Uncovering OCD: The Truth About Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

[Music] OCD to me is having a graveyard in your brain of the things that you once loved that OCD waged a war upon and she just decimated OCD is a nightmare of a mental illness that has derailed my life OCD for me has been an evil crippling monster a monster in your head that is I helped then Crime Alley influenced and primarily motivated to target and kill everything that you love [Music] [Music] what is OCD to you feels like you're treading water sometimes but you can't reach the bottom or reach the top you're like at that in-between part where you feel like you're drowning and you can't really pull yourself out of it and you feel like a bunch of bricks on your shoulders and you can never truly come above but once you do and you do you see that light it's a little different and you view things differently I think for me what LCD is is your brain is just hyperactive and it's constantly looking and scanning for things telling you consistently that something's dangerous in your environment and so you're always on edge always trying to protect yourself and you come up with these behaviors and avoidances to keep yourself safe OCD is a disorder in which you're obsessing and composing for at least an hour or more a day and your your life is literally being restricted as if like you're being killed by a boa constrictor it's like it's this tightening sensation in essence suffering with OCD is like being in hell and it's a hell that you're aware of which makes it really difficult unlike a lot of mental disorders there's this dual existence between this healthy part of your brain and the OCD and their existing simultaneously so the healthy part of your brain is going everything that you're thinking and everything that you're you want to do compulsively is illogical and it makes no sense whatsoever but then the OCD part of your brain is going you have to do this or this is going to happen right and you listen to the OCD part of your brain knowing that it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever but you just want to get rid of that feeling if anybody would have asked me if I thought I had a mental illness I would have said not me I just had no idea and so it took a while for me to really come to terms with knowing something was wrong and wanting to do something about I was very secret and I think as I got older I became more transparent as a mom what does what does Chris is OCD mean to you I had no idea if he would get better I had no idea if he would have a regular life if there was treatment that could help him so it was a very scary time to think that a totally normal person had become almost like a toddler one thing about the disorders it doesn't just hit you all at once it slowly consumes you until it gets to a point that's overwhelming there's so many moments when I was younger especially in high school full-fledged OCD but at the time you just don't realize what it is the definition of OCD are obsessions right so thoughts images feelings on a loop that we don't want to have they make us uncomfortable they give us anxiety a really uncomfortable feeling and then to alleviate that feeling we engage in a compulsion washing your hands tapping praying variety of things that compulsion alleviates the anxiety from the thought the vicious loop is that it only alleviates the anxiety for a short time after a while the thoughts come back the fears come back the emotion and anxiety comes back and you reengage in the compulsion and over time if you amount that it alleviates the pain is shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter until your compulsion constantly because you're just trying to get that sense of relief I think that people also assume that OCD is just OCD and you don't have anything else but along with obsessive-compulsive disorder comes a reign of emotions of anxiety depression intrusive thoughts suicidal thoughts and people don't really know that because people don't talk about it I first noticed OCD when I was 8 years old I've had symptoms of it since I was 5 years old I first noticed OCD when I was 12 years old I had something like this all through college I had something like this all through high school I had something like this all through middle school I first noticed my OCD when I was in eighth grade when I was 13 I had a massive intrusive thought that sent me into a panic attack emotional breakdown it was ground breaking fear that stopped me in my tracks one day I was okay and then the next day I was obsessed and I couldn't stop being obsessed so when did it start showing up in your life as early as I could form words and talk and make complete thoughts I think it was present when I was in kindergarten there was an eclipse of the Sun and the teacher was telling us that if we wanted to watch the Eclipse we had to do it this certain way because otherwise you can't start the Sun because you'll go blind and I became obsessed that my mother was gonna look at the Sun and go blind so I came home and I told her you can't look at the Sun you can't watch the Sun you can't go outdoors I didn't want to leave her side I wanted to protect her to make sure that she wasn't going to look at the Sun and go blind and we went through all kinds of you know I'm gonna what her sign or you can call me I ended up not going to school the day of the Eclipse to stay with her to make sure that she wouldn't look at the Sun 11 years old and I was in the cafeteria and we had these like sausage pizzas and everybody had one and I remember someone grabbing the sausage off the pizza and like squeezing it and it like exploded and I got all over me a normal kid would be like oh my god but I was like there's definitely germs all over me and I'm probably gonna die from a sausage pizza and like as crazy as that sounds that's how I knew that something wasn't right about junior year of high school was when I first started to have thoughts about men because I've been dating a girl for a few years so we broke up and then I started to have these same-sex thoughts and I would obsess over them because I didn't want to have so I started to obsess about everything if I had a bad thought about somebody I would have to tell them and apologize for having that thought about them when at the end of the day it's just a thought it was high school when it really started to hit I just felt like I had to do these rituals to say safe it was just something that I can't always explain to people but my gut my brain everything in my body had made an agreement that I had to do all this ritualistic stuff so I started bleaching everything I owned I started doing all this cleaning and and separating and isolating what was sad is like with my sister who I'm close with as well and then my mom like we were so close but I kept pushing them away because these rituals started become more important and I think that was the hardest part is I didn't really have a name or an understanding of what it was so that's where a lot of the anger and frustration came as well as like though I had to do these things but nobody was telling me like hey you don't it's a disorder and so it made me really angry I turned to like alcohol and and drugs to kind of self-medicate and I think my mom treated it just like a bad teenager so we really just lost our relationship and we're fighting a lot and our relationship was really just yelling screaming and punishing I went to go see my first therapist in 2009 but I got my actual diagnosis in 2011 I would wake up and I would think my eyes are wrong my nose is swollen my ears are upside down and I knew it wasn't a natural thing and I was scared to death I really thought that I had almost every disease that I heard about religious OCD so really being afraid of offending God being afraid I was going to hell being afraid I wasn't a good Christian trying to be perfect I also suffered from incest OCD so being afraid I was attracted to my family members and felt like I couldn't be around them homosexual OCD thinking that I might be gay and not wanting that as a 12 and 13 year old in my mind I truly believed I was being punished and had done something wrong so most of my compulsions or around the religious peace with repentance and prayer but also very much avoidance and rumination and mentally reviewing on the sexual intrusive thoughts one of my compulsions was to stay home from school because I thought it was sick and no one really understood what's going on because I kept saying that something was physically wrong with me I would count to a hundred and five whenever my mom was out I counted to 105 thinking that it would keep her safe I washed my hands upwards of 500 times a day and I knew something was wrong but I didn't know why I was washing my hands so often I just knew that they had to be cleaned and they were never clean enough it's very hard on the siblings because my daughter would be quiet so that she wouldn't be more trouble and you know she did that for many years that she just kind of faded away so that all the attention was on Chris and we just were trying to get him through without getting arrested or doing something horrible just get him through his teenage years you know it's funny because we don't always I think um you know talked about this period and I know um obviously at that time it was just a lot of selfishness because I just felt like I had to do these things I was in danger but carry my mom I'm talking about I'm knowing the payment I put my mom my sister you can I just don't remember that you were so in a in a place of like confusion and anger and turning to alcohol and drugs which is not going to help the situation and you know having my mom feel like okay how do I parent and what do I do putting someone through hell and that's like a regret I always have and obviously I didn't know but just knowing that I put my mom my sister my family through that first second third fourth grade that were really hard I mean I was just constantly afraid of everything I was afraid of swallowing every day going to school was a massive battle crying screaming I would fake illnesses I would fake I would do anything to just stay at home and not go to school because of just all these fears and thoughts and bombarding my head constantly if I'm being really honest I was in denial if I don't want to be different I don't want to be not like the normal kids in my school where you know they could do whatever they wanted when they got out of school but instead I had to go and wash my hands ten million times till my skin fell off because I was contaminated I had a public face and that was I was going to school I was working as a waiter I had friends but behind the scenes on my own I was spending hours and hours doing all these obsessing and compulsive behaviors and then it just got too overwhelming I couldn't do it anymore I wasn't able to show up to certain schedules at work I couldn't make it at certain times that's when everything went downhill because now I didn't have a job to get to I didn't have school to get to I was living on my savings and just every single day I was waking up I had rituals I had to do throughout the entire day compulsions obsessing and then I get so tired and exhausted and finally fall asleep I had this terrible fear of illness in high school I carried three thermometers around with me every day and took my temperature 80 90 times a day headache was a brain tumor and a fever was meningitis and it was just all this extreme health anxiety I couldn't leave the house certain days my anxiety was skyrocket to where I couldn't even say my names sometimes in a public environment because I had a count how many people were in the room how many people I could hurt how many people would be around me if I just fell dead on the floor who would help me and those are those are thoughts that I was thinking but when I talk about them now I'm like how could I have ever thought those things but they're so normal people like me the time from diagnosis to treatment actual treatment was 17 years so I didn't receive the proper treatment exposure response prevention and other treatments cognitive behavioral therapy tells 30 years old [Music] I kept OCD a secret starting day one up until I was 20 years old I had kept my OCD a secret for a long time I kept it a secret from my mom I kept it a secret from my friends unintentionally kept it a secret for a long time because I didn't understand what was going on yes a huge secret for almost two decades even after my diagnosis I kept parts of it a secret thinking you might molest a child how do you tell someone that thinking you might be attracted to your own mom how do you tell someone that I kept OCD a secret for 20 years because the content of my obsessional thoughts were so scary and so intrusive that I didn't think anybody would understand what was going through my head I thought that if I were to talk about what was going on in my head that I was gonna be locked up misunderstood I got so sick with OCD that I became completely bedridden it was really really dark I was doing OCD things that I had never done before like hand washing I'd become afraid that I was accidentally gonna poison myself what if I hit my head what if I gave myself a brain bleed what if I was gonna die by dot v cat-scans in a week at five different hospitals I had to go to an acute psychiatric facility and they diagnosed me as psychotic they didn't even know I was at a professional acute psychiatric facility and they told my parents that he does not have OCD he's psychotic and it was terrifying it was the most terrifying place I've ever been I got really really depressed I mean till level of depression I came and described where the only reason I got out of bed was to do the compulsions but I didn't feel like there was any out it was to a point where I just felt dark every day and I just didn't have the will to live and so this is always hard to talk about in front of her but it got to a point I just couldn't do it anymore I just really couldn't and it's I think the saddest part is because my mom and I were so close and my sister and I were so close and obviously like I should have reached out at that point there are so many times where I was like I'm gonna I'm gonna just not do this anymore but I mean obviously I only can ever think back to one time where I truly wanted to end it all which was May year but other than that you know you tend to just not want to go through it anymore cuz it's just painful it's not something that you'd ever wish even on your worst enemy since I was a teenager I've been in and out of treatment about four times there were two big events that happened the first time when I was about 19 I had a few suicide attempts and then again when I was 21 they were really cry for helps but unlegal document they would probably be called suicide attempts it took a little bit of time to like get up the courage to commit suicide but I just got to a point where I couldn't do it anymore so um we had a garage that we only used for storage and I pulled everything out of it and drove my car in the garage and so I ran the car and I just left myself to die and from what I know from what my roommate told me it's not a roommate at the time and she told me that she like went in tried to like kind of get a hold of me or make enough noise to get me up and I just wouldn't move and that she ended up calling 9-1-1 and all i remember is like somebody asking me if I was okay and then remembering being in like a hospital I was like really really upset and confused and I had finally come up with my own personal solution to this hell that I was dealing with at all times and it kind of gotten taken away from me and I remember them like I remember kind of like oh no I just fell asleep like I just wanted them to leave me alone and I was kind of thinking how am I gonna do this again and they had told me at the hospital that like you need to be living with someone you need to get some help and I remember tie myself like I need to have a conversation with my mom because I'm gonna attempt again I don't nothing's gonna get better and so we set up a time and I remember um being in her living room and kind of sitting her down and just telling her that I attempted suicide and I need help and it was funny because like she had a way different reaction they thought I thought that she would just be flippin our brush me off because we had such a bad relationship at that time I remember her calling you know being really worried that's what she kind of jumped in and just homey like we need to get you help and and so the process of finding a therapist was really really tough but I just kept saying yes to anything my mom would ask because I just was at that point where I couldn't put her through the pain that I saw when I told her I would never have known what was going on we wouldn't never have known what happened but never had a clue why he did it yeah so we just that was the only focus just finding him it was finding help I always think of that like if I would have done it there was no no you know I mean that crushes me now this if I would have caught through with it energy I had no idea they know her she would have played for herself that's but I mean we all all moms blame themselves we should have seen it I should have known it when he was three you know I should have been able to see it the shame the embarrassment and the guilt of the thoughts the fear of this really must mean that I'm a bad person I was terrified to let my parents know and it took a really long time a really long time because I just thought I was a bad person I didn't know what was a treatable disorder it's like you can't treat immorality I did that you know you can't treat to being a bad person you you are you aren't and I tried not to be I never told my mom and my dad what the real thoughts were and what I was really worried about I kept it to myself for a year until I couldn't anymore I truly thought that my friends would not want to be my friend anymore if I told them the person that I kept it a secret from the longest was my mom because I thought that she would be ashamed of me I thought that I'd be a disappointment I thought that she'd be embarrassed I had no idea that I was living with a mental illness I truly believed that in the scrupulous peace that I was doing something wrong and God was punishing me I can't even imagine the healing and growing and also getting treatment and figuring out what kind of treatment what a did the road seemed long for you yeah you know it's funny because I think the way that my mom shows love is she doesn't show it like in a traditional way of like warmth and I've learned like my mom no but no but she shows it by action my dad went online and we found the International OCD foundation we started to to find resources and it turned out that there was a clinic 20 minutes from my house where I lived for 14 years I first went there I went to the right place I sat down on the sofa and the therapist said we hear you we understand you we know exactly what you're going through and we can help you did you believe that no not at all like I wanted help but every other therapist had told me that why should I believe that so therapy was difficult I would feel like when I sat down in the chair that my therapist office I remember him saying okay what are we gonna do today what are we gonna do twos to say hello to the OCD like bring it out and that was traumatizing for me okay I mean its exposure response therapy you're exposing yourself to your biggest issues and your biggest triggers bringing them to the surface and dealing with them the treatment for OCD is exposure response prevention ERP where they expose you to your fears when they expose you to your fears instead of compulsion you resist the compulsion you've sort of engaged the anxiety and the discomfort and comfortable feelings and you sit with it until it starts to go down and then you trigger yourself again and do that over and over again what happens is it's called habituation and so eventually over time the more you exposed yourself to what you're afraid of you start to habituate and respond less and less I started therapy and I love my therapist now she triggers me more than I have ever been triggered in my life I remember when I went to my first therapy session I remember walking in and thinking I would give a million dollars if I had some sunglasses because I was so occupied with who might see me then get him well because of the suicide attempts waiting six months or eight months wasn't an option and I remember my mom found a treatment center and they called me and just want to make sure that I was on board as well I was still at that point where I wasn't on board and happy and excited but I just was like I'm gonna do whatever it takes I guess because I don't have another option and you know talking to them about once a week and and that therapist saying like you know I was all we could afford and cuz of the distance and you know I remember her asking me like you're gonna have to do a lot of the hard work at home because you haven't severe you probably need more but you're gonna have to do hard work at home and I was like I'll do anything and so that's kind of how our treatment started how did you get better I got better because a bunch of people that loved me didn't give up on me my therapist decided the best thing for me was to get out away from my parents and go to this residential program in Boston Massachusetts did this program for two and a half months and then one day we did an exposure where my therapist made me hit my head and then he's like okay great now go to town and go get a haircut and live your life I got two down I was middle of the getting a haircut and I convinced myself that I had a bleed and I jumped up from the haircut in the middle of it and ran out and again not a hundred percent of me believed but I would never but enough of it believed that it wasn't willing to take the chance so I went behind an apartment complex and I found a rock a sharp rock and I cut my head open right here and it wasn't to her that wasn't to hurt myself it was just to sell that I had fallen on the ice and hit my head so then I cut my head open I walked around found a snow bank on the curb and I literally just laid face-first in the snowbank and pretended to be passed out until the passerby came and found me and called 9-1-1 but I remember I was in the back of the ambulance they had my phone and they called my dad and I just remember him screaming do not take him to the hospital he's faking it he's lying he's a patient at this residential program whatever you do don't take him to the hospital and I heard the EMT go he has a cut on his head and I was like I knew that would come in handy but I mean looking back on it the illness was so so and it's so sick it's so sick and it wasn't to hurt anyone and it wasn't to to fake anyone out and it was it was to save myself went to the hospital got a cat scan they were like you're fine and I went ok it's it's a heroin addict getting his fix trying to find a therapist call make appointments get there would have never happened without our support and so having my mom really take this seriously I think that was like a big part of it as my mom took it seriously so I started to take it seriously and then getting information initially like hey this is a debilitating disorder this is what's going on in your brain in your body and getting in and understanding and then having my mom always be there like we're going you're going to therapy and I never missed a session I was always there and that is one of the reasons that he got better he did a lot of hard work I just got him there and we don't know how he tells me that he thought he didn't have a choice I'm less than 5 - so I don't know why he thought I could do anything but he yeah I guess it was in my face you're getting in the car and I went into the office and all my treatment team was there and my parents and my treatment team in Florida were there on the other line and they basically said we have a plan and the plan is you're not allowed to come back to Florida if you come back to Florida you'll be arrested and you have to stay in Boston and make a brand-new life and you can't have any relationship with your parents anymore and if you do that then you can continue to get treatment and therapy and people will you know support you but if not you're just completely on your own I backed me in a corner I couldn't get out of and three days later I moved into this disgusting I call crack house in the south side of Boston that I found on Craigslist and it was terrifying I got into the room and I closed the bedroom door and I literally pushed the dresser up against the door and I got into bed and I laid there for six days I didn't eat and I didn't drink and I didn't take my medications and I was going to the bathroom and I was I was paralyzed and petrified on day six I had a couple realizations the first realization was that nobody was coming for me and that was a terrifying realization because if I kept doing what I was doing then I was gonna die right well then I had to ask myself if I want to deliver I wanted to die and so I dug really deep and asked myself that question and I felt like I had nothing to live for anymore everything was taken away from me and I had this terrible illness that I couldn't get rid of I was broken I was unfixable it was unmended but despite all of those things there was this thing inside of me that was like you can't die like you can't kill yourself you this can't be for nothing the next thought was well what do i do how do i I don't how do I go about doing this and the first thought was like well you have to go out to get a bed and go buy food and all this stuff I got it a bed and I thought you know oh my god what if I hit my head on the headboard but suddenly the fear of maybe dying maybe not dying paled in comparison to the certainty that I was going to die if I kept staying in bed and not eating and not taking care of myself and just letting myself with her way and died and suddenly survival became more important in the OCD and that was the Epiphany what is the best thing that you could do for someone that is in the throes of it and in the getting a diagnosis and learning how to navigate it for themselves when he started therapy the therapist talked to me and she gave me some information on how I could best support him because the support that a family gives is counterintuitive it is completely opposite of what you expect to do as a mother so if you don't get that education you don't get that information you continue to harm your child by doing what feels so natural so and that's one of the reasons that a support group helps is because as a mom you're doing things that feel really bad and then you can talk to other moms who say no it's gonna work it's gonna work just stay in there very very slowly I started to do small things I started to eat I started to get outside I took a train and a bus to go visit the therapist I started going to the therapists saw them three times a week and then I noticed this exponential growth after four or five months my therapist suggested I reach out to my parents I reached out to my parents we started emailing we started talking on the phone they came to visit August came around I was like I don't just stay here anymore right I can go live my life and follow my dream with everything that I want I went home for two weeks visited my family and I moved out to California to sort of follow my dreams I was first treated with evidence-based treatment when I was 15 years old so that was three years after my symptoms started and two years after I was diagnosed I first started evidence-based treatment when I was in my mid-twenties I had a lot of attempts at evidence-based treatment that were unsuccessful because of how scary it was but it was when I was in my later 20s that I really buckled down my first bout with evidence-based treatment was my first experience with therapy sorry blast then my very first time in therapy I got evidence-based treatment so I first had my first dose new symptom ology when I was 10 years old and I wasn't until 32 until I first was successfully and properly diagnosed with OCD so that's 22 years yeah that's OCD that's the thing that's treatable we can do a lot for you ever want anyone to wait as long as I waited and to wait as long as so many people wait that's my whole goal that's why I share my story I know in my case I think about all the wasted years if somebody in my inner circle or family would have noticed oh something's wrong and maybe directed me in the right direction I it's hard not to live by sue the woulda couldas yeah and I always wondered how far long down the road I would be don't want to get most no it's somebody would it just simply told me or if I was educated I had no idea none I think for us it's always helping people not me the same mistakes that we made and then there's also part me that's always like well why can't have been born like 15 years later cuz the hell that I went through what you've gone through what advice would you give to somebody that might find themselves in your shoes and in the in your parents shoes yeah I wouldn't be alive without what my parents did and I can tell you that my parents did what they did because they had good education and good therapy OCD is very much a family disease your parents are not parenting you their parenting their your OCD your your mother and father are not married to themselves they're married to your OCD they live for your OCD enabling and reassurance and all of those things are literally the worst thing you can do for OCD but as a mom and a parent and a father that's all you know to do that's that's parenting we don't want our child to hurt we don't want you to suffer I think if you put it in the context for a parent of your not hurting your child you're hurting their OCD and that's a very important differentiator to know that if you enable if you reassure if you parent the OCD it will make it worse when you put something in your face and you deal with it it's gonna get easier for you as time goes on and that's what I'm doing with ERP okay and it certainly helped me and made me deal with like if I were to touch underneath of a table that would usually freak me out but now I can just touch the underneath of a table and be like okay okay and that's directly because of the ERP yeah yeah because I'm exposing myself to germs and stuff every day through ERP then I can do it in my life now so it's interesting when you're doing all of this work with the exposure response and you're you're feeling like it's not getting anywhere do you think that that was actually working you just didn't know it that was in person okay without a doubt there is no way that I would have gotten better without everything that had come before that okay so when I was going through that stuff on the street when I was living on my own when I was surviving if I hadn't had any of that background I wouldn't have made it so let's just get this on the table yeah that anybody at any point near life saying oh I am the OCD or oh I'm I have so much OCD about this and that that's not connecting that's not saying oh we're similar that's minimizing it's not understanding yeah that's the worst thing you could say okay so if someone is flip it or oh you're just a little OCD all those kind of narratives would be a great turnoff so I would like to be respected you know just feel I'm accepted like any other disorder that's out there you know no difference just treat us with some respect people with OCD we crave certainty we have to know certainty and this singular key to overcoming OCD is embracing uncertainty it's being okay with uncertainty it's not trying to feel better it's not trying to stop the thoughts it's not trying to stop the feelings it's not trying to be happy all the time it's simply being okay not being okay it's really important to remember that you are not your OCD I have taken so many medications I actually don't remember them all I take paroxetine the generic for paxil I am still on it a lot of people have to try multiple medications sometimes a cocktail medications I feel that I was lucky what does your future look like from this point on I think the biggest happiness about my future is OCD doesn't come as a factor into it OCD had such a conversation with every choice I made whether it was where I lived or who I talked to or when I left the house and I think the biggest thing for me is freedom just having that freedom to make any choice I want and it's it's difficult to explain but you know almost feeling captive for so long and getting to a point where the disorders and controlling you it's it it's a level of freedom and just free choice that I never thought I had and so I've done really well for myself if I can say so myself from turning it around I mean I was able to get an advanced you know master's degree do extremely well all A's in graduate school and become an OCD therapist and now treat individuals going through the same thing and my mom and I do a lot of advocacy together we run a free family and loved ones support group so kind of sharing our story and insights to help other people coming up and today I can sit here and tell you it's not easy I'm not okay but I'm doing it I'm getting through it I'm taking deep breaths where I need to take deep breaths I'm going to therapy my OCD is better than as urban even before I relapsed my o'seas been way better now because I know I have those tips and tricks up my sleeve to where if I have a day where I wake up and my anxiety is bad I can be like okay take that deep breath take that step back you can do this you've gone through before staying well from OCD not relapse is not about not having the thoughts and it's not about not having the feelings it's your response to the thoughts and feelings it's all about not compulsive it's all about embracing the discomfort and embracing the uncertainty and when you do that when you don't give oxygen to that fire the fire shuts down real fast there's such a lack of diversity within the OCD world the community I call ourselves the missing faces and I for me is so important to bring that diversity awareness to mental illness thank you because someone's gonna watch this and they're gonna see you and hear you and they're gonna feel like they're less alone okay and that what they're feeling is not crazy you know speak all over the world to sufferers and family members and clinicians in an effort to educate and D stigmatize and make sure that nobody has to go through what I went through the only way I can make sense out of it is to give back because otherwise what was it all for and I don't take days for granted I just don't allow myself to so if there's something in my life that I'm really interested in or really care about I fit it in and make it happen because I know what it was like to have so many years where that was just not something that I could do and making my mom proud she better be proud my job's part of people getting diagnosed sooner and getting the proper treatment sooner is definitely about spreading awareness and just making sure everyone knows what LCD is anything we can find out to help people live better lives and be diagnosed and treated sooner new research is critical to our survival to our continued welfare the continued D stigmatization of OCD is crucial it's so important I mean these are people's lives and I would definitely tell anybody out there that's struggling with this to not give up and to accept the fact that you're a little different but that doesn't make you any less of a warrior than you already are so to be able to be engaged in life no matter what is happening I feel this tinge of gratitude no matter what because at least I'm playing at least I'm in the game at least I'm not on the bench and I'm grateful for that and I'm grateful that I'm grateful for that I I am so thrilled with where he is I'm so thrilled of who he is I'm so proud of who he is and how hard he has worked he makes changes in people's lives he really helps people and Wow to go to work and say that you really changed somebody's life is great and I'm proud every time he tells me about it or people come up to me all the time say wow I'm glad we found your son you know I mean my son is doing so well something so I like that and how are you now like how is life feeling now for you right now it's great if you would ask me a couple of weeks ago you know it goes up and down but I've never felt better in my recovery as I do right now and I know it's just putting the work in and being an advocate has really really helped me but then there's those people that you do meet and a community that you create that you learn that you're not alone that you can get through this you can understand more about yourself you can educate other people and that's definitely a silver lining that I've found and a blessing in disguise for all this storm I want everybody out there to know there's hope because we did not have that our first our first thing that I was told is he'd never get better that was the first thing and I can't even relate how devastating that was to be told that I remember sitting on my bed looking at a picture of him and just crying like I lost my son what do you mean there's no help so I just like to dispel that right away there is hope there's treatment and there is hope and there may be times where people feel like giving up words can never happen our journey wasn't pretty there's definitely some some missteps but we always kind of got back on our feet and made it through so there's hope and there's help and people can get better we deserve to be happy we didn't ask for this it's a challenge for me it's always somewhere present but the days are good too you know it's not always bad did you enjoy this yes I did that was a little nervous but you're great I'm proud of you I'll never stop going to therapy ever I'll go to therapy every every week probably for the rest of my life because I know that's what helps me right and finding that is is truly super rewarding and reaching out and educating yourself and educating the people around you you're the best thing that I could ever give an advice to anybody and going out to those communities and asking for help asking for help isn't not not a bad thing right asking for how this how you get to places like where you're you're happy with yourself you know getting to those places of happiness I don't know that many people can say that they remember the first time they felt joy but I actually remember the moment and the day and what was happening he went it happened because I don't know that I never felt it before and I was walking down the streets of Boston and I was walking from work to home and the Sun was setting and I looked up and it was just a beautiful sunset and like the colors but I think I felt what I felt like I was supposed to feel my whole life but never did you know the beauty in nature or whatever I i felt something more than just functioning throughout the day I felt joy I felt happiness I felt connection I felt serenity I felt all of these things that I had never felt in my entire life and in that moment I was like that's what life's about that's what this is about it's not about functioning it's not about getting through it studying about it's not about going through the motions it's about this moment right here in this feeling and I'll always remember that moment and I'll always be very special but what's even more special is that I've had thousands of moments just like that since then [Music] you [Music]

Channel: International OCD Foundation

Views: 50,168

Rating: 4.9487648 out of 5

Keywords: OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, Mental Health, IOCDF, international ocd foundation, nonprofit, non-profit, charity, documentary, story, stories

Id: h1vjxZTALNg

Length: 42min 0sec (2520 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020