Dr. Alex George

If you're someone that really cares about your impact on the world and your behavior and how you are, and is introspective, because usually you need to have some level of introspection as to how you're impacting others, that makes a very good playing field for OCD to enter.

It doesn't mean that everyone who's empathetic ends up with OCD, obviously not, but it certainly does predispose you.

If you didn't care about...

yourself at all, or other people at all, in any way, shape, or form, I think your chances of getting OCD would be pretty low.

The cruelty is that OCD feeds on people that care.

They care about their own health.

They care about the health of others.

They care about their impact on other people, about the way that they act in the world.

They want to learn from their mistakes.

That is the perfect place for OCD to thrive.

So I think it's like chicken and the egg.

Does it occur in people that are successful because they want to do well, but some of those features make OCD more likely?

Or

Have people with OCD got greater awareness and therefore use that to focus on other things potentially?

Maybe it's both.

I tell you one thing for sure, I'd happily lose everything that I've ever done in terms of success and achievements and not have OCD.

I'd really, I would say like, I would happily have...

none of my successors take away all the books, everything I've ever done and live peacefully because OCD has definitely nearly killed me.

I suspect that OCD may well have been a feature in my brother and him passing away.

I think OCD kills a lot of people.