Speaker 1: And so I was thinking about what Tony Morrison said,
Speaker 1: if there's a book that you want to read and
Speaker 1: it hasn't been written, you must write it. So there's
Speaker 1: so many different layers of this like it. I wanted
Speaker 1: to bring this what I do in the clinical work,
Speaker 1: what I've done in my own life. And also it's
Speaker 1: sort of amash to my mom to say, look, there's
Speaker 1: so much more within this, and that's what I mean.
Speaker 1: OCD certainly can be a very challenging, torturous, disabling condition,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, I don't want people to
Speaker 1: lose the gold. There's a lot of dirt, but it's
Speaker 1: pay dirt.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of gold in OCD.
Speaker 3: It's a great pleasure to have clinical psychologists, Michael, I'll
Speaker 3: see on the show. In this episode, we have a
Speaker 3: refreshing humanistic discussion about obsessive compulsive disorder. Michael is critical
Speaker 3: of the standard medical model of OCD and points out
Speaker 3: the upsides of OCD. He argues that people with OCD
Speaker 3: has a unique temperament, which includes heightened existential sensitivity and
Speaker 3: a richer imagination. While people with OCD certainly have their
Speaker 3: struggles and tend to be obsessed, about causing harm or
Speaker 3: receiving harm. Michael also points us to all the ways
Speaker 3: that OCD have historically been channeled into some of the
Speaker 3: greatest works of art and literature, and how everyone with
Speaker 3: OCD can have a healthier relationship with their OCD. So,
Speaker 3: without further ado, I'll bring you Michael. I'll see Michael.
Speaker 3: I'll say how are you.
Speaker 1: Oh, so good to see you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to meet in person finally, Yeah, I've been really
Speaker 3: looking forward to this conversation too. Yeah to Jews with OCD,
Speaker 3: sitting with a candle between us, it's.
Speaker 1: The perfect environment. It's perfect too humanists to really have
Speaker 1: a conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, let's change that identity. Yeah, to humanist humanists.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Well what does it mean to be humanist? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think is funny thing.
Speaker 1: The humanist thing is so interesting because creativity is the
Speaker 1: centrality I think of being human and being able to
Speaker 1: be with the contradiction and complexity and nuance, the messiness
Speaker 1: of it, but also the transcendence of it. Right, they
Speaker 1: kind of go together, right, which I think is the
Speaker 1: brilliant part. Like Leonard Cohen said, if you don't become
Speaker 1: the ocean, you'll be seasick.
Speaker 3: Every day, almost every Leonard Cohen quote, including that one.
Speaker 3: So you are a clinical psychologist and you specialize in
Speaker 3: existential humanistic approaches. Is that right?
Speaker 1: It's integrative. So for me, existential and humanistic and psychodynamic and.
Speaker 3: Wow, you sneak in a little psychodynamic, it's still in.
Speaker 1: It's still in wow, because it's all relational and anything
Speaker 1: that's human requires relationship, right, So you know that's the challenge,
Speaker 1: is being a fully embodied self and actualized self in
Speaker 1: relationship to others.
Speaker 3: Do you bring a new union?
Speaker 1: Oh? Completely?
Speaker 3: Analysis? Yeah, because because i'm your patient.
Speaker 1: Oh completely, Because young Young was so much more open
Speaker 1: to the beauty of creativity and nuance, which I think
Speaker 1: the humanists took back and I think they reclaimed it.
Speaker 2: Which was really important.
Speaker 3: The humanistic psychologists, Yeah, the humanistic psychologists, the existential psychologists.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: You know what's interesting, I actually make a distinction between
Speaker 3: like the humanistic psychologists and the humanism movement because I
Speaker 3: feel like they're different. Like humanists tend to be like
Speaker 3: the Stephen Pinker hyperrational, you know, it's all about logic,
Speaker 3: whereas I actually think the humanistic psychologists were more about
Speaker 3: being a whole human and it's they're just separate things.
Speaker 3: Neither is better than the other. But yeah, but I
Speaker 3: think I feel like the humanism movement is different than
Speaker 3: the humanistic psychology movement. Do you agree? I agree?
Speaker 1: I think actually, But if you look at the threat
Speaker 1: of humanism throughout history, like you see like the Shakespearean
Speaker 1: kind of thing, right, the Shakespeare is the suber humanist,
Speaker 1: and and you know, the Renaissance, Da Vinci and all
Speaker 1: of this stuff, I think that brings it in. And
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that's really exciting about where psychology is right now as
Speaker 1: a field is that we're embracing more of the feeling
Speaker 1: poetic side as well as the logical linear side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and to be a humanist is to embrace that. So
Speaker 1: I like to think of us as sophisticated emotion regulation
Speaker 1: machines and ideas sophisticated completely as a sophisticated sentence, right,
Speaker 1: and even you know, the funny thing is we pretend
Speaker 1: not to be sophisticated, or we pretend to be. I
Speaker 1: pretend to be sophisticated all the time, all the time,
Speaker 1: but we have both. And it reminds me of like
Speaker 1: Da Vinci's Vitruvian man. You know, remember like with a
Speaker 1: square in the circle. Oh yeah, So the square is
Speaker 1: the logic and the circle is elocean. It's the poetic
Speaker 1: and the linear, and for my money, like the humanistic
Speaker 1: is about embracing the contradictions and complexities of that.
Speaker 3: Well, on that backdrop, let's talk about OCDE. The topic
Speaker 3: of your book is called The Upside of OCD flip
Speaker 3: the script to Reclaim your Life. Now, a lot of
Speaker 3: people who've been diagnosed with OCD, I do think feel
Speaker 3: like they are at control in their lives. That was
Speaker 3: a really deliberate phrasing in your title, obviously, and it's
Speaker 3: a very unique book you wrote, And I just want
Speaker 3: to say upfront, I thought it was a really great book. Obviously,
Speaker 3: I invited you to be on my podcast, and it's
Speaker 3: a book that I think virtually everyone who has been
Speaker 3: diagnosed with OCD or that's part of their identity could
Speaker 3: really benefit from. To expand their identity, I would I
Speaker 3: would phrase it that way, you know, not replace, you know,
Speaker 3: but given more expansive view of who they are and
Speaker 3: what they're capable of. So, really, congratulations on this amazing book.
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you what is the clinical diagnostic
Speaker 3: criteria for OCD. Let's like start with the basics, and
Speaker 3: then I want to ask you why are you not
Speaker 3: so happy with how it's currently framed?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean obviously it's obsessions and compulsions. So
Speaker 1: the obsessions are these these tendency to be have intrusive thoughts, right,
Speaker 1: They're often centered about did I potentially harm somebody by mistake?
Speaker 2: Am I clean enough?
Speaker 1: Did I think something blasphemous or a moral Did I
Speaker 1: count enough? Did I order things enough? All these things
Speaker 1: that kind of you ruminate on in a way that
Speaker 1: you sort of can't stop even though you'd like to.
Speaker 1: And the compulsion part of it is the side, well,
Speaker 1: I want to do something to feel more in control
Speaker 1: and to soothe the anxiety around this nagging obsession. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to wash my hands, I'm going to cancel
Speaker 1: the thoughts with a mantra or a prayer. I'm going
Speaker 1: to try to do something that purges me this nagging feeling.
Speaker 1: And so sessions and compulsions go hand.
Speaker 3: In hand really well put you know, as a humanistic
Speaker 3: we're both humanistic psychologists. First of all, Yes, gosh, I
Speaker 3: thought that it was like, oh god, right right between
Speaker 3: that and we're flying close to the flame there. But
Speaker 3: we're both humanistic psychologists and and and what big part
Speaker 3: of the humanistic psychology movement was was not wanting to
Speaker 3: neglect the experience aspect of what it means to be human,
Speaker 3: because they were really counter sort of the Freudian and
Speaker 3: as well as the reductionism of Skinner BF Skinner. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so let's really discuss, you know, what it's like to
Speaker 3: have OCD and really really get into that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think you brought up a good point
Speaker 1: that you know, everywhere in psychology and the history of psychotherapy,
Speaker 1: we find something and then we feel like we're missing something.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, that's where it's really important
Speaker 1: to be, as Howard Gardner says, a synthesizing mind, right,
Speaker 1: somebody who kind of draws from things is So I
Speaker 1: was reading Matthew Saye. It is a British writer who's
Speaker 1: written a great book called Rebel Ideas, and he says
Speaker 1: there's something about incremental innovation, and then there's recombinant innovation,
Speaker 1: which is when you pull from different areas. So the
Speaker 1: thing that I'm not so pleased with where OCD is
Speaker 1: currently is that it's looked at like in this kind
Speaker 1: of linear literal way. Right, you have these obsessions, you
Speaker 1: have these compulsions, right, that's it. Yeah, But I actually
Speaker 1: see it from a completely different framework, which is sort
Speaker 1: of similar to how Susan Kine looks at introverts. That
Speaker 1: people with OCD have a unique temperament and sensibility of
Speaker 1: sensitivity in empathic sensitivity. There's research out of Germany that
Speaker 1: shows that people with OCD are more empathically tuned in Wow,
Speaker 1: then not only healthy controls but people with other garden
Speaker 1: writing anxieties.
Speaker 3: Is there a correlation between OCD diagnosis and scoring high
Speaker 3: on the Highly Sensitive Persons scale like the iron I.
Speaker 1: Bet money on that. Yeah, completely, And I think they're
Speaker 1: very I think they're sort.
Speaker 3: Of overlapping fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so the other part of the temperament, like
Speaker 1: we were joking about before we got on here, is
Speaker 1: that there's an existential sensitivity. So if you're empathic and
Speaker 1: you notice how people feel and what their experience is,
Speaker 1: if you're intuitively tuned into them, you also notice when
Speaker 1: they get hurt. You also notice when there's ruptures. This
Speaker 1: is what makes us good therapists. That's why actually there's
Speaker 1: a lot of therapists I think who do have OCD tendencies,
Speaker 1: because it actually makes us really good at noticing we
Speaker 1: have a six of empathy and intuition. The second piece
Speaker 1: the people with OCD that is lost in the medical
Speaker 1: model version is that people with OCD have a very
Speaker 1: imaginative mind, very fertile imagination. Right, they go into what
Speaker 1: if spirals thought spirals and rabbit holes. But if you
Speaker 1: actually look at the mind, it's not too different from
Speaker 1: the obsessional aspect of creativity. And it's no surprise that
Speaker 1: Charles Darwin struggled with OCD because if you think of
Speaker 1: the brilliance with which he looked at different angles of
Speaker 1: things and went down all sorts of different places, there's
Speaker 1: a connection.
Speaker 3: I didn't know Charles Darwin had OCD.
Speaker 1: He worried that his children would die, he was concerned
Speaker 1: about reassurance. There's a story of him in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night going to his friend's house to make
Speaker 1: sure he didn't offend him. He struggled with a lot
Speaker 1: of these things that we would consider classic OCD symptoms.
Speaker 3: That's so fascinating. So what's actually neurologically going on in
Speaker 3: people who have OHB, you know what's going on.
Speaker 1: I wish it was as up to date. I remember
Speaker 1: when I was in college, I did extra credit paper
Speaker 1: and I was looking at all the data neurologically, you know,
Speaker 1: they look at the caudate nucleus and they look at
Speaker 1: areas and try to see what kind of activity is
Speaker 1: going on in there. And I think still the jury
Speaker 1: is out on exactly, but I do think one of
Speaker 1: the things that's really fascinated about OCD is that it's
Speaker 1: very much nature and nurture. There's certainly a biological component
Speaker 1: to the fact of having a tendency to spiral, to ruminate,
Speaker 1: but also to be empathically tuned in. And I think
Speaker 1: that's where I think that what gets missing in current
Speaker 1: ideas about OCD is not looking at I call people
Speaker 1: with OCD they have extraordinarily generous heart. You know how
Speaker 1: in The Grinch, the Grinch had a heart tenth size
Speaker 1: is too small. Yeah, people with OCD have a heart
Speaker 1: ten size is too big. But then they almost don't
Speaker 1: keep track of them. Wow, they're much like Freud said
Speaker 1: at one point, the person with OCD is probably most
Speaker 1: of the most scrupulous member of society, though they treat
Speaker 1: themselves as if they are a mass murderer.
Speaker 3: Oh that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: So the lack of self compassion and self advocacy for
Speaker 1: a person with OCD is extraordinarily interesting. And so my
Speaker 1: take on it is, wait, how do we harness the
Speaker 1: beauty of that big heart but also turn it towards
Speaker 1: the self. There's a great poem by Derek Walcott, Love
Speaker 1: after Love, one of Obama's favorite poems. He says, the
Speaker 1: time will come with elation when you will greet yourself
Speaker 1: in your own mirror, sit, feast on your own life.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Right, give back the love who you've given to another.
Speaker 1: And I think people with OCD need to give back
Speaker 1: that love. And so my mission, if it should be so,
Speaker 1: is to change the dialogue and conversation about what OCD is,
Speaker 1: what it could be, how we can understand it, how
Speaker 1: we could treat it. And I was thinking, you remember
Speaker 1: the old Solomon ash experiment and asked for those who
Speaker 1: don't remember, he was at Swarthmore College and he did
Speaker 1: this famous social psychology experiment where he's like trying to
Speaker 1: figure out it was supposedly a vision test, which is
Speaker 1: the correct line that corresponds to this one. And of
Speaker 1: course he had all these confederates, I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: hell no, yeah, I'd be like what. But of course,
Speaker 1: in maybe, like I think two thirds to seventy five
Speaker 1: percent of the people conformed to the dominant view, which
Speaker 1: they knew was wrong.
Speaker 3: And those people ended up being less creative.
Speaker 1: Is that completely? But he did another condition, as you recall,
Speaker 1: where he had one dissenter. Oh, that one dissenter took
Speaker 1: the conformity down eighty percent. I'm that guy. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: So that's what I want to do for CD is
Speaker 1: to dissent, to say, wait, there's more. I know the
Speaker 1: consensus right now is that this is what OCD is
Speaker 1: or could be. But there's more, And I think that's
Speaker 1: actually really hopeful.
Speaker 3: Yes, And your book it's very clear that you're trying
Speaker 3: to restore the humanity to OCD and say but and
Speaker 3: because your book is all about both, and that's your
Speaker 3: whole book is about both. End. I will say that
Speaker 3: for those who are in the grips of O. C. D.
Speaker 3: All this is very cold comfort, you know, so like
Speaker 3: for me, it's it takes the form of uh. One
Speaker 3: of the biggest forms it takes is like checking. So
Speaker 3: if I'm in the airport, I have to keep and
Speaker 3: whenever I'm in a nervous state, like I'm about to
Speaker 3: board an airplane, and I have to keep making sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, even though yes, yeah, and I ended up,
Speaker 1: I get to the point where I just I actually,
Speaker 1: like take a picture of like my apartment before I leave,
Speaker 1: so that when I worry later, did I picture of
Speaker 1: the parking spot to make sure that it was legal?
Speaker 1: Even though it's probably so.
Speaker 3: This is normal, normal, normal, not normal welcome to the club.
Speaker 3: So when my point is, like, you know, experientially, when
Speaker 3: I'm in the grips of that, you know you could
Speaker 3: come up to and be like, hey Scott, but you
Speaker 3: have great existential sense too, I like, go fuck off.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm trying to get over this moment I'm
Speaker 3: having right now totally. So what is your advice? You know,
Speaker 3: when you have clients who come sit down and are really,
Speaker 3: we're suffering so much, how can they hold both of
Speaker 3: these things? Because don't get me wrong, I'm not saying
Speaker 3: go fuck off in general, right because I think your
Speaker 3: message is amazing. I'll be very clear.
Speaker 2: No, that was in New Jersey.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Speaker 1: I get that you know it's all.
Speaker 3: Good, but you know what I'm saying, not in general,
Speaker 3: like your message is wonderful and it needs to be said.
Speaker 1: No, but you bring up a really good point which
Speaker 1: I think is really important. And the title is a
Speaker 1: little deceiving, which is it's actually as much about the
Speaker 1: downsize as it is about the upside. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: book isn't meant to glorify or glamorize these other wonderful
Speaker 1: facets behind OCD. I actually think these facets exist before
Speaker 1: OCD hits the scene. I think OCD comes about by
Speaker 1: lack of mentorship with how.
Speaker 2: To work with this.
Speaker 1: Oh right, So if you were like I'm going to
Speaker 1: steal from Elizabeth Gilbert, the writer, she talks about being
Speaker 1: a creative person is like being a border collie, and
Speaker 1: if a border collie doesn't have an good.
Speaker 2: Activity, they'll tear the place apart.
Speaker 1: No, personally, those cd A is a border calling in
Speaker 1: terms of how active their heart is and how active
Speaker 1: their mind is. If they don't understand that they had
Speaker 1: to train that, they're going to tear themselves apart.
Speaker 2: Right, But what you said too.
Speaker 1: About what hey, this isn't this is cold comfort when I'm.
Speaker 2: In the middle of a spiral.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'll share with you a funny example of
Speaker 1: when I got into a spiral. So during COVID, about
Speaker 1: six to eight weeks in, I started to get haunted
Speaker 1: by an obsession. So maybe I had a cavity and
Speaker 1: maybe I was going to need a filling or a
Speaker 1: crown or root canal. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I started to obsess what if I go to the
Speaker 1: dentist and I get COVID and I give it to
Speaker 1: my family and they all die. Or what if I
Speaker 1: stay home and don't get this taken care of and
Speaker 1: then I'm in slow agony?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And then what if because I have this cavity and
Speaker 1: it's not treated, I get something and then ironically I
Speaker 1: don't even die from COVID, I die from something else. Right,
Speaker 1: So having OCD is like that's the spiral, right, And
Speaker 1: it's a lot like a Law and Order episode, you.
Speaker 3: Know how degree toree, you know.
Speaker 1: And you go to the degree and then like a
Speaker 1: Lawn Order episode, you know how, like you always think
Speaker 1: the guy, that first guy in the first fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: that's that's the guy, that's the guy, so I thought,
Speaker 1: it's never that guy.
Speaker 2: It's never that guy, so I thought it was a
Speaker 2: two years girl.
Speaker 1: It's it's also like the person who doesn't look like yeah,
Speaker 1: the jerk.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So as I'm going down with this, I say to myself, Mike, Mike,
Speaker 1: you're spiraling. Yeah, and you know you're spiraling. But I
Speaker 1: was like, wait a minute. So you know how they
Speaker 1: do exposure exercises. The typical thing would be all right,
Speaker 1: just embrace the uncertainty that the shitty thing is happening
Speaker 1: and you're not going to give it too much credence, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I said, wait a minute, let me like check
Speaker 1: in with my feelings, like what else are you feeling? Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that you're not focusing on because OCD is really interesting.
Speaker 1: It tries to distract us while it's also trying to
Speaker 1: focus us.
Speaker 2: So then I said, wait, Mike, it's two.
Speaker 1: Months into COVID.
Speaker 3: Great point.
Speaker 1: This is creeping there, this is scaring me, this is
Speaker 1: terrifying me. And watching my son pretend to be at
Speaker 1: the places that he would be out in the world,
Speaker 1: rolled down to the basement was making me sad. So
Speaker 1: it's feeling sad. I was feeling scared. I was feeling
Speaker 1: like I should be tough, but I'm not feeling tough.
Speaker 1: And as soon as I let that motion come out.
Speaker 2: The too side bar.
Speaker 1: And bothering me, the obsession started to vanish. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: because again I found the real purp. The real PURP
Speaker 1: was understanding wait and again it's an existential concern. Notice,
Speaker 1: I was worried about death, I was worried about loss,
Speaker 1: I was worried about all these things. And of course
Speaker 1: what is it. The side show is it's a toothache,
Speaker 1: But it really it was a toothache signaling something but
Speaker 1: also concealing. It's everything that Freud said about a compromise formation.
Speaker 1: It both expresses and conceals. It's very, very sophisticated. And
Speaker 1: the reason I say that is because most ERP exposure
Speaker 1: response prevention, right, which is the main gold Standards Golding CD,
Speaker 1: which is to basically not seek re assurance, to allow
Speaker 1: whatever like, so allow the thought that you have a
Speaker 1: tooth and you might and you might not get it
Speaker 1: fixed or you know whatever, and try not to look
Speaker 1: for reassurance and all that stuff. But instead, I also
Speaker 1: think there's a way of actually being an exposure to
Speaker 1: the feelings of them more human and the context what
Speaker 1: was the con So people with who in the EUERP world,
Speaker 1: you know what, they say, the content doesn't matter because
Speaker 1: it's just going to morph to anything else. But I think, actually,
Speaker 1: I'll grant you. Maybe the content doesn't matter, the context does.
Speaker 1: And that's where I think it actually brings it back
Speaker 1: to humanism. That So, there's an interesting meme in the
Speaker 1: OCD recovery world which some people find very comforting. I
Speaker 1: find it actually surprisingly strange.
Speaker 2: But I'll explain why.
Speaker 1: They say OCD is like sound and fury signifying nothing.
Speaker 1: You know that quote from Macbeth, Yeah, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: to say, all this stuff is not really real. Don't
Speaker 1: let it get to you, it's just bullshit.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now that's comfort in some ways, right, yeah, but what
Speaker 1: if there's some healthy meaning this. So the meaning that
Speaker 1: was trying to be a messenger to me was trying
Speaker 1: to say, Mike, you're scared and you have a hard
Speaker 1: time being with that. Right, Wow, COVID is you're feeling
Speaker 1: this existential concern and you're sensitive to that, so you're
Speaker 1: going to feel it, right, How does that.
Speaker 3: Apply to checking what's the upside of being in an
Speaker 3: airport store and not willing to leave the store and
Speaker 3: board the airplane because you think, did I leave something
Speaker 3: in the store.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well think about this. It's also again free therapy
Speaker 1: for Scott right here.
Speaker 2: Right, It's also because if.
Speaker 1: You think of it, it's a place where I don't feel
Speaker 1: in control. That's the root is I don't feel in control.
Speaker 1: And you know what the other thing is people with
Speaker 1: OCD actually, and just people in general, wherewhere of change,
Speaker 1: change is happening all the time, and when you're sensitive
Speaker 1: to how easy change can happen. So I think actually
Speaker 1: people with OCD are using rituals to hold on to
Speaker 1: some stability when they're recognize that everything is changing, but
Speaker 1: nailed it. And that's why when you say you're right,
Speaker 1: this is weird. I don't know. There's a little bit
Speaker 1: of shifting here. I don't like. That's what can I
Speaker 1: hold on to? That's right, right again, that's the existential thing.
Speaker 1: What can I hold on to? Right? It's like facing death.
Speaker 1: I can't hold on life this year, but I know
Speaker 1: that it's going to be taken away totally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what do I do? So?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there you go.
Speaker 1: Then you remind yourself like, and then you come to
Speaker 1: your feelings because remember OCD likes to take us into
Speaker 1: our worried mind and we get this embodied Oh wait,
Speaker 1: am I feeling like I'm afraid I'm going to forget something?
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm in the middle of this transit
Speaker 1: and I feel like, great, what am I feeling? Am
Speaker 1: I feeling stressed from how much I've had to wait
Speaker 1: for this plane to get all this stuff?
Speaker 3: So it's so good, you know, because when I'm in
Speaker 3: a relaxed state, I would care less about what I
Speaker 3: left at an airport tru completely And that's where stinking
Speaker 3: or state because I you know, I've had to spend
Speaker 3: many years overcome my fear of flying, and I've overcome it,
Speaker 3: but there's still residual sort of nerves right before I bord.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's the context.
Speaker 1: See, that's where I think meaning is important.
Speaker 2: Get it, I get it.
Speaker 3: Cont That's why the textasue like, you'll grant them that
Speaker 3: content doesn't matter, but you're not going to grant them
Speaker 3: that context doesn't.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is content does and doesn't matter. Right,
Speaker 1: It really wasn't my toothache that was the issue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it really was pointing to something that was an issue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes the cigar is not not it's just exactly
Speaker 3: we're redoing that quote.
Speaker 2: We're doing that.
Speaker 1: You know. It's funny too, Scott. It's interesting because I
Speaker 1: think one of the reasons why there is such an
Speaker 1: interest and movement towards the behavioral is because I think
Speaker 1: there was sort of you know, in the early days
Speaker 1: of OCD treatment, it could be analytic and very cerebral,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it wasn't focusing enough on that really concrete
Speaker 1: stuff and how this was affecting. And I also think
Speaker 1: there was a sort of trauma response in the field
Speaker 1: to how that hurt people and made them feel like
Speaker 1: they weren't getting what they want. But appere's to quote
Speaker 1: Drew Weston, it's we're at that was a different vintage
Speaker 1: of psychoanalysis. That's like nineteen twelve. Yeah, twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: is a much more relational, interpersonal, also intra psychic, but
Speaker 1: in a really kind of nuanced way.
Speaker 2: And I really would love.
Speaker 1: CBT people to see that actually talking about affect talking
Speaker 1: about meaning.
Speaker 2: Is exposure too.
Speaker 1: There's we're you know, it's I really think it's important
Speaker 1: for us to be multilingual as therapist.
Speaker 3: What do you think of the ACT approach?
Speaker 1: I think the actor approach is lovely, you know, I
Speaker 1: think I think you know again, like I said with
Speaker 1: that Leonard Cohen quote, if you know, if you if
Speaker 1: you can't become the ocean, you'll be sea sick. Right,
Speaker 1: It's wonderful to embrace stuff. So the only thing that
Speaker 1: I think is missing. I think ACT is like Buddhism. Right,
Speaker 1: it's great for you to be zen about accepting things
Speaker 1: and not being too attached. But I think what we
Speaker 1: need with that is also the meaning says But what
Speaker 1: am I making of this? Because remember we're meaning creatures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we need to make stories. Yeah, we need to have coherence.
Speaker 1: And that's the other thing is I don't think of
Speaker 1: OCD as just this alien thing that is like a
Speaker 1: sickness that descends upon you. I also think of it
Speaker 1: as trying to tell you stuff about what you're experiencing
Speaker 1: yourself and your world, which is about making meaning.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I made meaning when I was like, wait, this isn't.
Speaker 2: About the toothache.
Speaker 1: This is about these deep feelings, these deep thoughts that
Speaker 1: I'm having. So I really don't see I don't see
Speaker 1: it contradictory to have it be both meaningless and meaningful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fair enough. You talked a little bit about the
Speaker 3: traditional approach ERP. Yeah, and you have a response a
Speaker 3: quote I have here respond to that later in your book,
Speaker 3: but I highlighted it and I love it. I just
Speaker 3: want to double click on this quote of yours quote.
Speaker 3: Does the treatment out there really appreciate, understand and explain
Speaker 3: the overly generous and empathic heart of those with those
Speaker 3: Does it see the creative possibility and power within the
Speaker 3: expanse of mind and creative prowess of the OCD suffer?
Speaker 3: Does it pay heed to the inner story and potential
Speaker 3: trauma that can originate or exacerbates OCD. That is a
Speaker 3: beautiful poetic quote. It like you're a poet yourself, you know,
Speaker 3: Like that was really poetic.
Speaker 2: I didn't even realize I wrote that, So that's really okay.
Speaker 3: Wow, that encapsulates a lot of the upsides of OCD
Speaker 3: right there. Well, a lot of writers must have had OCD.
Speaker 1: John Green is a really phenomenal example. You know, he
Speaker 1: wrote a novel called Turtles All the Way Down, which
Speaker 1: is a protagonist as a young girl with OCD. But
Speaker 1: any of his other books. The thing that I always
Speaker 1: think is interesting about John Green is he he talks
Speaker 1: about I'm good. I'm good now because my OCD is
Speaker 1: treated with medication or with you know, CBT, and I'm
Speaker 1: like John, John, Buddy, buddy.
Speaker 2: Wait.
Speaker 1: The nuance in sophistication and sensitivity of your work is
Speaker 1: because of all this. I haven't John. If you're watching John,
Speaker 1: I think your writing is brilliant. And also the other
Speaker 1: thing about Green's writing is.
Speaker 3: They just broke the third wall.
Speaker 1: I wrote, oh my god.
Speaker 3: Sorry.
Speaker 1: So the thing is, you know, uh, if you look
Speaker 1: at John Green's books, so much about his existential issues.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Faulton Our Stars is about two characters who have cancer
Speaker 1: who are dealing with looking death in the eye. Right,
Speaker 1: so there, And you know, if you look at like,
Speaker 1: there's so many creative people and scientific people like I said,
Speaker 1: Charles Starw and Nicola Tesla had this funny counting obsessions.
Speaker 1: He needed to do things in threes, and if he
Speaker 1: didn't go around the block three times, he'd have to
Speaker 1: continue it. He needed to live in an apartment that
Speaker 1: was a multiple of three.
Speaker 2: Right, you know, we have you.
Speaker 1: Know, the musician and producer Jack Antonoff talks openly about
Speaker 1: his OCD and but also he doesn't see it as
Speaker 1: just a detrimental thing. Camila Cabello talks about she was
Speaker 1: on an Armchair Expert with Dacupard and she said, listen,
Speaker 1: I don't even call it OCD with my therapist. We
Speaker 1: call it my obsessionality, right, And she had all sorts
Speaker 1: of classic like she thought when she was young that
Speaker 1: because she didn't ever period for the year, that she
Speaker 1: was the virgin Mary, and and you know, like she
Speaker 1: had all of the things that you'd expect in classic OCD.
Speaker 2: But she also I think sees this.
Speaker 1: Hidden upside that we're talking about, and that's what I
Speaker 1: think is really extraordinary, and that imaginative mind, that nuanced intuitive,
Speaker 1: emotional sixth sense, like just like what Susan Kane did
Speaker 1: for introverts, and saying, we we just don't know how
Speaker 1: to approach people with this and to support them best,
Speaker 1: and there's so much strength and we can also work
Speaker 1: on the difficulties right at the same time.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's fascinating. This is news to me that
Speaker 3: OCD is correlated with the virgin thinking ability. And I
Speaker 3: actually haven't seen studies on that. I've seen studies linking
Speaker 3: ad D with creative thinking, but OCD, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some studies OCD. There's some studies about OCD
Speaker 1: and creativity.
Speaker 3: You send them to me, Yeah, because I think that
Speaker 3: that's a missing part of the creativity literature.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna do a plug for you moment.
Speaker 1: Like when I was reading about your your background, I
Speaker 1: was talking to you before about the dual theory of intelligence.
Speaker 3: Like the only one who knows about it, I'm.
Speaker 1: The only Yeah, it's it's what's so cool about it
Speaker 1: is because the dual theory, the part that you're focusing on,
Speaker 1: is exactly the part that I think is missing in
Speaker 1: OCD treatment, which is the metaphorical the intuitive. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: so right now, treatment is like literal, which is one
Speaker 1: I we need the metaphorical to get real depth perception.
Speaker 3: Well, I really appreciate you appreciating that My dual was
Speaker 3: called it was called the dual process Theory of Human Intelligence.
Speaker 3: A big part of my dissertation was arguing that the
Speaker 3: field has really ignored the cognitive processeds that contribute to
Speaker 3: artistic creativity. So that was a big impetus of my
Speaker 3: dissertation because they's focused so much on IQ and at
Speaker 3: conscious logical reasoning that correlated the creative achievement. But researchers
Speaker 3: were starting to act as though, like, to the extent
Speaker 3: to which it deviates from its correlation with the creative
Speaker 3: achievement is the extent to which it's will or and intelligence.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, hell, hell no, yeah, I
Speaker 1: got to get in on this.
Speaker 3: You all are missing missing at least fifty percent of
Speaker 3: human cognition or the benefits of It's huge. Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for it's huge.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I think Antonio Dimasio has done a
Speaker 1: brilliant job of really showcasing that. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of looking at the contributions of this stuff,
Speaker 1: it's super important.
Speaker 2: Actually, you know what I think is.
Speaker 1: A cultural piece that's really interesting. So I think actually
Speaker 1: part of our movement towards this is the way things
Speaker 1: have shifted in their landscape. Right If you think about technology,
Speaker 1: it's allowed a lot more introverts to get into the mix.
Speaker 1: You've gotten a lot more imaginative stuff going on. There's
Speaker 1: more if you think about it. In the old computer
Speaker 1: days or an old post industrial revolution, left brain linear
Speaker 1: thinking was priority ties and I think now you're seeing
Speaker 1: just like Daniel Pink says, right, the right brain stuff
Speaker 1: is really important now because we've also moved computers to
Speaker 1: do all that left brain stuff better than us. So
Speaker 1: I think actually one of the reasons why this is
Speaker 1: super important is because I think the field is still
Speaker 1: staying with the cultural thing of the left brain because.
Speaker 3: They're all nerds. I mean, the people who are in
Speaker 3: the the research themselves aren't artists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think you need both.
Speaker 1: And so so you know how they talk about an
Speaker 1: OCD treatment embracing uncertainty, Yeah, right, right, which is a
Speaker 1: lovely is a wonderful concept. So John Keats, the poet
Speaker 1: romantic poet, had this lovely concept called negative capability. Negative
Speaker 1: capability is basically allowing yourself not to let reason just
Speaker 1: take you where you go, but to allow the openness
Speaker 1: to ambiguity and mystery.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Love that. That's so Susan Kane, That's so Kinge right
Speaker 3: when she loved that her book Bittersweet. Yeah, totally, No,
Speaker 3: I mean it's so me too. I I love it.
Speaker 3: I absolutely love it, you say. My paradoxical take on
Speaker 3: OCD is captured beautifully by Carl Young. Quote it seems
Speaker 3: that all true things must change, and only that which
Speaker 3: changes remains true.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that blew my mind.
Speaker 3: You said this is the embodiment and essence of Ocd's upside.
Speaker 2: Can you that's completely it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I thought that one audience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I stole that from Brad Stolberg, who wrote
Speaker 1: a beautiful book.
Speaker 3: Called Master, a friend of mine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's wonderful. And the reason I said is because actually,
Speaker 1: what you even write about it's it's a kind of
Speaker 1: kind of connection here is what you know? Change is
Speaker 1: the central thing. So I don't know if I stole
Speaker 1: this from somewhere, So just if I stole this from you,
Speaker 1: I apologize. But my definition of creativity, or my stolen
Speaker 1: one is it's the art of creativity is the art
Speaker 1: of changing while staying the same. That's what psychological creativity is,
Speaker 1: right right. And Tony Robbins once said in a talk
Speaker 1: that I heard humanists love two things. They love stability
Speaker 1: and they love change. Yes, so, but to be a
Speaker 1: creative person not just in the arts or in the sciences,
Speaker 1: but psychologically, And that's what we do as therapists. We
Speaker 1: allow people to experiment with changing while still saying, well,
Speaker 1: you're still the same, right, And so the paradox of
Speaker 1: being able to work with that in fluid and interesting
Speaker 1: ways is the thing. And for people with OCD, they're
Speaker 1: super aware of change, and that's why they need to
Speaker 1: keep things controlled, because they're aware of the essence of
Speaker 1: how you can never step in the same river twice.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But the beautiful thing and that's what I meant about
Speaker 1: the Leonard Cohen quote. But if you can be like
Speaker 1: that ocean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, that's your golden you know you're trying to
Speaker 3: about selling like bruce Leaf or second right, Yeah, the
Speaker 3: wild Yeah, but there's a lot of commentant you know.
Speaker 3: Oh see these interesting one out of all of them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you view it as a constellation of stars, OCD
Speaker 3: seems to pair nicely. It's like the one that pairs
Speaker 3: nicely with everything else, all the other disorders you tend
Speaker 3: to see. Autism has a lot of co morbidity, you see,
Speaker 3: schizophrenia has the co morbidities. It's like OCD tags onto everything.
Speaker 3: I don't know what to make of that, but it's
Speaker 3: something I noticed in the psychiatric literature. It's like OCD
Speaker 3: is really a really high comorbid one with lots of
Speaker 3: other things, you know, because maybe part of it, and
Speaker 3: I'd love to hear your thought is, you know the
Speaker 3: thread there is well, high anxiety runs through everything, high
Speaker 3: neuronym and the need for control, right, which is the
Speaker 3: personal I treate Neuroticism has been found to be the
Speaker 3: thread personality trait that runs through every semblemental disorder. You know,
Speaker 3: the person who has like a zero neuroticism score tends
Speaker 3: to be emotionally they're boring.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, do you want bee friends with
Speaker 1: that person? I don't know whether they're saying gradually I'm.
Speaker 4: Sorry, zero or one hundred percent emotional stability. You know,
Speaker 4: they're they're always practical, they make the right choices, they
Speaker 4: never worry, They have no conscience, they have no guilt anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's just as interesting that you know, you
Speaker 3: can OCD shows up in lots of different packages, a
Speaker 3: lot of different NERD in the whole nerd diversity world. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can have different profiles. If you if you met
Speaker 3: one person with OCD, you've met one person of OCD, right,
Speaker 3: just like I you've met one personalitism, you met one personaltism.
Speaker 3: Because you know you can have you know, all sorts
Speaker 3: of ways that it combines and mixes together and yeah, anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think another thing that people forget about
Speaker 1: OCD is that it actually kind of showcases the quintessential
Speaker 1: dilemma of being human.
Speaker 3: Oh great, great.
Speaker 1: Poetic So to think about it, like the real quote
Speaker 1: for OCD is not life is you know, full of
Speaker 1: sound and fury signifying nothing. It's to be or not
Speaker 1: to be. The question that a person with OCD is
Speaker 1: always asking is what's it like to be? And to
Speaker 1: realize that we're not going to be? So if I
Speaker 1: like to think of people with OCD as existentials from
Speaker 1: the start who never read Kirkgarter startra and didn't have
Speaker 1: the lexicon and the support with understanding how to hold
Speaker 1: and carry that fire of those feelings, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that's why actually when we forget this, But when
Speaker 1: Freud was studying, he studied like the ratman was his
Speaker 1: quicst intential OCD cases. That's where he develops this this
Speaker 1: conflict between this moral side of us, the super ego,
Speaker 1: and the ID which is the aggressive side.
Speaker 2: Because people with OCD are.
Speaker 1: Really cagy around their wild side.
Speaker 3: Oh what do you mean? Tonal? Well being you're afraid
Speaker 3: of it going out of control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so what are they obsessed about? I'm really
Speaker 1: out of control right right, I'm going to kill somebody.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do something obscene. I'm going to do
Speaker 1: something horrific. I am something horrific. That's so interesting, right,
Speaker 1: And Freud was onto that very early. And the point
Speaker 1: of that, I think that's really crucial here is that
Speaker 1: it's not easy being human to reconcile these full throated
Speaker 1: feelings sometimes, of which the other reason that people of
Speaker 1: those are so concerned is because they're worried about being harmful.
Speaker 3: They're so worried about harm.
Speaker 1: Because because feelings, it's hard to take up space. It
Speaker 1: takes a little ai of a mentor who said to me,
Speaker 1: it takes a little aggression to have a self.
Speaker 3: Wow, you're blowing my mind. I need to process that
Speaker 3: last night because I was already processing what you said
Speaker 3: the sentence before, and then you're throwing one thing to
Speaker 3: process after another. You know it is It is so
Speaker 3: profound what you're talking about. My one of my favorite psychotherapist,
Speaker 3: Carl Rogers, a humanistic part of the original Humanist Psychologist group.
Speaker 3: He wrote in his book on becoming a person. He said,
Speaker 3: most of my patients, if not all, my patients, are
Speaker 3: constantly terrified that they're going to release the beast. Here's
Speaker 3: a whole section of his book on releasing the beast.
Speaker 3: I always think about that because there's something very human
Speaker 3: about that fear. So, yes, people with OCD might that
Speaker 3: might be that fear in steroids, but I think there
Speaker 3: And he says, in virtually all the cases, no one's
Speaker 3: released the beast. When they have started the integration process,
Speaker 3: they if anything, they become more socialized, they become more
Speaker 3: in control of themselves. And I'm going to yes and
Speaker 3: Carl Rodgers and also say, you know, the mentality of
Speaker 3: the kind of person that they're fearing, you know, is
Speaker 3: the opposite actually of a psychopath. Because if you've ever
Speaker 3: hung out with a psychopath many times, you know, and
Speaker 3: they're fun to party with, but they never ask themselves.
Speaker 3: They're never never asking themselves. They're not wrestling with the questions.
Speaker 2: Ever they nailed it.
Speaker 3: Ever, you know, when you hang out with psychopaths, you
Speaker 3: never hear a psychopath say, oh my gosh, what if
Speaker 3: I release the beast? They're like, how can I give
Speaker 3: me the context? So I can release the beast. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know what I'm saying, that's right.
Speaker 1: And there's two other things I was thinking about that. Right,
Speaker 1: So you said something about the psychopath versus the person
Speaker 1: of OCD.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So the other thing is you're right about this wild side. Right,
Speaker 1: So people with OCD fear this wild side, fear it.
Speaker 1: But I like to think of where the wild things are.
Speaker 1: Remember that story about little Max, like he actually is
Speaker 1: just getting to use his power. He's excited about Ooh,
Speaker 1: I'm powerful, I'm a wolf and I'm chasing after the
Speaker 1: dog with a fork. Because he doesn't really want to
Speaker 1: eat up the dog in terms of like literally doing.
Speaker 1: He wants to eat up the world, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: know how to carry that along with being moral, right, right,
Speaker 1: But that's why he needs to befriend the wild things
Speaker 1: to say no, no, that's good. You can integrate the
Speaker 1: wild things. But then his mom leads the know the
Speaker 1: bowl of soup to say, I still love you even
Speaker 1: though you have this propensity to use power. Right, that's
Speaker 1: healthy aggression and it's important.
Speaker 2: And again you're right.
Speaker 1: The worry is that it will be oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be the psychopath, right, if I have
Speaker 1: that No, it's hard to carry that. I call it
Speaker 1: like carrying a fire. It's hard to carry that fire.
Speaker 3: The whole release of the beast thing is interesting because
Speaker 3: another one of my favorite humanistic psychologists, Roald May, means
Speaker 3: I mean, I know we can talk the same language. Here.
Speaker 3: He has in one of his books, I forget which book,
Speaker 3: he talks about how he had this patient who was
Speaker 3: so terrified every time he walked past a window.
Speaker 2: He was he was.
Speaker 3: Scared, he was going to jump out the window. He
Speaker 3: had these intrusive thoughts. And he was walking with the
Speaker 3: patient one day and they passed a open window and
Speaker 3: and Roald May goes jump to jump, like what's stopping you?
Speaker 3: And in that moment he said that the guy's fear dissipated.
Speaker 1: You need you need freedom.
Speaker 3: Isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. And that's in exposure exercise right there.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It's funny. No people, nobody would say Roalde is a behaviorist.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And you know another Rogers that I love to think
Speaker 1: of is mister Rogers because you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that's brilliant about Rogers is he was he was
Speaker 1: an artist. He was a rebel. He took on consumer
Speaker 1: culture and said, okay, media, I'm going to use.
Speaker 2: You for humanistic purposes.
Speaker 1: And the thing with Rogers is that you think about
Speaker 1: think of the thing is talked about. He talked about divorce,
Speaker 1: he talked about assassinations, he talked about race relations.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he talked about his daughter. Made him be
Speaker 3: more interested in feminism towards.
Speaker 1: I mean, he talked about the most difficult things. But
Speaker 1: because he approached it in that way, right, and again,
Speaker 1: I think there's a way of being with the wild
Speaker 1: stuff while also being very thoughtful. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the thing, and that's what I want to bring back
Speaker 1: to the looking at the OCD treatment, is.
Speaker 2: That you could do both these things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I like that you're you're also breaking
Speaker 3: stereotypes because you know, just to circle back to the
Speaker 3: psychopath thing, there is a stereotype. I think that psychopaths
Speaker 3: are OCD right, like they like when depicted in there's
Speaker 3: that famous movie.
Speaker 1: I forget the what it is, but American psycho or
Speaker 1: American psycho.
Speaker 3: I think you maybe you know they all they always
Speaker 3: have to have everything in order, you know.
Speaker 1: They there's also a difference between the personality disorder obsessive
Speaker 1: compulsive personality disorder and OCD. So the person obsessive personality
Speaker 1: disorder has a very different sensibility. I do not think
Speaker 1: they have the deep empathy that the person of OCD has.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know there was a difference between the two. Yes,
Speaker 3: they're saying there's a clinical version on clinical version.
Speaker 1: So there's the personality obsessive compulsive personality. So that's the
Speaker 1: person who's very type A who thinks, you know what,
Speaker 1: if you don't do this my way and line it
Speaker 1: up or do this, you're wrong, right, And there's a
Speaker 1: self righteousness about it. You know, it's not uncommon for
Speaker 1: people with OCD to find people with OCD personality disorders
Speaker 1: because they compliment each other. Well, right, because those people
Speaker 1: of th o CD personality disorder are very short of themselves,
Speaker 1: almost too short of themselves. And and you're right that
Speaker 1: that psychopath has some dimensions of that because they're a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 2: Of a narcissism.
Speaker 3: They want to control everything, like this obsessive need to control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again in an ecosyntonic way, yes, correct, right,
Speaker 1: not something that I feel bad. I'm not wrestling with that.
Speaker 1: So the difference is the wrestling. So that's the that's
Speaker 1: actually the saving grace of the person with OCD that
Speaker 1: they wrestle.
Speaker 3: I didn't you just be in my mind because I
Speaker 3: didn't know that there's a in the clinical literature there's
Speaker 3: a real important difference between OCD and obscac disorder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, personality disorder yeap O CPD.
Speaker 3: I see.
Speaker 1: No, So the reason is because nobody thinks about the
Speaker 1: personality style of the person with OCD. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: actually a really interesting that it would be confusing because
Speaker 1: we just think about the clinical symptoms of OCD without
Speaker 1: looking at what's the character.
Speaker 3: What's the what the upsides that you're referring to. Are
Speaker 3: you saying that's more along the lines of the personality one?
Speaker 1: No, it's only for this is only for the disorder,
Speaker 1: for the disorder. So there's actually it's funny. In the
Speaker 1: series that book is published in, another author wrote about
Speaker 1: the personality disorder, which I haven't read, but sort.
Speaker 3: Of personality disorders where you see maybe more than narcissism.
Speaker 1: I see, And that's why the correlation. It's not surprising
Speaker 1: to have a psychopath who has a CPD tendencies.
Speaker 3: I totally get it now, right, there could be overlap, right,
Speaker 3: I totally get it now. I thought you were doing
Speaker 3: the reverse. So no, that makes that makes sense because yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean you see that almost by definition, extreme narcissism
Speaker 3: is OCD to a certain extent because everything can become
Speaker 3: obsessive need to control uh and have power over others.
Speaker 1: But you know what, Scott, you actually brought up a
Speaker 1: really good point that two good points. One that I
Speaker 1: think that we don't think about the personality of somebody
Speaker 1: with obsessive compulsive disorder because we think, oh, wait, it's
Speaker 1: just these things, as if it's just symptoms onto glom
Speaker 1: onto a person. But what if there's more about the
Speaker 1: personality and the style, just like when you look at
Speaker 1: like a psychoanalysis, like what is the character organization?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is it a borderline organization? Is it a schizoid organization?
Speaker 1: So I think there's actually more to mine there, right
Speaker 1: about the psychopath thing. So the difference with someone with OCD.
Speaker 1: One of my exercises for people with OCD is basically
Speaker 1: is how to.
Speaker 2: Be an asshole?
Speaker 1: Oh, not really be an asshole, because people with OCD
Speaker 1: are worried about being an asshole. But if you're really
Speaker 1: worried about being an asshole, you're not really an asshole,
Speaker 1: and you're certainly not a certifiable asshole. And the fact
Speaker 1: that you grapple with that so good. Right, So that's
Speaker 1: the difference. That's OCD, that's ego dystnic right. I don't
Speaker 1: really want to be this. And the funny thing is,
Speaker 1: you know how I said that people with OCD have
Speaker 1: a hard time being assertive and selfish, you know, when
Speaker 1: they can be when well, you have to wash your
Speaker 1: hands now, you see, and you have to do this
Speaker 1: because I'm stressing. It's not me that's doing it. It's
Speaker 1: my OCD. So I'm not blaming myself. So I think
Speaker 1: actually OCD is a way of regulating boundaries because the
Speaker 1: person with OCD is a hard time just holding their
Speaker 1: boundaries and they get blurred with others and so then
Speaker 1: they need the OCD to come in to help them.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So Robert Frost, you know I love poetry, said first
Speaker 1: you be a person, then I'll be a person, and
Speaker 1: then we'll be as interpersonal as we please.
Speaker 3: Wonderful.
Speaker 1: The person with OCD is so tuned into others they
Speaker 1: almost get to they lose sense of themselves, and then
Speaker 1: the OCD in a way comes in to say, okay,
Speaker 1: that's how it's a messenger.
Speaker 3: Wow, you've described my mom to a t.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether say I'm sorry congratulations on that money.
Speaker 3: Either, but that's but that's what it is. Yeah, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: now your mother, Yes, there is a little michugarnto.
Speaker 1: Right, she did, and my mom had contamination OCD. Also,
Speaker 1: when I was a child, like my mom, I worried
Speaker 1: that something was going to happen like terrible to my mom,
Speaker 1: like like third grade. It hit me like out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: and this worry that's something if I didn't do my
Speaker 1: prayers correctly in religious school, that something would happen. My
Speaker 1: mom had the same yier. So there's clearly a genetic link.
Speaker 1: But what I never understood because there was no language
Speaker 1: for it at the time within OCD research or anything.
Speaker 1: There was sensitivity. My mom was extraordinarily sensitive.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 1: She was a therapist as well. She was a literature
Speaker 1: buff because she was tuned into that stuff. But there
Speaker 1: was nothing out there. So when people say ask me
Speaker 1: like I forgot to tell you this, I didn't think
Speaker 1: I was going to write this book. I didn't think
Speaker 1: I was going to need to write this book. So
Speaker 1: I did my dissertation on something alike this, like fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, and my mentor was a big OCD
Speaker 1: researcher named Dean McKay, and he was cool enough to
Speaker 1: take a gamble on me looking at cognitive behavioral and
Speaker 1: psychoanalysis and attachment theory and bringing it all together. And
Speaker 1: I thought, cool, this was a cool project. Someone's going
Speaker 1: to put this together. I don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 1: Twenty years later, I'm like why, And so I was
Speaker 1: thinking about what Tony Morrison said, if if there's a
Speaker 1: book that you want to read and it hasn't been written, you.
Speaker 2: Must write it.
Speaker 1: So so there's there's so many different layers of this,
Speaker 1: Like it's I wanted to bring this this what I
Speaker 1: do in the clinical work, what I've done in my
Speaker 1: own life, and also sort of amach to my mom
Speaker 1: to say, look, there's so much more within this, and
Speaker 1: that's what I mean. OCD certainly can be a very challenging, torturous,
Speaker 1: disabling condition, but at the same time, I don't want
Speaker 1: people to lose the gold. There's a lot of there's
Speaker 1: a lot of dirt, but it's pay dirt.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of gold in OCD.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a real, really expansive view of it
Speaker 3: that's been neglected in the psychological Well, it's definitely psychiatric literature. Yeah, psychiatricalist,
Speaker 3: social psychiatrical literate. They don't like upsides of anything.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. I also, also, I've been pushing,
Speaker 1: I've been so I wrote this book also to be
Speaker 1: really sensitive to what I think are the wonderful contributions
Speaker 1: of CBT and Europe and A and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: And my point is not to say we get rid
Speaker 1: of that. I say is to blend it all together.
Speaker 1: But the other thing is that I want to say
Speaker 1: to clinicians out there and researchers out there, let's let's
Speaker 1: keep on looking at all these different angles of it.
Speaker 1: Because every I was looking while I was researching the book,
Speaker 1: it was like, what do they say out there in
Speaker 1: the book about the origins of OCD? And I thought
Speaker 1: they were going to say, like, yeah, it's biological or
Speaker 1: it's environmental. We really don't know how much isot. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you really don't know, but you're saying there's only a
Speaker 1: gold standard. We don't have a gold standard yet if
Speaker 1: we don't really know all the ins and outs.
Speaker 3: It's a great point. It's a great point you. I
Speaker 3: like in your book you talk about how OCD presents
Speaker 3: slights of hand that are possible in cover if you
Speaker 3: know how to spot them. Yeah. You call this performing
Speaker 3: upside magic. Tell me a little bit upside magic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean exactly what I did with that Law
Speaker 1: and Order episode of me right so so OCD. So.
Speaker 1: I once had this client who came into me. This
Speaker 1: was like when I was a grad student. I was
Speaker 1: like twenty five, and she was extremely like altruistic, kind,
Speaker 1: sweetest pie woman, and she said, Mike, I have this
Speaker 1: relentless obsession that I'm going to get brain damage. And
Speaker 1: at first I was like, you know, trying to do
Speaker 1: the ERP with her and thinking, well, it's okay. We
Speaker 1: can tolerate the uncertainty that you know, if something is wrong,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be okay. But then I was like, tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit more about the context. And as
Speaker 1: she was telling me, she told me that at work
Speaker 1: someone playfully hit her on her arm, and she wanted
Speaker 1: to say she didn't like it. Oh, she didn't and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden her OCD came in. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the distraction the sleight of hand is that it's make
Speaker 1: her think that she has brain damage when the real
Speaker 1: thing that it's really getting at is that she wants
Speaker 1: to say no, stop it having a voice right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so being able to decode that yeah, and to
Speaker 1: look at the nuance of what's happening is super important.
Speaker 1: And that's what I think. OCD is very magical in
Speaker 1: that way. It performs this sleight of hand to say,
Speaker 1: oh no, you say I did the trick, but you
Speaker 1: don't see where the slide. So I think our job
Speaker 1: is therapist is to help people see the sleight of hand. Wow,
Speaker 1: which is actually really fun.
Speaker 3: Isn't it. It's fun in that context. Yeah, it's also fun.
Speaker 3: And I'm gonna do some magic for you later.
Speaker 2: Perfect.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fun in a real magic context as well.
Speaker 3: Both of us are fans of Irving Yaum, who has
Speaker 3: been a guest on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've hung out with him at his home. At
Speaker 3: his home, you know.
Speaker 1: I once I once saw him at the Networker conference
Speaker 1: and I thanked him for showing all of a therapists
Speaker 1: how to be artists, And he said, I'm not an artist, Yes,
Speaker 1: I said, luckily. Sue Johnson said, I think the guy
Speaker 1: has point. And I sent him the book that I
Speaker 1: wrote about it, which is about how we're artists therapist
Speaker 1: and he's like, I hear you now, good And I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, good, you're right. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 3: As he suggests, existentialism is what allows us to be
Speaker 3: more alive and creative as human beings. Yeah, you say,
Speaker 3: having such a keen imagination and open heart makes those
Speaker 3: with OCD very susceptible to these existential concerns at nearly
Speaker 3: every turn. So would you argue that in his book,
Speaker 3: you know, existential Psychotherapy, which is the bible for people
Speaker 3: like us. Yeah, fools like that, big. Yeah, he has
Speaker 3: section the givens of human existence. Do you think people
Speaker 3: with OCD are more sensitive to each of those givens?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think they know about those givens. I think
Speaker 1: they're aware of them precociously, very early. And also adults
Speaker 1: don't expect them to understand them and don't necessarily talk
Speaker 1: both in a way that's age appropriate and also that's
Speaker 1: a way that takes the sophistication, So you know, I
Speaker 1: think so. I have a story in the book about
Speaker 1: my son. Once we were downstairs during the pandemic, and
Speaker 1: my eyes flashed upon my old piano bench, and I
Speaker 1: started to think about my mom, who passed away several
Speaker 1: many years back and didn't get to meet my son,
Speaker 1: and both the wistfulness of my mom prized my playing
Speaker 1: as a pianist. She encouraged it. And then I was thinking,
Speaker 1: how I missed my mom being able to meet my child,
Speaker 1: my son, and my son without missing a beat.
Speaker 2: He was about three, said, Danta, why are you sad?
Speaker 1: Now he could pick up with that emotional sensitivity, he
Speaker 1: could tune into it.
Speaker 3: Do you think he has OCD?
Speaker 1: Tennis, I think he has the sensitivity part of it,
Speaker 1: because he misses nothing. I mean, his preschool teacher said,
Speaker 1: Aiden is lovely, he's smart, he's cute, but nothing.
Speaker 2: He misses nothing.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to say, and he misses nothing?
Speaker 2: Right, good?
Speaker 1: And exactly what you're saying is that I do think
Speaker 1: that people with OCD are keenly aware of the existential givens.
Speaker 1: And that's what I think is the beauty is that.
Speaker 1: So I joke in the book that OCD is like
Speaker 1: playing six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to ask you.
Speaker 1: That, and Kevin Bacon is is the death. But if
Speaker 1: you can focus, if you can actually face death as
Speaker 1: Yallam talks about, then you're really living and making meaning
Speaker 1: out of life.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, how do you think Kevin Bacon would feel
Speaker 3: that you likened him to death at the court?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think he's been successful and still
Speaker 1: looks young enough to not not really get to bother
Speaker 1: by it. I consider an homage Kevin. I mean really,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 5: Okay, okay, because if you think about it, if I'm
Speaker 5: gonna get it, I'm gonna rationalize this one because if
Speaker 5: you think about it, when I'm talking about the Kevin Bacon, actually,
Speaker 5: when you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Death, you're actually really talking about life, right, So fear
Speaker 3: of death is really the fear of not being fully alive.
Speaker 1: It's completely that's it, And that's what so poetry, like
Speaker 1: I was once taught, is both about love and loss.
Speaker 1: It's about the line ending, but but what we do
Speaker 1: with the breaks, and it's about kind of being in
Speaker 1: that contradiction. So I really see Kevin Bacon. I really
Speaker 1: see it's about life by facing death, exactly what Yam
Speaker 1: would say, Like Joan doesn't write about existentialism being like
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, like I'm a morbid goth.
Speaker 3: He write a whole book on the importance of facing death.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, yeah, yeah, really beautiful.
Speaker 1: So Kevin Bacon is the son, Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3: I think that's a good rationalization for making Kevin Bacon
Speaker 3: feel good about himself. Yeah, because he's going to listen
Speaker 3: to this.
Speaker 1: He's also a great musician too, by the way, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't let's not flatter a Kevin Bacon too much. Yeah, true,
Speaker 3: he don't want his ego to get too out of control.
Speaker 3: Let's end this interview today with a point you made
Speaker 3: in your book at his essence. What you did in
Speaker 3: your book is you drilled down to the core of OCD,
Speaker 3: which you conceptualize as a profound and precocious existential awareness
Speaker 3: that sensitizes you not only to loss, but also to
Speaker 3: the fragile beauty of life itself. You also explored how
Speaker 3: being in touch with these questions in a creative way
Speaker 3: with proper support, could make it possible to make this
Speaker 3: experience of OCD creative and all inspiring rather than terrifying.
Speaker 3: So I just want to thank you so much for
Speaker 3: stripping some of that terrifying nature of it and expanding
Speaker 3: our views of OCD. You've helped me personally and reading
Speaker 3: this book. I want to send a copy of this
Speaker 3: book to my mom and to anyone I know who
Speaker 3: has OCD and really humanize this in a really important way.
Speaker 3: And this was also my first time ever coming out
Speaker 3: as having OCD, so I thought it was a be
Speaker 3: a good place to do that.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the club.
Speaker 2: It's a good club to be a part of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So thank you so much, Michael. I am really
Speaker 3: so deeply appreciative of you being here.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Scott. This has just been a pleasure.