Jordan Peterson - A Sad Story About Living With OCD

Psychology Professor Dr. Jordan B. Peterson tells a story about a patient with severe obsessive compulsive disorder. Severe cases of OCD can easily destroy a life.

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[bearbots]

Note: I am a huge fan of Jordan Peterson, love his lectures. One of the things he does not mention with OCD is it' not just physical things like washing hands, etc. It can also be thoughts, and thoughts alone. I know this because i suffer from it. Good lecture though.

[michellecannizzo]

Living with OCD is like living in a puzzle where one piece is missing and, every time you find that missing piece, another one goes missing. Always striving to fix something but never able to.

That’s the best way I can describe it.

[noaffiliation-xw]

OCD Destroyed my relationship. A lot of people just associate OCD with a need to be tidy but thats just one umbrella. Mine comes in the form of intrusive and unwanted thoughts and it always attacks the ones close to you. It can be crippling to say the least.

[Drumzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz]

"they had sympathy for the dog but no sympathy whatsoever for the guy"
Welcome to 2019. Sad.

[ENGWSH]

OCD is like having two brains: a “normal” brain and an OCD brain. Think of OCD as a separate entity; you are not your thoughts. People with OCD have the same thoughts as people with “normal” brains, but our brains get stuck in an uncontrollable loop we can’t stop. It is uncontrollable because no amount of reassurance from someone else or self-rationalizing will help.

Understandably, it may be hard for people to fathom unless they have experienced something similar. Imagine if someone says: ‘try not thinking about a pink elephant for one minute.’ Of course, it is very difficult to not think about a pink elephant. Now, imagine instead of a pink elephant, it’s a thought that makes you feel startled or scared all day long. Combine those feelings with a sadness so deep, you don’t want to wake up anymore.

[brandonbooth]

Has anyone noticed that people nowadays constantly claim to have OCD because they organized one thing or are a little clean?

It drives me nuts and delegitmizes people that actually have it. If you want to know what actual symptoms of OCD are, plenty of the comments below explain far more common, less extreme examples of OCD compared with the story depicted in the video.

[vexelreglage]

Jordan's vids have probably taught me more than what I've learned from any person in real life

[adamhonestyanddecency]

Anyone else ever notice that 99℅ of the OCD discussions and portrayals we see in media are NOT about people with "Pure-O?" I'm in an OCD support group, and I'd say fully 1/3 of the people have no external compulsions.
I have Pure-O and can't stand to watch or read stuff about OCD, because I know I'll be disappointed for that reason. It's a truly silent epidemic.

[chrisbannu]

I'm no psychologist, but as someone who has OCD among numerous others, I think it's more related to fear, and the need to minimize risks. Something like "I'll close this door for 3 times, just to be on the safe side. I'm aware that it might not make any difference how many times I close it, but why take any chances?"

[DeladisKythera]

This isn't entirely accurate. I have completely debilitating, life-limiting, life-destroying OCD; and it is mostly centred around intrusive thoughts, phobias, a debilitating need for routine and rigid, fixed ideas about an illusive state of ''perfection''. That's a summing up. But I would not say that a disgust impulse drives it. I am sure that is true for some people with OCD, but many people with OCD have ruminations and intrusive thoughts too.

[TheMarkusFIN]

I have had a formally diagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder since I was 14. It is a complete nightmare. From fears of being contaminated, which would drive me to wash my hands 40-80 times a day till they were bleeding to horrifying mental images of becoming a criminal and being sent to prison. The worst part, the one no-one talks about, is the fact that when you succeed in winning one compulsion another one comes in and takes it's place. So I have propably been able to succesfully overcome around ten to fifteen different specific forms of OCD and it was always a matter of time before I became plagued by another one. It makes life a living hell. Nothing matters except you trying to get rid of that anxiety before it overwhelmes, engulfs and destroys everything you care about.

[okeydokokey]

Hearing his voice shake broke my heart :(

[JR]

My aunt had very severe OCD for years started in her late 20s. Washing hands, endless showers, even using medical alcohol on everyone in her house..you name it. She overcame it. She took medications but according to herself, the real change came from her self talks into a new belief system. It was really something. I tell you guys this so if anyone of you still suffer, just know that a FULL and COMPLETE recovery is POSSIBLE! I have no doubt about it. It happened right in front of my eyes.

[scramptha]

I have OCD but it has nothing do with cleanliness, It's definitely more of a stress disorder for me. I draw imaginary geometry based on the rectangular things in my environment and then I have to stay within the bounds of those rectangles, it's almost like Jack Nicholson from As Good As It Gets, but my cracks are imaginary.

[kaybee]

This is such a sad disorder. There needs to be more awareness surrounding OCD. So many suffer in silence battling daily.
With more awareness it can be picked up quicker and not left to get worse.
Life's experiences can feed the OCD fire or contain it, the earlier it's picked up the better quality of life one can have

[ulisesbernales]

My religious OCD is terrible. I have to keep doing rituals in my head to feel that I fixed my sins.

[VolcanicPenguin]

As someone with OCD I generally disagree, a lot of my rituals have to do with locking doors and making sure the stove and oven is off etc. It's mostly a disconnect between what I rationally know and what I feel, a paranoid insecurity. In other words, anxiety.

Of course these different disorders intersect.

[AManAndKeys]

As a clinical psychologist, I have to partially disagree with Dr. Peterson. OCD can have to do with disgust, particularly the washing / cleaning type Jordan mentioned in the video, but the main component from my perspective is anxiety. People with OCD have an intense need for security and control, they want to avoid some sort of damage that, to them, seems very likely to occur. The purpose of obsessive cleaning is to avoid contamination and infection. The purpose of checking if a door is properly locked, a window closed or an oven switched off is the same, to avoid damage (someone could break in, the house could burn down...). Peterson is not completely wrong however, that's why I said partially in my first sentence. There are several common forms of OCD, but basically all kinds of variations are possible and they are, at least in my experience, a reflection of a deeper lying problem the patient is struggling with. From that perspective, the OCD is a individual strategy to deal with a fundamental personal issue, and the mind resorts to obsession and compulsion in order to somehow remain stable and functioning.

It's characteristic for OCD that the precautions taken to avoid bad things from happing take on absurd dimensions, and it's also the job of people like me to help the person suffering from OCD to find out, in detail, what the purpose of the disorder is; how it is rooted in the personality, how it is connected to recent (or not so recent) events and so on.
If you are suffering from OCD, I strongly advise you to seek professional treatment. If you would like to understand your disorder better or if you know someone who is suffering from OCD and wants to have a better understanding of their condition, the following questions might be helpful (English is not my native language, I apologise if the questions sound slightly awkward):

- When did the compulsive behaviour start for the first time?
- Do you feel that the obsessive thoughts are your own and a product of your mind, or is someone or something else influencing them? (it's important to distinguish OCD from psychotic disorders)
- Has there ever been a time when the OCD stopped or bothered you considerably less than usual?
- When are you suffering the most? What circumstances in your everyday life are present when that is the case? (for example: problems at the workplace, partner / family issues... )
- What would be the benefits of you not succeeding in your controlling and obsessive behavior? For example, let's assume that the oven - despite you checking it 50 times a day - actually causes a fire and in consequence, your apartment burns out completely. Would there be anything positive to that? Or if you actually got sick from eating the fruit you cleaned for an hour, what would that lead to? (this question often seems ridiculous at first, but trust me, the answer(s) can be very interesting and insightful)

Naturally there are many more questions one could ask, but those few are at least something to begin with.

[JJ-yuog]

OCD isn't always about cleanliness. It's about obsessiveness, repeated pattern doing something over and over and over.

[letshavefundaniel]

Ocd is painful to live with. So if you have ocd just know that I pray for you every night and I’m thinking about you. ❤️