Dr. Alex George

Maybe that mistake I made 10 years ago was a big mistake.

Maybe it's not.

Maybe, maybe not.

Constantly.

Because the brain then goes, oh, he's tolerating uncertainty.

And at its core, what OCD is, is an intolerance of uncertainty.

You cannot tolerate the fact you don't know.

And if you notice the key thing with every OCD theme, whatever it is, whatever that theme of obsession is, it always comes down to the fact that you cannot be certain.

You cannot be certain that you're a good person.

You can't be.

There'll always be things in your past that would not fit with a perfectly good person.

The truth is because no one is perfectly good.

There is no way you can be certain that you won't get cancer.

I pray that you won't, but there's no way.

How could you?

If anyone said to you, there's no way Alex is going to get cancer, they're lying to you.

I'll tell you that for free.

So all of these themes have uncertainty, and what we need to do as human beings is tolerate that.

The only certainty we have is that we're not going to live forever.

Yeah, because I guess with ADHD, because if we remember, you know, that part of the brain that kind of pulls the levers of keep calm, don't stress, anxious, be happy, do all these things, good idea, bad idea, that kind of emotional regulation, executive functioning part of your brain.