Speaker 1: The following podcast contains very sensitive information regarding intrusive thoughts,
Speaker 1: sexual assault, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heeart radio podcast.
Speaker 1: This week's Thursday episode, We've got a Legra cast In's on.
Speaker 1: So she's a licensed marriage and family therapist. She has
Speaker 1: a master's degree in clinical psychology from Pepperdine. She is
Speaker 1: the founder of the Center of OCD, Anxiety and Eating Disorders.
Speaker 1: She sees clients out of her New York office as
Speaker 1: well as via teletherapy. So she specializes in the treatment
Speaker 1: of obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety disorders, body focused repetitive behaviors,
Speaker 1: and eating disorders. And she has a podcast called Books, Looks,
Speaker 1: and Lobotomies. And she's currently writing a memoir. So let's
Speaker 1: get her on.
Speaker 3: Hello, HOI you did, I'm good? How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm Jana. This is my husband Alan Leice
Speaker 1: to me to meet you too. Hello. Hello, So we're
Speaker 1: excited to have you on to chat all things. I
Speaker 1: kind of want to just take it back though to
Speaker 1: the very beginning. When did you well, when did you
Speaker 1: first realize that you were We're dealing with OCD.
Speaker 4: So I was nineteen years old, and well, actually nineteen
Speaker 4: was when I had my onset of symptoms that just
Speaker 4: debilitated me. So it was like, in point two seconds
Speaker 4: everything changed. It felt like a flip switched to my
Speaker 4: mind and I started having repetitive intrusive thoughts.
Speaker 3: All day long.
Speaker 4: But I didn't actually get diagnosed for another fifteen months,
Speaker 4: so I think I was twenty years old when that happened.
Speaker 1: What was the thing that was like happening that You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is this is OCD?
Speaker 4: So I was having and I don't know how much
Speaker 4: you know about OCD, but I was having repetitive, unwanted
Speaker 4: sexual thoughts about kids and animals and family members, and
Speaker 4: it was the last thing that I wanted to think about,
Speaker 4: but it just kept popping into my mind all day long.
Speaker 4: So at first I didn't associate that with OCD because
Speaker 4: I thought OCD was a disorder of cleanliness and organization.
Speaker 4: And when I finally googled after fifteen months, like why
Speaker 4: am I having these terrifying thoughts? OCD came up on
Speaker 4: the Internet and that kind of changed my whole life.
Speaker 1: I had no idea personally, I thought it was something
Speaker 1: where I heard the clean thing, but also it's like
Speaker 1: you touch the same spot every single day or is
Speaker 1: that part of OCD too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I always gauge things around professional sports,
Speaker 2: and you hear coaches say all the time when they
Speaker 2: misplace their cones and they have to walk back and
Speaker 2: replace them and then walk back and replate, like, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's just my OCD, But it's not. It's you don't
Speaker 2: have OCD, you have an attention for detail. There is
Speaker 2: a big, big difference. And I looked into it a
Speaker 2: little bit yesterday and it's amazing how it affects people's life.
Speaker 2: But at what point did it become dangerous for you
Speaker 2: in your life?
Speaker 4: So that's you know, it's a tough question because I
Speaker 4: was what we call high functioning. I was working in
Speaker 4: Los Angeles at the time as a publicist, and I
Speaker 4: think being very high functioning masked a lot of my suffering.
Speaker 4: But it got to a point where I was in
Speaker 4: trigger warning I'm going to talk about suicide, where I
Speaker 4: wanted to kill myself because I didn't want to live
Speaker 4: with these thoughts anymore. And I had been getting in
Speaker 4: a lot of car accidents because I couldn't focus, Like
Speaker 4: I just kept having the scariest thoughts replay over and
Speaker 4: over and over, and when I wanted to end my
Speaker 4: life because of this, that is when I really thought
Speaker 4: like I need to get some kind of help or
Speaker 4: I will be dead.
Speaker 2: I must be really tough. I mean, you know what
Speaker 2: it's like in period in life where you don't your
Speaker 2: decision making and trusting your own decision making is as vital.
Speaker 2: And for that to be, I mean, how much does
Speaker 2: it affect your decision making and your normal function on
Speaker 2: a daily basis, because your decision making is everything and life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, now I am at a place of recut, so
Speaker 4: I would say I don't meet diagnostic criteria for OCD.
Speaker 4: But when I was really sick, it took up every
Speaker 4: single second of my day, Like there was not a
Speaker 4: second that I wasn't having a scary thought or doing
Speaker 4: a mental compulsion like ruminating about why I was having
Speaker 4: these thoughts, And it became really hard to trust myself.
Speaker 3: Like I knew, I knew I.
Speaker 4: Was born to be a mom. That's just something that
Speaker 4: I've always known about myself. I've always loved kids. I
Speaker 4: worked with kids before the onset of my OCD, and
Speaker 4: so when this happened and out of the blue, I
Speaker 4: started having scary sexual thoughts about kids, it made me
Speaker 4: doubt myself and the kind of person that I was.
Speaker 4: And I think it's it's a scary experience for a
Speaker 4: lot of people with OCD because you know who you are,
Speaker 4: but you have these really odd thoughts in your brain
Speaker 4: that are trying to tell you that you're something that.
Speaker 3: You are not.
Speaker 4: So it really attacked my whole identity and at a
Speaker 4: time in my life where I think, nineteen twenty years old,
Speaker 4: you're already kind of trying to find yourself, and that
Speaker 4: really impaired a lot of different areas of my life.
Speaker 1: I have two kind of questions around it. At the first,
Speaker 1: So were you nervous to speak about the things that
Speaker 1: you were dealing with because I could sense some or
Speaker 1: I could imagine people hear that and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: stay away from my kids, or something like a thousand Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, I was terrified.
Speaker 4: I didn't even want to google it because I didn't
Speaker 4: want like, I didn't want to google why am I
Speaker 4: having these scary thoughts about kids? Because I didn't want
Speaker 4: the Internet to say you're a pedophile because I knew
Speaker 4: that I wasn't.
Speaker 3: I was not getting enjoyment out of these thoughts.
Speaker 4: OCD is very egodystonic, Like I knew that this wasn't me,
Speaker 4: and then I was really afraid to tell a doctor
Speaker 4: because I didn't want them to tell me you must
Speaker 4: be a pedophile, because I knew so deeply that I wasn't.
Speaker 4: And that's a fear a lot of people with OCD have,
Speaker 4: whether it's postpartum obsessions about one's baby harm obsessions, like
Speaker 4: they worry that they're going to go see a therapist
Speaker 4: who doesn't understand OCD and then says you're a killer,
Speaker 4: or you're going to drown your baby, or you're a pedophile,
Speaker 4: and that's actually the last thing that the person is.
Speaker 1: So now that you've gotten, you know through through the
Speaker 1: work of all this, like what was the do you
Speaker 1: know why it comes up? And then how was the
Speaker 1: like the healing to get through it?
Speaker 4: I really wish I had that answer, And I'm writing
Speaker 4: a memoir right now, and like that is the question
Speaker 4: that I probably won't ever have an answer to. We
Speaker 4: don't know what causes OCD right now. It's often people
Speaker 4: think it's a mix of genetics, biology, environment, So if
Speaker 4: you have trauma growing up, that might contribute to it.
Speaker 4: And I was anorexic at the time, so I think
Speaker 4: that me being anarexic struggling with an eating disorder and
Speaker 4: not eating enough probably contributed to my brain not functioning
Speaker 4: as well as it should have. But I don't think
Speaker 4: I'll ever know what caused this, and that is kind
Speaker 4: of scary if I think about it, because I guess
Speaker 4: I never know if I'm going to have that like
Speaker 4: relapse of symptoms again in that way.
Speaker 1: So how did you get through it?
Speaker 5: Then?
Speaker 1: What were the If someone else is listening to this,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh my gosh, same and I've been to
Speaker 1: or ified to admit it. So thank you, you know,
Speaker 1: for sharing for those that can, because you're going to
Speaker 1: be helping people obviously through sharing everything you share. So
Speaker 1: what was the first thing you did and how what
Speaker 1: were the steps following?
Speaker 4: So I saw a therapist who understood OCD, which was
Speaker 4: really helpful. And there's a specific evidence based treatment for OCD.
Speaker 4: It's not like general talk therapy that you might do.
Speaker 4: It's cognitive behavioral therapy with an emphasis on exposure and
Speaker 4: response prevention. So I started seeing a therapist who understood OCD,
Speaker 4: and then I also started taking medication, which I'm not
Speaker 4: saying that other people have to, but that was also
Speaker 4: a really big tool in my healing journey, like quieted
Speaker 4: the thoughts down, I didn't feel as anxious, and it
Speaker 4: enabled me to do the therapy work.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious what medicine.
Speaker 3: I'm on, Prozac, prozach okay, yes, yes.
Speaker 1: Just curious if I had anything, because I used to
Speaker 1: take lexapro. So I was just wondering, like which ones
Speaker 1: stimulate certain different SSRIs or whatever.
Speaker 3: It depends on the person.
Speaker 4: Which is another shitty Like I had to go through
Speaker 4: four medications and three different doctors to find a doctor
Speaker 4: and a med that actually worked for me, And that
Speaker 4: can be really scary for people who want that fix quickly,
Speaker 4: to feel like a guinea pig.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just it just amazes me because there's a
Speaker 2: perception of what an outside perception of what OCD is like,
Speaker 2: to give an example, like, and it's a poor perspective really,
Speaker 2: Like to give an example, I used to play soccer
Speaker 2: and there was a period where I was walking the
Speaker 2: team out and I was a captain, right and I was,
Speaker 2: I had so many superstitions, so been interesting to see
Speaker 2: what the links are between superstitions and OCD. Because there's
Speaker 2: one time we were just walking the team out. I
Speaker 2: was going in the field and like, my shoes are
Speaker 2: facing the wrong way in the locker room, and I
Speaker 2: left my teammates and walked back like eighty yards so
Speaker 2: that I could put my shoes back the right way,
Speaker 2: just so that I thought, because I thought that would
Speaker 2: ruin my performance. So it'd be amazing. I'd be amazed
Speaker 2: to see the links between what people think are superstitions
Speaker 2: and think are OCD when it's not. It's just a
Speaker 2: it's just a stupid superstition based on which is essentially
Speaker 2: what it is, based on what you think how it's
Speaker 2: going to affect your day and affect your performance. And
Speaker 2: when I read I didn't take a deep dive, but
Speaker 2: I read about OCD, and I'm like, wow, it's so
Speaker 2: far from what you think it is it really is
Speaker 2: and what and what the public perceivers is o c D.
Speaker 2: And it actually really amazed me, Like even like I
Speaker 2: seen I saw one of your posts yesterday. It was
Speaker 2: about you having intrusive thoughts on a plane yes, related
Speaker 2: to me because Janna is not a good flyer.
Speaker 1: I'm like, and I'm constantly thinking, is it Does that
Speaker 1: mean I'm OCD? Then? Because but I have like thoughts
Speaker 1: all the time. I'm like about the plane going down,
Speaker 1: and then what's going to happen? And then like am
Speaker 1: I gonna have to do this? And I have like
Speaker 1: thirty different steps of what I'm doing on the plane?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so my question what are those intrusives? So if
Speaker 2: you're in the exit role of a flight, yeah, what
Speaker 2: goes through your head and makes it so dangerous for you?
Speaker 4: So like now I can laugh about it because I'm
Speaker 4: in a place of recovery. And by the way, like
Speaker 4: anybody can have an intrusive thought, For the person with OCD,
Speaker 4: it's repetitive, it tends to stick, and the person is
Speaker 4: performing mental, mental, and or physical compulsions that take up
Speaker 4: an hour of their day. So if you have a
Speaker 4: random intrusive thought, that doesn't automatically mean that you have OCD.
Speaker 4: For me, I was able to just say, like, that's
Speaker 4: a ridiculous thought and get on with it. But ten
Speaker 4: years ago that would have consumed my entire flight, Like
Speaker 4: I probably would have wanted to get up and move
Speaker 4: to a different row, because I would have been so
Speaker 4: afraid that I could just snap and open up the
Speaker 4: door midflight.
Speaker 1: And then what so, okay, so you say that, and
Speaker 1: then what are the other actions that you say go
Speaker 1: along with it for the next hour.
Speaker 4: So mental compulsions are big, and a lot of people
Speaker 4: don't understand that. They think if someone has OCD, I'll
Speaker 4: see them redoing something or sanitizing. For me, all of
Speaker 4: my compulsions were mental. So they might sit there ruminating
Speaker 4: about whether or not they actually want to open the door.
Speaker 4: They might mentally review the past to see if there
Speaker 4: are any instances that confirm that they could be a killer,
Speaker 4: or they could reassure themselves internally. They could neutralize their
Speaker 4: thoughts constantly repeating I'm not going to do that, I'm
Speaker 4: not going to do that.
Speaker 3: So a lot of mental compulsions for people.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering now is like my anxiety actually OCD.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a complete deference on how anxiety affects. You'll see,
Speaker 2: like I was reading, but.
Speaker 1: I obsess of things like mentally in my brain.
Speaker 2: Anxiety is your perception of yourself.
Speaker 1: That is fear too of like unknown.
Speaker 4: Tell us the difference for sure between anxiety and OCD.
Speaker 4: With OCD, there tends to be what we call obsessional
Speaker 4: doubt or pathological doubt. So the person is doubting what
Speaker 4: they know. Like I know that I'm not a pedophile,
Speaker 4: but I keep having these thoughts about that. I know
Speaker 4: that I'm not a killer, but these thoughts keep popping
Speaker 4: into my mind. So there's a lot of doubt that
Speaker 4: is not super rational. And there's also a lot of anxiety.
Speaker 4: With generalized anxiety, someone might be experiencing an excessive amount
Speaker 4: of anxiety about an everyday life experience like taking an exam,
Speaker 4: getting onto an airplane, but it's not necessarily that irrational.
Speaker 3: What if if that makes sense?
Speaker 4: And what's tough is people with anxiety can perform mental compulsions.
Speaker 4: You can ruminate all day long and have anxiety and
Speaker 4: not OCD.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating.
Speaker 1: So then how what's then the difference with that? So, like,
Speaker 1: let's say I ruminate all day like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm so because I have like this weird like medical
Speaker 1: anxiety thing. I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: to the hospital and I'm gonna be sick in this
Speaker 1: That and the other all day ruminating about it, where
Speaker 1: then would it make it OCD.
Speaker 4: So a lot of the times it comes down to
Speaker 4: the doubt. So like, for instance, what if I have cancer.
Speaker 4: If that's someone's obsession and they have health OCD, there
Speaker 4: isn't anything in the here and now that would substantiate
Speaker 4: that doubt.
Speaker 3: If it is.
Speaker 4: More of anxiety about a health situation that's actually happening,
Speaker 4: that would be a bit different, because with OCD, we
Speaker 4: want to resolve the doubt to the best of our ability,
Speaker 4: to get the person to understand you're not a pedophile,
Speaker 4: you don't have cancer, you're not a killer. Whereas if
Speaker 4: it's something future based with anxiety, like what if our
Speaker 4: plane crashes, that's not really something that we can resolve.
Speaker 4: There is some uncertainty to tolerate there. So they are
Speaker 4: pretty similar.
Speaker 5: Really, it can be resolved, yes, absolutely, oh yeah, Whereas
Speaker 5: sometimes with anxiety, when it's future oriented, there just isn't
Speaker 5: an answer.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense, So then I'm just anxious human?
Speaker 1: What has been? Because how old? Can I ask? How
Speaker 1: old are you?
Speaker 3: I'm twenty nine?
Speaker 1: Okay, oh you love that, twenty nine?
Speaker 3: Do I look old? Scared?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, because you're still young, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like it's I feel like I'm but thank you the
Speaker 1: same trust. So you've been essentially quote living with this
Speaker 1: for you know, as you know, ten ten years. What
Speaker 1: has been the biggest besides therapy in the medicine, like,
Speaker 1: the biggest tool for you that has helped you on this.
Speaker 4: Path acceptance and acceptance of the thoughts that I'm having.
Speaker 3: Not that the thoughts are true. I think that that word.
Speaker 4: Scares people with OCD, but I really had to get
Speaker 4: to a place of this is my brain. It will
Speaker 4: think the wildest thoughts possible, and I just have to
Speaker 4: let those exist because the more that I fight with them,
Speaker 4: the more I experience those thoughts. So acceptance, I would say,
Speaker 4: is the number one tool out of anything that I've
Speaker 4: done that changed my recovery journey.
Speaker 1: For me well, and with you being very open to
Speaker 1: on your podcast, I make up that it's probably difficult
Speaker 1: to having people that come to you and like say
Speaker 1: things that might be again hurtful, but also you're speaking
Speaker 1: your truth too. So in that we've obviously helped a
Speaker 1: lot of people. What's the biggest thing that you've heard
Speaker 1: from people that reach out to you.
Speaker 4: I get messages almost every day that I've saved someone's life,
Speaker 4: which really I I mean I sometimes they can't even
Speaker 4: comprehend it, but it's usually that like, I've never heard
Speaker 4: someone openly talk about this. I didn't know that what
Speaker 4: I was experiencing was OCD because of all the misconceptions.
Speaker 3: So probably those two things.
Speaker 4: And I think having someone like I never know how
Speaker 4: to talk about this, but when you when you think
Speaker 4: about someone having scary sexual thoughts about kids, you probably
Speaker 4: think about like the eighty five year old grandpa in
Speaker 4: the basement. But when it's someone like me, who's like,
Speaker 4: you know, was a twenty five year old, twenty one
Speaker 4: year old whatever experiencing it, I think it makes people
Speaker 4: feel better like this can happen to anyone. You know,
Speaker 4: You're not like a creepy, gross, weird person. It's just
Speaker 4: a mental health condition.
Speaker 1: For the anorexia. Do you mind if we touch on
Speaker 1: that for a second.
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Was that just a way of controlling? Was that a
Speaker 1: part of the OCD you think was having that control?
Speaker 1: Was it was it inexia or bolimia?
Speaker 3: It was anarexia.
Speaker 1: It's arexias? So did you not eat because of a
Speaker 1: message you heard or was it control or what was it?
Speaker 4: That's another thing I don't think I'll ever have the
Speaker 4: complete answer to.
Speaker 3: But it was me.
Speaker 4: It started with me wanting to lose weight, and that's
Speaker 4: something that I had been told my entire life, that
Speaker 4: I should lose weight, and so I started a diet
Speaker 4: my freshman year of college, and then a couple of
Speaker 4: months later. The only way I can describe it is
Speaker 4: like I just fell into an eating disorder and I
Speaker 4: couldn't think about anything else other than food and body,
Speaker 4: and it was it felt similar to OCD because there
Speaker 4: were obsessions and there were convulsions, but it was to.
Speaker 3: Me a lot easier than the OCD that came.
Speaker 1: Next, Right, And like you said, like I feel like
Speaker 1: or I'm sure there was nutrients possibly missing in the.
Speaker 3: Brain, right, Oh for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah that might have triggered certain things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not eating can really impair a person's cognitive functioning,
Speaker 4: and so I work with OCD and eating disorders. Those
Speaker 4: are two of my specialties. And if someone comes in
Speaker 4: and they're really malnourished, that is like the first thing
Speaker 4: that we have to address, because it's hard to do
Speaker 4: that cognitive treatment work if your brain is just not functioning.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because my daughter's in she's in third grade,
Speaker 1: and she has I don't know where she's heard it
Speaker 1: because we don't say fat or skinny in this house.
Speaker 1: We always just say like healthy, and you know, we
Speaker 1: work out a lot. But I've never been like, oh
Speaker 1: I'm fat or anything about skinny. And so she the
Speaker 1: other day she was like, Mommy, am I fat? Or
Speaker 1: am I skinny? And I'm just like, I was like, honey,
Speaker 1: you are healthy, you are beautiful. But I'm like, am
Speaker 1: I even saying the right words. I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: know because I'm like, obviously I wouldn't say like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're skinny. I mean, she's she's a slender girl. But
Speaker 1: I'm like, I you know, it's like all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: third grade is opening the door to all these bigger
Speaker 1: conversations which something happened their day. I have to talk
Speaker 1: to you about allan. But we know she heard something
Speaker 1: at school, and so there's things I'm like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: It's like I remember what it was like for me,
Speaker 1: you know, being a kid and then going into middle
Speaker 1: school and just having the comparing your bodies to other girls,
Speaker 1: and even it's worse now because it's social media. So
Speaker 1: it's just like and then I've been looking at her
Speaker 1: lunch box too and being like, honey, and I noticed
Speaker 1: that she didn't eat all of her food and she
Speaker 1: had like a lot left, and so I kind of
Speaker 1: looked at her and then I'm like should I even
Speaker 1: be questioning her on this right now? But also like
Speaker 1: she barely touched her lunch, so and it was after
Speaker 1: the skinny conversation, so I was like, hey, baby, I
Speaker 1: was like, I noticed you didn't eat your lunch, like
Speaker 1: is every were you okay? She's like, oh, I just
Speaker 1: had a lot of the nuts, and I was like okay.
Speaker 1: But then it like cocked in my head, is like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, is she like thinking about not eating
Speaker 1: because she wants to be skinny? And so then I
Speaker 1: just like spiraled on that.
Speaker 4: But any advice, So, I think when kids come to
Speaker 4: us and they say, am I skinny?
Speaker 3: Am I fat?
Speaker 4: What's really important is to look at those words as
Speaker 4: descriptors and to try to help them see that. So
Speaker 4: there's nothing wrong with being fat. If a person is fat,
Speaker 4: there's nothing bad about that. Some people have more fat
Speaker 4: on their bodies. Some people have less fat on their bodies,
Speaker 4: So talking about those words in that way instead of
Speaker 4: saying like you are skinny, which obviously you didn't do.
Speaker 4: And even the word healthy can be super loaded. I
Speaker 4: think a lot of the times people think that being
Speaker 4: thin means being healthy, but you can also be fat
Speaker 4: and be healthy.
Speaker 3: You can be thin and you can be unhealthy.
Speaker 4: So I think helping your kids see that no matter what, like,
Speaker 4: these are descriptors and they're not good or bad, they
Speaker 4: just are. Some people have long hair, some people have
Speaker 4: short hair, some people have round bellies, some people have
Speaker 4: flat bellies, and all of that.
Speaker 1: Is okay, yeah, that way a better conversation.
Speaker 4: But it sounds like she's really internalized something from school.
Speaker 4: So I think having that conversation might be helpful.
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: I talked to me about groin. I started to watch
Speaker 2: a yesterday.
Speaker 3: I'm obsessed.
Speaker 1: Okay, an Scottish accent too.
Speaker 4: Anyway, So, oh my god, I just went to Scotland
Speaker 4: last week for the first time and it was amazing.
Speaker 1: So wait, catch all of us up that had no idea,
Speaker 1: I mean, the listeners.
Speaker 2: Please all did you enjoy scott Scotland.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, I want to move there, but I
Speaker 4: have an American stafford charitary so pitbull, and I don't
Speaker 4: think that she'll be allowed.
Speaker 2: That would be your own reason for not moving.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they'll take her away.
Speaker 2: Mmm? Is it a pit bull?
Speaker 3: I mean technically, but aren't all bull terriers?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Can you go back to the gruns?
Speaker 2: It's called groin ahead.
Speaker 3: This is the funniest I have ever been asked this.
Speaker 2: Listen. I might be smiling and laughing, but I get
Speaker 2: that it might be. It's obviously a.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: So I started to watch. I started to watch a
Speaker 2: video with you and one of it, I think it
Speaker 2: was maybe someone you'd on your podcast or a show,
Speaker 2: and you and you guys started to talk about groino
Speaker 2: and then my flight took off and I couldn't I
Speaker 2: couldn't hear the rest of it, so I stayed intrigued.
Speaker 2: So I thought, I need to ask you what and
Speaker 2: elaborate on what it actually is.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is a life saving question, It really is.
Speaker 4: So basically, this can happen for anyone, not even just
Speaker 4: people with ocd Our bodies don't always respond to what
Speaker 4: we're actually aroused by So what tends to happen for
Speaker 4: people with sexual intrusive thoughts is they feel something in
Speaker 4: their gronal area because they're having a sexual thought that
Speaker 4: is not automatically indicative of desire. So there's something called
Speaker 4: arousal non concordance where you're having a physical response but
Speaker 4: it's not at all concordant with what you like up here,
Speaker 4: and so people with OCD talk about it as like
Speaker 4: a gronal response. I'm having a coronal response to this
Speaker 4: thought that is so disgusting to me. And Emily Nagowski,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure if you've heard of her, she wrote,
Speaker 4: Come as you Are. She's a fabulous sex educator. She
Speaker 4: gave an example her husband in high school was thinking
Speaker 4: about a donut and then got an.
Speaker 1: Erection thinking about a donut.
Speaker 4: Yes, he didn't want to put the donut, but when
Speaker 4: you're thinking about like a whole and you're fifteen years old,
Speaker 4: like your brain registers that as sexual somehow, and so
Speaker 4: he had an erection thinking about that, and that's kind
Speaker 4: of what that is.
Speaker 3: Like you could have a sexual thought about your mother
Speaker 3: and it disgust you.
Speaker 4: But because it's sexual in nature, your body responds, or
Speaker 4: I also want to give a trigger warning.
Speaker 3: I'm going to talk about sexual assault.
Speaker 4: People who are raped sometimes orgasm, not because they're enjoying
Speaker 4: it whatsoever, but because their body is responding to something sexual.
Speaker 4: So a grinal response is you are having some kind
Speaker 4: of response and you think it's evidence that your obsession
Speaker 4: is true and it is not.
Speaker 2: So is that what happened to gym from American pie?
Speaker 3: I haven't seen that, you know, an American pile. I
Speaker 3: was just twenty nine.
Speaker 1: Penis and a pie. An apple pie just goes what
Speaker 1: a pull?
Speaker 5: Wow?
Speaker 1: More questions?
Speaker 4: Yeah, these are great questions from you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just really need I needed to clear it
Speaker 2: up what it actually was. It was intriguing, but it's
Speaker 2: one of those questions where I didn't know whether it
Speaker 2: was going to be because it kind of seems funny,
Speaker 2: but it's not as serious clearly, So then don't how
Speaker 2: you approach it? So I'd just be okay, growing tell
Speaker 2: me more.
Speaker 4: I'm glad you asked, because that is something that keeps
Speaker 4: people stuck in like I might be this bad person
Speaker 4: when it's like no, you're just having a bodily response
Speaker 4: to something, just like we can feel anxious about something
Speaker 4: that isn't actually real. Same with our bodies, we can
Speaker 4: feel like a bodily sexual response to something that we
Speaker 4: do not desire.
Speaker 2: Crazy.
Speaker 1: You're great. Yeah, I appreciate you coming on and so
Speaker 1: you got your when when's your memoir coming out.
Speaker 4: Spring of twenty twenty six, So I'm still writing, I'm
Speaker 4: on deadline.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Thank well you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you being authentic. I appreciate you sharing your story.
Speaker 1: You were helping people and that is the win at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, and everyone else, you know,
Speaker 1: can just look the other way if they don't want
Speaker 1: to listen, is what I always say.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I love that. I think you're educating people
Speaker 2: on something that they think they know about it, but
Speaker 2: the one of a clue what it?
Speaker 1: I literally just not OCD was just cleaning obsessively. Yes,
Speaker 1: so this is very enlightening. And everyone listened to books,
Speaker 1: Looks and the Bottom. Yes, podcast new episodes every Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, girl. I really appreciate you.
Speaker 3: So nice to meet you.
Speaker 1: Bye.