Overcoming Superstitious Obsessions (with Laura Ryan) | Ep. 316

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SUMMARY:

Laura Ryan tells her story of overcoming superstitious Obsessions

How to manage Whack-a-mole obsessions

How her family helped to support her as she overcame Superstitious OCD

How to get through the hard OCD days

Perfectionism and Exposure & Response Prevention

Links To Things We Talk About:

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

Kimberley Quinlan: Well, welcome, Laura. I am so excited to hear your story today about Overcoming Superstitious Obsessions. Thank you for coming on the show.

Laura Ryan: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Kimberley Quinlan: Yeah, so it's wonderful. I love the stories when I like accidentally meet people online and then we have this sort of cool story that's together but we're not like not together at all. So I'm actually loving hearing your story for the first time today and I love that. I've been a small small part of that journey for you. So so I tell me a little just to kind of get us. Tell us a little about you and your backstory in, you know, the area of recovery.

Laura Ryan: Yeah. So I definitely would have had OCD my whole life but it wasn't until I was about 17 or 18 years old that I just stumbled across something on the Internet where I was like Oh yeah that sounds like me. I've got OCD, but it didn't. It wasn't stopping me from doing anything at that point. So I just ignored it and I went on to do Quite, well, it uni, I had three you need degrees under my belt. I was working at a publisher and freelancing as a book editor and then

Laura Ryan: my family had had some, some health issues and my sister as well, had had some relationship issues and I don't think I knew what to do with the stress. Um and OCD crept up. So gradually that it was undetectable and then all of a sudden I found myself a age 22 with crippling compulsions.

SUPERSTITIONS AND BREATH-HOLDING COMPULSIONS

Laura Ryan: Yeah, it was nothing short of torture. It was horrific. I was so ill with OCD that I would come home from a day at work and I wouldn't even remember the day because I'd spent the whole day in fight or flight. And I had mental sort of thought replacement and breath-holding compulsions. So it was completely invisible to people around me, but it was able to kind of have control over me for the whole day. Like from the second, I woke up to the second. I went to sleep. I remember when I eventually saw a doctor the psychiatrist was like, Oh and how often are you affected by these thoughts? And I just didn't understand the question because I was like Well, every few seconds I guess.

Laura Ryan: Yeah, so they they were really weird. compulsions, like a lot of Shame around them as well because they were all kind of magical thinking superstitious. Like there was no logical link. They were all like I'm holding my breath because

Kimberley Quinlan: You.

Laura Ryan: I think I will magically give someone a disease if I breathe out while looking at them, or Yeah, just weird. We had rules that made absolutely no sense.

Laura Ryan: which, Also. yeah, really had an impact on my self-esteem because I've always thought of myself as a Logical person but yeah, these just made no sense.

Laura Ryan: yeah, I also became Like, stick thin because if I and it wasn't even anything to do with the food, it was just if you eat this food, the intrusive thought will come true. And I, it just wasn't worth their Stress of eating. and then, there was a point where

Laura Ryan: I would have conflicting compulsions so OCD would kind of be like if you do this thing or if you don't do this thing, the intrusive thought will come true and then I would just stand there paralyzed Like unable to do anything. I don't like to think how long I've spent just standing still, like the pervasive slowness, I think it's called was just Yes, stopped me from. Doing anything? I think some nights I would have taken me more than an hour to get to bed. I was just, I had to touch wood or Rearrange things like for so long before I was able to to get to sleep. yeah, so I'd been a...