What People Don't Understand About OCD

▼ Timestamps ▼
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00:00 - Intro
00:28 - Reddit post #1
08:42 - Keys about compulsions
20:00 - Can people be obsessive over self-improvement?
27:32 - Treatments
36:34 - What else are you willing to do as a patient?
41:50 - The more rapid the benefit...
46:33 - How does ones life change if they get diagnosed with ADHD?
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DISCLAIMER

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All guests of Healthy Gamer are informed of the public, non-medical nature of the content and have expressly agreed to share their story.

[TheOnceandFutureGeek]

I spent 8 years struggling alone with severe OCD. Finally broke down and went to a facility to check myself in. The intake person was so ignorant about OCD (kept saying that intrusive thoughts are "voices", which they aren't) that I ended up leaving without seeing anyone. Went to multiple therapists who had no clue how to help me. Ended up in the hospital multiple times for SI, was told by one ER doctor that I was "wasting his time" and threatened to have me strapped to the bed (I left against medical advice, hasn't said anything that could let them hold me). It took months in crisis before I found a therapist who specialized in OCD and could finally help me. Just goes to show you even most HEALTH PROFESSIONALS don't understand OCD. But good news is that you CAN get to a place that's good, it takes a lot of hard work through treatment but it's possible. Meditation and mindfulness saved my life.

[TheCrayonMan]

When you have OCD, even if a therapist says you have OCD, your mind puts doubt into your mind if it's truly OCD. That's the craziest thing. It's truly a terrible mental issue.

[HP-rzew]

I never realised how validating It can feel to hear someone voice correctly what OCD actually is. And knowing that many people who won’t know will see this and now have better understanding.

[TheMoreTheMary_]

OCD gave me the worst years of my life. I'm so blessed that therapy helped and I no longer have to live like that.

[wessel_g]

Just a note here: obsessions can be about anything. Many people talk about 'themes'. Which is fine. But under the hood it's all the same mechanism. The topics are just different. A good therapist will tell you to drop the topic and work with the underlying mechanism: extreme intolerance and sensitivity to uncertainty, which causes your limbic system to think there is danger and sound the alarm.

Your limbic system then communicates about this impending danger with you via: thoughts, feelings and physical sensations. It's just trying to get you to avoid something (thanks brain haha).

I was diagnosed with OCD years ago after I was in a really bad place. A stressful period of my life lead to terrifying obsessions about suicide ("what if I get a depression and kill myself?") and existentialism. I had panic attacks that lasted for days. Couldn't go to work and it felt real. I have never been so scared in my life.

Looking back I've had it all my life. But I thought it was normal.

What helped me was learning the game OCD plays, through therapy (ERP and ACT) and through the right resources:

- Your Are Not A Rock (By Mark Freeman)
- The Happiness Trap (Russ Harris)
- Man's Search For Meaning (Viktor Frankl)
- Help & Hope for your Nerves (Claire Weekes)
- Wherever your go, there your are (Jon Kabat Zinn)

Get therapy, or at least read these books if you're struggling.

[PresidentGorbachev]

Hey, shout out to Dr K's team for listening to the audience and doing away with the jerky jumpcuts. The smoother longform style is so much more enjoyable. You guys rule <3

[zeroqp]

My gf has OCD. Videos like this help me understand her and hopefully let me be more empathetic.

[trippasnippa]

my ocd is so overwhelming that i will zone out for multiple times a day to think out a scenario or i will search feverously through google for answers to questions that are consuming me and lots of other things. I always told people that i cant stop thinking, i feel like i never get a break, and i always feel like im running at max stress, and no one could ever give me any sort of secret wisdom i was looking for when i would tell them these things that i was hoping they would have so that it could magically "fix" me. Ive gotten deseperate over the past 2 years trying to figure out what was wrong with me sitting in my room, rotting away, playing video games all day, smoking weed. Then i finally figured out that i have ocd and that it can actually be treated! This thing that has been plaguing my mind since i was a kid and could never get anyone to understand, youre telling me theres TREATMENT for that. I'm going to get diagnosed tomorrow and will begin treatment asap after that. wish me luck.

[roselereau]

My childhood was hell because of OCD. I suffered alone - I didn’t tell anyone

[kafka]

I have OCD and the OPs post really resonated with my problems. It's a cycle of knowing my thoughts are irrational and then doing self-soothing techniques that actually makes my irrational thinking worse and I end up spiraling. I'm very anxious all the time but I try not to let it affect anyone but myself.

[missnikkigiron]

The part about ADHD and OCD made me cry...I struggle so bad. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, but thought maybe I picked up OCD tendencies from being diagnosed for so long. I get so frustrated with myself, especially with planning and lists. Or just doing things in general.

[FawningLeaves]

I have OCD and ADHD and I've honestly never felt more validated hearing something. Where I live mental healthcare is very poor and even some doctors when asked for help will respond with, "Well, have you tried not doing it?"

[justplainninja]

I had OCD for fifteen years (don't have it anymore, had a breakthrough three years ago), and it was a really rare subtype of OCD called emotional contamination, which is apparently so uncommon that it's frequently misdiagnosed as psychosis. Basically I believed that my personality was going to be invaded and consumed by the emotions and psychological characteristics of people I didn't like (the people that triggered it were all my close family members, all of whom were abusive), and what I remember most about going to therapy for it as a teenager was how blindingly unhelpful every mental healthcare professional I spoke to was. First I was forced to take meds, which didn't work, then forced to do exposure-response therapy, which gave me massive anxiety attacks and made the OCD even worse. At no point did anyone bother to explain to me that subtypes of this illness even existed, or try to talk to me about what specifically I was so scared of in the first place.

My parents treated me terribly for it, and constantly shamed and guilted me for "being so mean to my grandma" who was the person that triggered me the most, like I was fucking choosing to feel terror and dread every time I stepped into her house or stood next to her, which was almost every damn day, for hours at a time. My dad triggered me pretty bad to, and the compulsions involved gave me some pretty serious hygiene problems (I won't get into what they were, just know they were gross, time-consuming, and humiliating) and they would all make me feel so terrible about it. Going to the dentist or orthodontist was actual torture and would cause panic attacks that would sometimes last two hours at a time, which I was always punished for. They constantly mentioned how bad I looked, how I was making their lives so hard (thanks guys, you wanna swap brains?), and how awful it was that I was "so fucked up". I was bullied so bad in middle school for it that I tried to off myself, everyone acted like I had chosen to be that way and blamed me for something that was totally beyond my control for a very long time. I felt so ashamed of having OCD I couldn't even admit to myself I had it for the longest time...

IN CONCLUSION to this stupid long comment, this illness does NOT fuck around, it can spiral out of control really fast, and people on the outside usually have no idea how it actually works, and tend to blame the people that suffer from for their own symptoms. I would have gotten over it a lot faster and suffered a lot less if my parents and teachers and hell even my therapist had been even a the tiniest bit understanding of how scared I was. Then I wouldn't have been so afraid to admit I was ill in the first place.

[donatotaglialatela]

I suffer from ocd and sometimes it feels like you don't have control over your brain and your body.
I can't just stop, it's like an infinite loop and the more you try to resist, the worst it gets

Thank you Dr K i was waiting for a video on this topic

[PikaBolaChan]

having OCD is awful enough but one thing that I’ve struggled with is having almost everyone around me growing up not understand it and constantly belittle me and treat it like it’s not a real issue, all that stress and pressure only made my symptoms worse and the path to recovery is way harder now just because the people who were supposed to care for me chose to act like they already knew everything about me

[CharizardChick]

As someone who's been a long time watcher of this channel, I feel strangely excited and optimistic to see this video pop up on my feed. I was diagnosed with OCD at the age of 15 and now at the age of 30, I can confirm that my experiences of living with such a condition can and has been a living hell for me. I can't unstate how debilitating and anxiety inducing it can be while preforming what are seemingly mundane tasks for others when your mind tells you that you need to act in a certain way otherwise something truly terrible will happen. It's like living in a constant state of fear when the consistant pattern of thoughts arise continuously. I count myself fortunate that I'm now in a much better place mentality but it's very much still an ongoing battle within my mind as far as my compulsions are concerned.

I just wanted to take this time to say thank you to Dr K, the team and the rest of the community at Healthy Gamer for helping me better understand and relate to others over the past two years. Keep doing what you guys do! .

[enzomatos]

My ex gf has been diagnosed with OCPD, as well as a bunch of other disorders, i tried my best to try and help her, but ended up sacrificing myself for years. If you guys aren't happy, and feel like you're losing yourself, distanciating yourself from friends and people you like, don't be afraid to leave, it's not your responsibility to "fix" people.

[vulcanhumor]

I wasn't diagnosed with OCD for so long because I didn't know that mental compulsions were a thing...and also devoting as much mental energy as I was to my obsessions/compulsions was not the way most people lead their lives. And yeah, I could definitely relate to not wanting to admit some of the things that would go through my head, mostly violent stuff. There's a real fear that people will think you're deeply disturbed and possibly a danger to others if you say what's going on in your head...I really feel for people who have pedophilia-themed OCD. I've spent much of my life just thinking I was just a bad person, that there was a monster within me that would one day just break loose and wreak havoc. I feel like a ticking time bomb. The loss of certainty and loss of control is petrifying.

[Myslexia]

Thank you Dr. K! The part where you said that not all compulsions were physical behaviours was so validating. I used to have compulsive behaviours that got me made fun of a lot growing up so I turned the behaviours inward and they became thought rituals instead. People thought my OCD went away but I'm still tormented by unwanted and inappropriate thoughts, I just don't show it.

[RootwitchQueen]

I have OCD and ADHD (as well as a myriad of other mental health disorders) and I've struggled for YEARS. I'm also autistic so that's just icing on the cake for me. I can't even leave my house or be around people without having massive anxiety from my compulsive thoughts. I have the type of OCD that you can't see outwardly but if people knew what happened inside of my head and what I thought 24/7 then they'd probably be mortified. It absolutely irks me when people joke about having OCD because they like their things organised because OCD is SO debilitating from my experience with the disorder. I really wish people understood more about the disorder and weren't so dismissive of it and stereotyped it so much. So thank you so much for holding this segment and making a genuine attempt to educate and inform others. I try my best to educate others about the disorders that I have and the things that I experience because I want people to UNDERSTAND. I JUST want understanding from people and I have no idea why that's so hard to get >//<