Do You Have ADHD, OCD, Or Both?

1. 0:00 – 1:33

   Trailer

   1. SPSpeaker0:00

      ADHD is a disorder regulation where you have features of things like impulsivity, hyperfocus, sensitivity. In OCD, you have a situation of obsession with something that relates to your health, morality, thought process, time, and you are stuck on this thing.

   2. APAlex Partridge0:16

      Dr Alex George is an ADHD specialist.

   3. SPSpeaker0:18

      And one of the most renowned voices in the ADHD space.

   4. APAlex Partridge0:21

      He's using his incredible knowledge to help you understand your ADHD-

   5. SPSpeaker0:25

      And live in harmony with it. The cruelty is that OCD feeds on people that care, that care about their own health, that care about the health of others, that care about their impact on other people, that want to learn from their mistakes. That is the perfect place for OCD to thrive. I tell you one thing for sure, I'd happily lose everything that I've ever done in terms of success and achievements and not have OCD and live peacefully, because OCD has definitely nearly killed me.

   6. APAlex Partridge0:46

      On the extreme end of it, and only if you're happy to talk about that-

   7. SPSpeaker0:49

      Mm.

   8. APAlex Partridge0:49

      How does OCD kill people?

   9. SPSpeaker0:51

      So OCD, um...

   10. APAlex Partridge0:56

       Can I have just a second of your time? If this podcast has helped you understand your brain or made you feel less alone, can you do me one favor? Can you hit the subscribe button? And I'll repay the favor by continuing to book the best and most exclusive conversations on this topic. Please enjoy the episode, and always remember, you're not broken, just different, and you have always been enough. A quick trigger warning before we start. References to suicide are made from the beginning. [upbeat music] Dr Alex George, welcome back.

   11. SPSpeaker1:25

       Thank you. Thanks for having me.

   12. APAlex Partridge1:26

       You've had some interesting news recently, which in many ways might be a warning to our viewers and

2. 1:33 – 10:45

   The overlap between ADHD & OCD

   1. APAlex Partridge1:33

      listeners. You've recently, as well as ADHD, been diagnosed with OCD.

   2. SPSpeaker1:37

      Yeah.

   3. APAlex Partridge1:37

      Is there a big overlap there?

   4. SPSpeaker1:39

      Yeah, I think it's, to be honest with you, um, OCD is something that I've lived with most of my life, but had no idea that I actually had. And I think this is the thing about OCD. It's a sneaky, sneaky, um, illness because it constantly hides behind your worries and your fears, and you constantly think that it's the thing you're worried about that needs fixing, not the illness itself. So, um, you know, many people with OCD, like myself, will go fifteen, twenty years before they're diagnosed for that very reason. So if you're someone, for example, that's constantly worried they're gonna get sick, you, your brain is focusing on not getting sick and making sure that your compulsions, your actions are gonna minimize that risk of getting sick. What you don't think is that it's not the illness that you're worried about catching that's the problem, it's the OCD. You don't realize that. Or if you're someone that's worried about being a good person, you're constantly like, "No, but this thing that I did makes me bad," or, "This, this thing, I need to deal with this in the right way, otherwise I'm a bad person." You think that that is the thing you need to get to the bottom of, and you never do. Uh, you don't realize that actually it's the OCD you need to work on, and it is cruel for that reason. You know, at its core, OCD is something where there is an obsession. So the core thing that you're worried about often preys on your biggest fears, maybe being a good person or, you know, uh, say... Yeah, so say for example, being a good person is your important thing that you want to be, um, then everything in your life is to try and make sure that you don't do anything that could be aligned with not being a good person or punishing yourself for any mistakes you've made that would align with being a bad person. So it is, it is very cruel because you have this obsession, and then your compulsion, the OCD part, so the C, the compulsive part, can be not just people think of it as cleaning or tidying pencils, it can be rumination. Rumination is a very core compulsion that people have. Fact-checking, reassurance-seeking, um, checking your, you know, thoughts, your contacts over and over and over again. That is a compulsion. Now of course, most people want to be a reasonably good person. Most people have the ability to reflect and go, "I made a mistake. I'll learn from it." But the difference is you'll never get to the point where you accept and move on. So a normal thing is like, "I made a mistake. I offended someone. I feel bad about that. I'll remedy it, learn from it, move on." It's not normal five years later to still be thinking about that interaction over and over and over again. It is a very cruel thing, and I think it's much more common in the ADHD community.

   5. APAlex Partridge4:05

      It sounds all-consuming and totally exhausting. Are there any positives of having OCD?

   6. SPSpeaker4:11

      Not that I've realized. [laughs] Actually, no, there is one.

   7. APAlex Partridge4:13

      [laughs]

   8. SPSpeaker4:13

      Um, and someone said this, and I thought it was very true. Um, having OCD means that you are... If there's a crisis, you're the most prepared person in the room because you've imagined every single day and experienced in your body a crisis continually happening. The way that it feels to have OCD is that you're living with your worst case scenario as if it's happening every single day. So the visceral response you have, the anxiety, the worry, the dread, the all-consumingness of OCD is as if the thing you're afraid about is actually happening. So when a disaster actually happens, often the most calmest people in the room are the ADHDers and the OCDers, 'cause ADHDers will focus in and hone in, and the OCDers, "Well, I've been preparing for this every day of my life anyway."

   9. APAlex Partridge4:55

      [laughs]

   10. SPSpeaker4:55

       "So the worst case has happened, and actually it's not as bad as I thought it would be." Um, and it's... Yeah, I think that's about as good as it gets. I think OCD is a very cruel, uh, condition. Uh, WHO names it as the seventh, I believe it says it's the seventh, um, most debilitating condition, uh, worldwide, 'cause it's all-consuming. It absorbs every part. It's all-consuming, can absorb every part of your focus, attention, and being. Suicide risk is exponentially higher in those with OCD. Co-concurrent depression is much higher as well, and often people with OCD will use other ways to kind of cope with their compulsions or their anxiety. For example, drug use and alcohol as well. So it's a really difficult thing to have, and a lot of people don't realize that OCD has a very strong genetic component, and there are many psychiatrists who argue that it is actually part of a neurodevelopmental disorder, so that OCD is a neurodevelopmental disorder in itself. If I look on my mother's side, I believe, I'm not certain, but I suspect my nan may have had OCD. My mum, I believe, had OCD when she was younger, really struggled with it. Um, she had a lot of fear around making mistakes at work and would go and check, and would wake up at night at 5:00 in the morning, couldn't relax, couldn't even enjoy time off.I now look at myself and I've been passed on, I think, those [laughs] that unfortunate gene, and it's been very hard. I actually think the OCD has been way harder than, than ADHD. Um, I don't wanna say that, 'cause that sounds minimizing of ADHD, but in my experience, the OCD has been horrendous. Maybe the ADHD has actually been part of it because you have a, um, hyper-focus, impulsive, sensitive part of, of a experience combined with a compulsive hyper-rumination type experience, and the two is like a, a beautifully horrible storm.

   11. APAlex Partridge6:44

       Many of the viewers and listeners will relate to what you just said. How many people with ADHD have OCD?

   12. SPSpeaker6:49

       This is really shocking. Around 3% of the population experience OCD at some point in their life, right? When you look at people with OCD, 25 or up to 25% of them have co-concurrent ADHD. So what we're saying is that a lot of people who have OCD, a significant proportion of them, actually have a background of having ADHD, and bearing in mind the prevalence of ADHD is about 4 to 5%. I think that shows really, it highlights how much the two things can play into each other, which to me makes absolute sense. So if you have ADHD and you're someone that gets really stuck on things, I don't really care what your compulsions are, physical or not, if you get stuck on things and you can't get over things, you keep ruminating, or you can't move on from something, it keeps coming up day after day, week after week, think about OCD. OCD is the fourth most common psychiatric disorder, so it's a really common experience, and yet it is massively underdiagnosed because people don't realize they have it. They suffer for decades with no clue that the thing they're suffering from is actually OCD.

   13. APAlex Partridge7:56

       You've also been very successful. You've got a podcast that you've stuck at for three years. You've, you've written many books. You've got many businesses, and for someone to do that, surely there needs to be some form of obsession towards those things to stick at it. If someone is successful but in the metrics that society defines success as, the obsession that's required in order to achieve that, is that related to OCD?

   14. SPSpeaker8:19

       Maybe. Maybe. I often wonder if I, I want to do my best to, um, to kind of be busy, to, um, to focus on other things. Morality's very important. I want to help people and do good things, and therefore perhaps my obsession around making sure that I make a difference plays into it. But I suspect that probably leans more to other aspects of being neurodivergent than the OCD side of it. Maybe it does drive me in some ways, maybe that there's a level of avoidance even, um, by that. I think you're right. I mean, like I said, the things that make you susceptible to OCD are the things that might make you brilliant at running a podcast like this. Um, the fact that you, for example, if you want to be someone to help other people, you kind of need to care about other people, right? You need to actually have empathy and care. If you're someone that really cares about your impact on the world and your behavior and how you are, and is introspective, 'cause usually you need to have some level of introspection as to how you're impacting others, that makes a good, very good playing field for OCD to enter. Doesn't mean that everyone who's gonna, who's empathetic ends up with OCD, obviously not. But it certainly does predispose you. If you didn't care about yourself at all or other people at all in any way, shape, or form, I think your chances of getting OCD would be pretty low. The cruelty is that OCD feeds on people that care, that care about their own health, that care about the health of others, that care about their impact on other people, about the way that they act in the world, that want to learn from their mistakes. You know, that is the perfect place for OCD to thrive. So I think it's, it's like chicken and the egg. Does it occur in people that are successful because they wanna do well, um, but some of those features, um, make OCD more likely? Or have people with OCD got greater awareness and therefore use that to focus on other things? Potentially. Maybe it's both. Um, I tell you one thing for sure. I'd happily lose everything that I've ever done in terms of success and achievements and not have OCD. I'd really, I would say, like, I would happily have, um, none of my successes, take away all the books, everything I've ever done, and live peacefully because OCD's definitely nearly killed me. Um, I suspect that OCD may well have been a feature in my brother and him passing away. Um, I think OCD kills a lot of people. Um, and so I, I tell you now, I mean, the amount of suffering I've had with OCD, I would in a heartbeat give up everything, every possession I have, to have never experienced that and be free from it.

   15. APAlex Partridge10:42

       On the extreme end of it, and only if you're happy

3. 10:45 – 12:42

   How OCD kills people

   1. APAlex Partridge10:45

      to talk about that-

   2. SPSpeaker10:45

      Mm.

   3. APAlex Partridge10:45

      How does OCD kill people?

   4. SPSpeaker10:49

      So OCD, um, is a cyclical experience of thinking, and if you start with a negative fear that you have or a belief about yourself, and you wind tighter and tighter and tighter, eventually, you know, at the beginning you might be able to cope and paddle away and keep working, but eventually your sense of self becomes eroded. You start believing that you are a certain person or that a certain outcome is likely. If you're, say, obsessed, the fact you're gonna get sick tomorrow and die, that belief might become more frightening and worse and worse and worse and tighter and tighter till eventually you see no way out. You become so depressed and low and anxious that there seems no way forward, and when there's no way forward, people feel there's no way out or that there's only one way out. And so, you know, the rates of suicide with OCD are, you know, not insignificant for that reason, because suddenly you feel very alone. I think OCD's very clever. Again, the reason why people don't get diagnosed for decades is because you feel it's just you. You are the problem. I am problemed in myself, and that no one else can see it or understand it because it's something I need to fix. In fact, lots of people with OCD will go living throughout their lives where no one else has a clue. Even their partners won't know that they have OCD because-For example, what they call pure O, so pure OCD. The idea is that there's no external compulsions, that all of it's in your mind, the fact-checking, rumination, re- re- reassurance t- um, thing. It's not physical things. Many of that can just exist solely in the mind, and so no one would ever know. So you can end up in a hell of a state without anyone having a gl- a clue, and just think, "Do you know what? I give up. Life's not worth living," or, "I'm a terrible person, I don't deserve to be alive," which is a common theme in OCD. People end up believing they don't deserve life.

   5. APAlex Partridge12:38

      It's truly terrifying, the idea that it can be so well-hidden.

4. 12:42 – 14:40

   How ADHD masks OCD

   1. APAlex Partridge12:42

      Can ADHD mask OCD?

   2. SPSpeaker12:45

      I think so. I think that, um, that in the sa- if you're, especially someone, if you have ADHD and you're used to masking, the skill of masking can be used for many things, and suddenly you'll be masking your OCD behind that. You can be having a conversation with a record player behind you going, "You're a terrible person, you're awful, this happened." Maybe there's a trigger in a conversation that suddenly sets the record player going, and we can be chatting, and this record player's churning behind me ho- hour, in hour after hour, and no one has a clue that you're experiencing it. Just 'cause you're not sitting there like this in the corner doesn't mean that you're not torturing yourself. Some of the people who are the most depressed and suffer the most might have the biggest smile on their face. I mean, often you'll see this on TikTok where, "Hey, look at this video of my partner a week before they died with a big smile and laughing." Just tells you little about what's going on behind the smile. Um, which I think actually why it's so important to be kind, um, something I think we've completely lost in recent years. There's, there's something around, like, you know, everyone should be kind. There's that be kind hashtag, kindness, be kind stuff that happened a few years ago, and now we've seemed to have gone to a place where being kind is just, like, woke, and no one wants to be kind, and i- it's, we're in a horrible state of affairs. I think we need to be much kinder to people. Um, I think we need to judge less. We're the most judgmental we've ever been as a society. I think we need to accept the imperfections of people. People make mistakes. People get things wrong. People are imperfect. You know, and I think that's, that doesn't help people with OCD, um, you know, living in a world where any mistake is catastrophic, living in a world where, you know, for example, you know, it's like, oh gosh, you know, if you've eaten this food, then you're gonna be X times more likely to die from a disease. [laughs] You're surrounded by constant messaging of things you might have done, or mistakes you make, or decisions you're doing that feels all irreversible and feels very heavy.

   3. APAlex Partridge14:31

      Mm.

   4. SPSpeaker14:31

      So I think we have to be kinder as a society, otherwise I think we're gonna see more, more, more OCD coming up. It's a breeding ground, modern society, for OCD.

5. 14:40 – 14:51

   Tiimo advert

   1. APAlex Partridge14:40

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6. 14:51 – 16:07

   ADHD Explained

   1. APAlex Partridge14:51

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   2. SPSpeaker16:01

      The crossover between ADHD and OCD has been one of the most requested topics to cover on this podcast.

7. 16:07 – 24:48

   Traits of ADHD and OCD

   1. APAlex Partridge16:07

      Are there any common confusions, common traits that c- could give someone a clue that they might have both?

   2. SPSpeaker16:13

      Um, I think what you're looking at, at its core, to remember, is that ADHD is, uh, is an, is, is, is a disorder regulation, where you have features of things like impulsivity, um, hyperfocus, sensitivity. Um, there's things around time and memory, blindness, stuff like that. You see those features. In OCD, you have a sit- uh, situation of obsession with something that relates to your health, morality, thought process, time. It might be a s- something... There's something you're really obsessive about, and you are stuck on this thing, and you end up in a cyclical process of su- stuckness, and you end up anxious of a, of this obsession. Obsession with autism would be, "I'm obsessed with trains." It gives you joy. This obsession makes you absolutely miserable and anxious. But sometimes OCD, people confuse OCD with, uh, autism. In fact, obviously, because of the co- co- because of the co-concurrence of all of these things, you could have OCD, uh, ADHD, and autism, right, all together in one pot, but the features are different. So yeah, you might be obsessed with, um, with learning every fact about a car, right? But that makes you happy. Whereas learning every fact about a disease is not of interest. It's, it's the thing you're trying to do to reduce your anxiety, or that obsession makes you miserable. That's what you kind of look for. But the reality is, is that people can have both because of the fact that you've got someone that can be really sensitive, really hyperfocused, and then lock on on this thing. Um, but ultimately, when you ask yourself, "Could this be OCD?" are you stuck on something? Is there a belief or thought that you're stuck on, that you end up cyclical with, and that you're doing things to relieve yourself from?

   3. APAlex Partridge17:55

      Mm.

   4. SPSpeaker17:55

      So are you doing things, whether it's avoidance, reassurance checking, compulsions, rumination, cleaning habits, whatever it might be, are you doing things to reduce the anxiety caused by this obsession or thought? If you are, think OCD, and just remember, you'll probably doubt it's OCD the whole time, and even if you get diagnosed with OCD, you'll constantly question-But is it OCD? What if they're wrong? What if I haven't got OCD and I am gonna get sick tomorrow? Or what if I've got OCD, I am a terrible person? Just remember that OCD will always try and come in the back door, and that's okay, but you just gotta see it and know that it's doing it.

   5. APAlex Partridge18:30

      Mm.

   6. SPSpeaker18:30

      Name it. The most power thing, most powerful way to manage OCD I've learned is to name it. "Ah, this thought I'm having, thank you for that thought. I can see you, OCD. Welcome. Thanks for being here. Maybe you're right, maybe you're not. Maybe, maybe not." Most powerful phrase to use w- to combat OCD is maybe, maybe not. Maybe I'll die to- tomorrow, maybe I won't. Maybe I'm a good person, maybe I'm not. Maybe, maybe, um, maybe my friend hates me, maybe they don't. Maybe that mistake I made 10 years ago was a big mistake. Maybe it's not. Maybe, maybe not, constantly, because the brain then goes, "Oh, he's tolerating uncertainty." And at its core, what OCD is is an intolerance of uncertainty. You cannot tolerate the fact you don't know. And if you notice, the key thing with every OCD theme, whatever it is, uh, whatever that theme of obsession is, it always comes down to the fact that you cannot be certain. You cannot be certain that you're a good person. You can't be. There'll always be things in your past that wouldn't, would not fit with a perfectly good person. The truth is, 'cause no one is perfectly good. There is no way you can be certain that you won't get cancer. I pray that you won't, but there's no way. How could you? If anyone said to you, "There's no way Alex is gonna get cancer," they, they, they're lying to you. I'll tell you that for free. So all of these themes have uncertainty, and what we need to do as human beings is tolerate that. The only certainty we have is that we're not gonna live forever. That's it. Everything else is uncertain.

   7. APAlex Partridge19:53

      So with uncertainty being one of the core features of OCD, but yet also people with ADHD struggling with uncertainty, how do you cope with that issue?

   8. SPSpeaker20:03

      Yeah, 'cause I guess with ADHD, because if we remember, you know, that part of the brain that kind of pulls the levers of keep calm, don't stress, anxious, be happy, do all these things, good idea, bad idea, that kind of emotional regulation, executive functioning part of your brain, with ADHD, you can really therefore struggle with uncertainty, and I think that's something a lot of people would agree with. For example, you know, it might be someone saying, "Oh, can we have a chat tomorrow, um, quickly before work or at the start of work?" You don't know what that's gonna be about, so you tie in the emotional side of rejection sensitivity plus uncertainty is chaos. And you're like, "Oh my God." And so how do you deal with uncertainty? I think a, a lot of the time, because actually what uncertainty does is drive anxiety, it's actually being able to learn to build a tolerance of uncertainty. So it's beginning to practice sitting with an emotion saying, "Right, I feel a bit a- anxious and more anxious because boss wants to have a chat in the morning. I don't know what's going to happen. It could be really positive, it could be a negative thing, or it could be absolutely neutral. And right now I could spiral into it, or I could sit and accept the fact that there is a bit of discomfort. And rather than sit with this and now ruminate for hours and panic, I'm going to instead gently move my attention to the present. Right now, what's more important is drinking a cup of tea I'm having, or spending time with the kids, or perhaps I'm gonna go for a run, or maybe I'm gonna go and do something that I usually enjoy," and trying to take the attention off that conversation tomorrow onto something else. Now of course someone's gonna say, "Yeah, that's very well, but, like, I'm still gonna think about it." Yeah, that's fine. It's about saying, "Hey, thanks so much. I appreciate, brain. You're trying to warn me that tomorrow could be something problematic, but right now there's nothing to do, so I'm just gonna let you sit there. I accept you. You're welcome to stay, but I'm still gonna drink my cup of tea." And it's something that you can practice and you can get better at, and it's something that's used a lot in OCD, but is applicable to any sort of uncertainty. It's saying, "Hey, maybe, maybe not. Who knows? You might be right. Could be terrible tomorrow. It could be a great day." You know, sometimes the best days of my life started off terribly, and they ended up being the best days. Some of the worst days have been amazing and ended up badly. So a lot of the time it's going, we don't know what's coming, but we'll deal with it. 'Cause, 'cause really if you, if you look at it this way, if you take it a step further that, for example, anxiety, uh, anxiety, which OCD is effectively an, you know, a form of anxiety, right? It's kind of a form of anxiety disorder, um, because anxiety's the predominant emotion that you feel. Um, you know, anxiety is that intolerance of uncertainty, but really when you dig even deeper, you don't feel you can trust yourself to deal with something happening. It's a lack of trust issue. You know, it's, "I can't deal with this if this happens tomorrow." But you can, because you know from evidence that you've dealt with everything that's happened. You might have had a terrible time before. Something might have happened that did floor you. But you did deal with it, and you did move through it, and you are here today. So often it's saying, well, actually, if the boss tomorrow says, "Look, you've done something wrong and you're on your final warning," you know that you can actually deal with that. You are going to have all the tools you're currently using against yourself to cause stress to deal with it. You know, it's that, um, is it Seneca said that, um, all the tools that you currently use against yourself you can use in the future to tackle your problem. That's not the, um, the sentence of the quote, but it's effectively along those lines. And I, and I, and I love that idea because it's true. The weapons that you currently use against yourself, you can use that to deal with a problem if it happens, 'cause otherwise you're suffering twice for no reason. My mum always says it, "Cross the bridge when you get to it." And it's the hardest thing to do, but you can learn to do it, and it is a skill that's learnable and practicable. Practice it.

   9. APAlex Partridge23:29

      I can imagine ADHD and OCD are quite conflicting in the way that they present. I guess with ADHD it could be quite impulsive and perhaps h- sometimes haphazard, and with ADHD or with OCD being the opposite. In that case, does that present inner turmoil sometimes?

   10. SPSpeaker23:46

       Yes, I guess so. I guess the thing is the impulsivity with ADHD will usually be thought or interest led, dopamine chasing, whereas the impulsive side of OCD, or rather the compulsive side, 'cause ADHD tends to be impulsive, OCD is compulsive, is all about reducing anxiety. So you're not doing something to chase dopamine, you're doing that thing to, to calm yourself. So for example, exercise, you might have an impulsive feeling, "Oh, I wanna go out and do a 20K run today. I've got into running in the last two weeks and I'm now wanting to run every day." That's impulsiveness, right? OCD is, "I need to go for a run for 20K because if I don't, I might get cancer, I might get sick, I might get sick. If I don't run 20K today, I might get sick. Or if I don't run 20K today, something bad will happy, happen to my family member."As a compulsion versus im- impulsivity. And when you see it that way, actually the clarity is clear. But you have to ask yourself, "Am I doing this because I have an extreme interest in this, or a desire to go and do this thing and chase dopamine 'cause I wanna feel high and happy? Or am I doing it to reduce the anxiety, to alleviate the fear or worry or obsession that

8. 24:48 – 28:28

   Audience questions

   1. SPSpeaker24:48

      I have?"

   2. APAlex Partridge24:48

      Phenomenal. Thank you very much, Alex. I wanna move on to audience questions.

   3. SPSpeaker24:52

      Sure.

   4. APAlex Partridge24:52

      The Washing Machine of Woes, where every week a member of the audience send in their ADHD woes, and it goes in a washing machine, because for me it represents memory loss, 'cause I always leave my clothes in the machine. And last time you said you do relate to that?

   5. SPSpeaker25:03

      Yes, I absolutely do relate to that. [laughs]

   6. APAlex Partridge25:06

      [laughs]

   7. SPSpeaker25:06

      It's just forget- I, I... My big thing is, like, losing keys and stuff like that. Losing any item, in fact, but keys are a big one, yeah.

   8. APAlex Partridge25:12

      The Tiimo app is helping me remember, but we're still on a journey of self-acceptance. This week, Alex, someone has written in and asked, "I'm 43, and throughout my life I've been diagnosed with bipolar, anxiety disorders, as well as other things. How can I trust the doctors are right, and it's not just ADHD?"

   9. SPSpeaker25:34

      Well, I mean, the thing is, is I think one of the hardest things to do with any mental health experience... Now of course, being, having ADHD is not a mental health disorder, it's neurodevelopmental, but we know there's a lot of crossover, and a lot of people with ADHD will go on to have other struggles and so on. So when you're looking at anything that's to do with the mind and the brain, the problem is, is that you are s- [laughs] you're in there with it too. You know? Um, you're, you're living with this thing in your head, or this experience, and that clouds your judgment and your ability to see. And I think if you look at, for example, OCD, the biggest thing is the lack of insight. If you had true insight into your experience, you wouldn't experience OCD. So if you had true insight, honest, complete clarity, as they say, OCD clarity, all of the time, OCD would dissolve, because your insight would tell you that probability, possibility, and relevance isn't there about whatever you're worried about. 'Cause that's the core of it, because if it was an actual problem, it wouldn't be OCD, right? But you constantly flick between clarity and, you know, losing clarity in OCD. That's the problem. So when, when it comes to these situations, it is about saying, "Hey, am I the best person to make the call on this experience within my mind, or is it better to trust the professionals and people around me?" And on the whole, yes, people make mistakes, and yes, people get things wrong. But on the whole, like, people are there to help you. They've got the trained experience to do so, and they're often better placed. I sat down, actually, with my psychiatrist a couple of months ago, and we were discussing medication. And, you know, I'm in that position where I'm a doctor, have some knowledge, not a huge knowledge, but decent amount of knowledge, and I was there, like, debating this medication with her, like, "Oh, I don't know, is this a good idea?" And then I had this moment of like, I'm sat here with a psychiatrist who's been doing this for 20 years, and I'm trying to have too much input into what the best thing for me is. And I sat there and I said, "Do you know what? You're actually the person who's best placed to make this decision. I'm gonna trust you." And I was absolutely right to do so, because we were doing a medication switch. The medication that I've gone to has, is definitely infinitely better than the one I was on, for me. And so in that moment, I had to let go. And when you're talking about things in the mind and challenges of the mind, the hardest thing to do is let go. But the question I'd ask yourself is, has me trying to control the situation myself got me better or worse? And in OCD, I guess the question is, has your lack of insight, has the way that you see things led you to a better or worse place? And perhaps it's time to trust someone else. So as hard as it can be, it's not about just completely letting go and having no autonomy or questioning things you don't understand, but I think it is realizing, you know, we do need to trust people, and we do need to see that experts are experts for a reason.

   10. APAlex Partridge28:19

       Dr. Alex, on behalf of everyone grappling-

   11. SPSpeaker28:21

       Thank you

   12. APAlex Partridge28:21

       ... to understand their brains, thank you so much.

   13. SPSpeaker28:23

       Thank you so much. It's been great to be here again. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 28:29