Author Archives: Claire Dickson

HBO Star Lena Dunham Discusses Her Experiences with OCD

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not_that_kind_of_girl_by_lena_dunham_WEBContamination fears and checking compulsions are just a couple of the OCD symptoms given attention on the HBO TV show “Girls.” Director, actress, and writer Lena Dunham takes her own struggle with OCD and works it into the show’s main character (Hannah) resulting in an honest portrayal of the disorder rarely seen on television.

Dunham delves into the details of her disorder and recovery in her new book: “Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s Learned.” One can hope that this kind of discussion will help bring the real experience of OCD sufferers to the attention of the public and break down the stereotypes and prejudices that many TV shows and books play a roll in perpetuating. Read more about Dunham and her new book.

A Scrupulosity Success Story

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To add to the recent interviews we’ve posted regarding scrupulosity, here is an excerpt from The Imp of the Mind that illistrates successful CBT treatment of scrupulosity:The-Imp-of-the-Mind-9780525945628

 Father Jack, a priest in his late fifties, came to our clinic several years ago for help with inappropriate sexual obsessions that threatened to ruin his professional and personal life. For him, the worst thing he could imagine doing would be to be caught staring at a young woman’s private parts.

     Seeing an attractive young woman walking down the street or talking with a female parishioner one-on-one, the priest would have the thought and urge to stare at her buttocks, breasts, or crotch. Over the years he fought this urge with all his strength but with little success.

     He had been but a teenager when the thoughts began. When he had told his superior about them, he was told they would pass with time, and to be patient. Only they didn’t. It wasn’t that he had trouble maintaining his vow of chastity – that he was sure he could do. Rather, it was the vulgar images that played over and over in his mind and the way he felt compelled or stare at women’s private parts. The very thing he was most afraid of doing – the very thing that seemed most disgusting to him – why was he having these very thoughts and urges?

     No one who saw him performing ceremonies in his church knew the torment going on inside his mind. Although he had taken the vow of chastity, his mind refused to cooperate. Finally he confided to a parishioner about the thoughts and images that were forcing themselves into his mind whenever he saw an attractive female on the streets or in church. He soon regretted this confession. He got a call from his superior, who told him about a complaint he had received from a parishioner and a warning that the father might be a dangerous man. Providentially, the superior had heard of obsessive thoughts like Father Jack’s, and he arranged for him to receive treatment at our clinic.

     Father Jack told me that he had read my book and others about how to deal with obsessions, and he wanted to know if he had understood them correctly: Was it true that the best thing to do was to stop resisting his obsessions, and to put himself in the situations that triggered his obsessions rather than avoid them?

     As Father Jack returned for his weekly, and then biweekly, visits, I was pleased to hear that he was feeling better…he now noticed that he no longer needed to fight the obsessions or to avoid attractive women on the streets of Boston. By letting himself look at whatever he wanted to look at; by letting whatever thoughts came simply pass through his mind; by recognizing the bad thoughts as nothing more than thoughts – he had cured himself of his obsessions.

     Fortunately for Father Jack, simply stopping thought suppression and no longer avoiding places where he would see attractive women were enough to tame his bad thoughts.

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A Dad Helps His Son Overcome OCD

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“Dad, my brain said that you’re a bad dad and mom is a bad mom.”

“Dad, my brain said that I should hurt myself and hurt you and mom.”

“Dad, my brain said that someone is going to take me.”

“Dad, my brain said that I am gay.”

Each of these statements and many more like them came out of my 11 year old son’s mouth countless times, and each time I would sit with him and tell him to ignore them or change the channel in his head. I would tell him to think of something positive since there’s so much to look forward to, but the thoughts and the statements kept on persisting. Why is my son having these thoughts? Is this a prodrome to a more serious psychiatric condition? Is he really capable of hurting himself or someone else, or is this just a phase?

As a medically educated person I sought an expert’s help with my son’s struggles, but I didn’t recognize what his condition really was. I figured it was anxiety and a child therapist was a good first step. I asked his pediatrician to recommend a therapist and she was happy to comply and gave me a referral. I called this therapist who seemed to be appropriately credentialed and we started bringing him to therapy once a week. My son was more than willing to go and talk with the therapist since he disliked the intrusive thoughts and the anxiety it brought him and wanted to help himself get rid of them. We went week after week and after thousands of dollars and many hours spent, he really didn’t improve. His thoughts were as bad or worse than before and I was getting more worried.

Frustrated and concerned that my son was suffering, and neither I nor a licensed therapist were able to help, I sought further assistance from my network of highly experienced experts (I am fortunate to work in the Pharma industry and have a network of experts that I can talk with). I reached out to a colleague and described my son’s symptoms and he quickly came to the suspicion that my son was suffering from OCD spectrum of disorders with intrusive thoughts and not garden variety general anxiety disorder that the therapist we were seeing thought he had. He recommended that I reach out to an expert in OCD. There was a certain amount of relief that came with the fact that my son had a specific anxiety disorder and there were specialists that had experience in treating it successfully.

After briefly speaking with the OCD expert on the phone, I traveled to Boston with my son for a consultation visit. After a short period of time, it was confirmed that he was suffering from OCD with intrusive thoughts. Prior to the visit, I ordered our new therapist’s books on the subject and showed my son who thought it was pretty cool that he was meeting someone “famous”.  The first visit lasted almost 2 hours and by the end, it seemed that the session had already started to help. On the way home, my son stated he really liked the therapist and what he talked about. We continued the sessions via Skype and with each session, he seemed to get better and better, realizing the thoughts were just thoughts.

I think the most important message to parents with children that suffer from invasive or intrusive thoughts is to recognize that this is a distinct anxiety disorder that requires a certain type of therapy. The appropriate diagnosis along with the specific therapy tailored for this disorder is the first step to certain improvement. I am very thankful that my son’s invasive thoughts are much less frequent now and when they do pop up, he is much better prepared to deal with them (as am I).

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Being Me With OCD

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Alison Dotson is a former OCD sufferer, advocate, and author of “Being Me with OCD: How I Learned to Obsess Less and Live My Life.” You can learn more about her and her book on her website.

Ali_Dotson_RGBOver the past couple years, I’ve been writing more and more about my personal experience with OCD. And let me tell you—it hasn’t always been easy to do. I’ve bared my soul to strangers and published words I still can’t say out loud without blushing or looking over my shoulder to make sure no one else has heard me.

My worst obsessions were disturbing by almost anyone’s standards. Many people didn’t understand why I had them, why I worried about the things I did, but they could certainly understand that having the thoughts took a toll on me.

When I had my first appointment with a psychiatrist eight years ago, it took everything in me, all of my strength and courage, just to give him a general idea of why I was sitting there in his office. I forced myself to tell him I was struggling with obsessions, but I was terrified of how he might react if I told him even a fraction of the truth, let alone a detailed rundown:  I couldn’t shake the gut-wrenching fear that I might be a sex offender who just hadn’t acted yet. I thought he might have a professional, legal, and moral obligation to report me. As outlandish as it seems now, before I met with him I had images of him reaching under his desk and pressing a button that alerted the authorities as I unknowingly continued to pour my heart out.

Luckily I was able to get enough out, and he understood what I was telling him—he even understood what I left unsaid. I was relieved to be diagnosed with OCD because it meant I had a treatable disorder. It meant I wasn’t a bad person, despite my bad thoughts. It meant I could try to move on and lead a happy, healthy life.

Not only have I gotten a strong hold on OCD, I have started to talk about it with a transparency I couldn’t have imagined that day in my psychiatrist’s office. People often talk about the stigma surrounding mental illness, a very real problem, but I’ve never had a problem telling people I have OCD. I’ve hesitated, however, when they’ve asked me what my symptoms were. How could I tell them about my sexual obsessions? What would they think of me if they knew what I’d obsessed over, even if I tried to explain that my thoughts were unwanted, unpleasant, intrusive, unbending?

beingmewocdSometimes I still can’t believe that I now regularly blog about my personal experiences with OCD, and I really can’t believe I’ve written a book about it. I’ve shared secrets I long thought I’d keep inside for my entire life, and I’ve done it because it’s what I needed when I felt most alone: someone to “confess” first, someone to say “Me too” or “You’re a good person, Alison, despite those images in your head.”

Years after my diagnosis, when I decided to write a book that would help others with OCD, I was doing remarkably well. I hadn’t really obsessed for years; whenever I had a bad thought I was able to talk myself through it, and I was on effective medication. I felt ready to share my story so others would feel less alone—but before I sent my first draft to my editor, I did some editing of my own. I deleted every mention I had made to the most taboo sexual obsessions, and I even added a line about having violent obsessions, thinking people would be much more forgiving of someone who obsessed about wielding a knife than someone who obsessed about sexually assaulting somebody. As honest as I wanted to be, I was still afraid of how people would react. If my sister-in-law read my book would she forbid me from seeing my nephews? What would my husband think? Would I be shunned at work?

My editor gently nudged me to share more details. I knew his advice was sound, and I knew I could be the most helpful to my readers if I was as honest as possible. I was scared to include so many embarrassing details about my obsessions, and yet that was exactly why I knew I had to do it anyway. I wasn’t diagnosed with OCD until I was 26 years old, but I’d been struggling with intrusive thoughts for nearly two decades. Could I have felt better sooner if someone like me had already written a book and admitted they’d had obsessions like I’d had? Every time I hesitated to be more forthcoming I would think of someone else out there who feels just as alone as I used to, just as ashamed and hopeless. And I knew I had to get over myself and follow through on my goal to help others. It’s been so worth it. I’ve connected with so many wonderful people at all different stages in their journeys with OCD.

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Advice From an OCD Sufferer: How I Controlled My Harming Obsessions

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My advice to those having fears of harming themselves or fears of harming others, and OCD thoughts in general, is: you can outsmart the OCD.

Your creative mind is picking the worst possible things you imagine doing, producing high levels of anxiety.  Rituals that follow, i.e. checking, reassurance seeking etc., are what you are doing to reduce the anxiety. The urges you feel to complete the rituals is incredibly strong. However, as I’m sure you have experienced, rituals are time consuming, can take away life enjoyment, and can feel very overwhelming and annoying. Know that you are definitely not alone with your thoughts and rituals, and that OCD need not take over your life.

Know that having these thoughts does not mean you are crazy, and it does not mean you will act on these thoughts.  As someone that has OCD, I know that the amount of doubt OCD brings can make it feel impossible to trust yourself and know for sure that you will not act on your thoughts. I want you to imagine believing in yourself again, and all the ways that it will positively impact your life. I want you to picture having the thoughts that cause your anxiety levels to shoot up through the sky, no longer producing anxiety. This is entirely possible.  As you trust your mind and body more, the trust in yourself will build.

One of the things behavior therapy has taught me is the power of the brain. The mind is a brilliant thing and takes care of many processes without you having to constantly monitor, check, or seek reassurance.  You don’t constantly have to worry if you are hurting yourself or others. I always felt like I had to watch myself to make sure I didn’t do anything wrong, so this was a hard thing to accept. The fact is, this won’t happen overnight. It takes hard work, but you can build trust in yourself. I was highly suspicious of this at first, and felt that I would have to live with my fears forever. However, exposure therapy continues to build my trust in myself, and allow me to face my fears.

No matter how depressed you feel, know that changing your behavior can change your thoughts. Resisting exposures and trusting your mind and body takes time, but can make living with OCD manageable. You can enjoy life again in ways that you never imagined possible. The power of medication and therapy available to OCD patients today is truly amazing compared to where it has been in the past.

Know that your OCD does not make you a damaged individual and is not something you have to be ashamed of. I didn’t believe this just a few short months ago. However, I now realize that the words ‘happiness’ and ‘I have OCD’ can coexist in the same sentence.

A Former OCD Sufferer Gives Hope and Support to a Current Sufferer

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An OCD sufferer who has successfully gone through the recovery process and an OCD sufferer who is currently struggling talked about their experiences with OCD and social anxiety. Here is some of their conversation:

Current OCD sufferer: I have OCD and social anxiety and a little bit of depression. I feel like it’s harder for me to make friends just because of the social anxiety and it sometimes gets lonely. For the OCD I worry about harming other people. Specifically, when I’m in my car driving and worry about hitting other people in my car. And then harming other people in general like if I brush up against someone or also doing something sexually bad. So it’s a wide range, but that’s a little bit of me. Do you have any advice for going through the exposures? I’m just trying to do one of playing the recording for an hour a day. And I’m sure you’ve went through that and it’s probably hard in the beginning.

Former OCD sufferer: It’s really hard to first kind of say out loud anything because the first thing you want to do is not think about it. But that’s actually what makes it worse. What I think is by not facing it and trying to not think about it would make me think about it more. So I think a lot of it was just talking about it and saying it out loud and knowing that it wasn’t me. It wasn’t something that I was actually going to do. The fact that it really bothered me to even think about it, the more I thought about it I was like, “well if I’m really worried about doing this, I wouldn’t be worried about it, I would just be doing it.” People who worry about doing things, they just do it. There’s no conscious behind it – it’s just something they act on. Do you know what I mean?

Current OCD sufferer: Yes. I think the OCD thoughts, like you were saying, now I know it’s not me and that I’m not actually going to do whatever thoughts go through my head. A lot of the things I would do involved checking or asking for reassurance. So I’m trying not to do that as much. I feel like it’s pretty hard, but hopefully it will pay off.

Former OCD sufferer: It will. I’ve gotten so much better and it’s a huge relief because it was the hardest time in my life. The OCD to me was worse than my social anxiety, but my social anxiety – I still have issues with that. It’s an ongoing thing with my social anxiety and it’s something that I’ll probably have for a while. I’m just trying to really get out there and talk to more people because honestly what really helps is having people to talk to. Because when you’re alone – that’s when it’s worse for me. If I’m alone and if I don’t talk to people, and if I don’t reach out and try to communicate with other people I start to get depressed and then my OCD will start to act up, and my social anxiety. Because you’re just alone.

Current OCD sufferer: And do you find it’s worse when you’re working? Or is it better when your mind is busy focusing on what you have to do?

Former OCD sufferer: It is so much better when I am around people and my mind is busy and when I’m busy. The worst time for me would be when I was alone at night. That’s when my mind was open to think of everything. And if I had a change in schedule, change would bring on my OCD more, and if I was more tired that would bring on my social anxiety and OCD. I noticed if I’m more refreshed, if I sleep enough, and eating well, healthy, that I hear can help with mood as well.  It’s really hard. Your mind is a powerful thing. It will make you think things, and make you think that you’re going to do things, and you can really start believing. I was really believing that I was very capable of doing everything I thought. And to just know that I’m not the only one who thinks that, I’m not the only one who has had thoughts. And even talking to other people with OCD, it’s still like “I don’t want them to think that I’m actually really going to do this because their problem is a little different from my problem.”