really help me as far as my ocd, but what it did was it kind of helped me realize that maybe there was some treatment for it. And, and so I realized later that exposure response prevention for hyper awareness sensory motor OCD isn't necessarily the best thing you can do. Some exposures such as if you're avoiding things, you need to do those. But what happened was I came across a therapist down in Southern California. His name was John Hirschfield. And this is when he was working in Southern California. And, and I remember him, I remember getting on with him and telling him about the exposures I was doing and him telling me, okay, yeah, you know, and John, how John comes across just really casual, mellow, just. He goes, but we probably need to approach this a little bit differently. And we started doing acceptance and commitment therapy and started looking at how I was thinking. And what really changed for me was he told me, he said, why don't you just tell yourself you're a guy who thinks about his blinking? And for whatever reason, Stuart, that that totally changed my trajectory because I realized, why can't I be a guy who just thinks about us blinking, right? And so anytime the thought would go up, I just say, yep, you know, this guy who thinks about his blinking and I'm normal kind of in any other way. Because I always thought I was crazy because I was thinking about my blinking. But here was a guy that was telling me that I was fine. I just happened to be a guy who was thinking about my blinking. And so I credit John. And I see him at conferences and talk every once in a while. And I, I still credit him for giving me that kind of mantra that change it. And since then, you know, John has gone on for bigger and better things, you know, but it. It's crazy thinking. Yeah. So I was working. I worked for the county and things seemed to get a little bit better. But after I got that help about using acceptance commitment therapy, I decided to retire from my job. I decided that I wanted to be a therapist. John kind of been. Had kind of been my, My mentor. And because he was a guy that the people don't know, but, like, he had done some acting before and he was. Before he became a therapist and then he found out about his ocd and then he went back to school. So, I mean, that sounds so cool. I kind of want to use Johannes for my mentor. So I, I retired from my job, which I could do, and I went back to school and became a therapist. And I, I worked. I remember. It's interesting you mentioned no cd. I worked for right out of my. Got my degree and my license. I worked for no CD for a period of time. And it was great because they had this great training program and I thought I knew everything about ocd, but I didn't. And so I, I learned a ton of stuff through an ocd, and they were great. And I started picking up some private clients who found out I was, you know, doing therapy and stuff. So I left no cd, and now I just see clients privately. And it's. It's great. I see a video. I'm. I'm helping people. And just my story is. I mean, I could spend three hours talking about my story, but bottom line is people who have ocd, sometimes they. And. And I did. I suffered for years and years and years. And. And you just, you have to just, you have to keep going. You. You just. You have to keep going because you don't know. Treatment is interesting. It helps some people. Some people helps a little bit. Some people helps a lot. There's all these nuances, right, involved in mental health therapy. And you never know when someone's going to say something to you or, or you're going to hear something that can change your trajectory, you know, and so that's what I really want to tell people. And so people can hear that you need to just keep going. Sometimes things don't work out and therapy maybe doesn't work, but you need to just keep looking and trying to find therapy. So that's kind of my story right now. I'm. I'm seeing clients I, I'm speaking about ocd. I'm part of the affiliate of OCD Sacramento. Very open now with my ocd, which was if you had asked me that, you know, 15, 20 years ago. But I, I don't have a problem with telling people about my subtype. I get people that call me from across the United States who have this subtype because I, I, I, about four months ago I gave a TEDx talk on OCD, specifically Hyper Awareness OCD. So I've had people call me who have this, that have sync therapists that don't realize it's OCD and it's really, it's really rewarding and like I'm the first person they talk to that have had this subtype of OCD because it's not real common. And so one of the, kind of lesser known people have it, but it's one of the lesser known. And I did a blog for the Anxiety Depression association of America and on hyper awareness ocd. And so you know, I, I do this, I would, I would do this even if I didn't have my license, even if I didn't do that. I, I would, I'm at the point now where I just want to help people with all OCD obviously. But it's just interesting now with people that have the hyper awareness ocd, you know, they look online and they find they, they can see my name just because it's, it's out there. So I kind of outed myself by doing the TEDx talk now, now it's out there in the world for everyone, everyone to see. That kind of, kind of was interesting. Kind of messed with me for a little bit. My OCD tried to, oh my God, now everybody knows, you know, and my neighbor was going to come knocking at my door that my eye had OCD or something like that, you know, So I started to get these thoughts, but typical ocd, right? Try to attack stuff that you, that you do. But, but it was a great experience. And so that's kind of where I am right now. I, I, you know, it's been a, it's been a wild ride. You know, looking back, I, I wouldn't wish OCD on anybody. But you know, I think those of us who are in recovery have this just appreciation and we, we've gotten better, just appreciation of, of life that I wouldn't have and, and reaching out and helping people and, and whether or not you become a therapist or an advocate or whatever, it's just, it's so helpful, right? So helpful when you can Meet somebody who's suffering and then provide some light and help to them that I WISH I had 30 years ago, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, nice. It's kind of my story.
