Gemma Spake

And then the last, let's say five, 10 years, it's

It's actually matched all at once where it should have been for 40 years or longer.

I would argue OCD is probably going to go through this in the near future, you know?

Our idea of OCD right now is kind of similar to what our idea of autism or ADHD was like maybe 20 years ago.

At least our public knowledge of OCD is still very narrow.

A lot of people still imagine OCD as being about cleaning, checking locks, being orderly.

liking things neat, but many people with OCD experience really intrusive taboo thoughts.

They experience mental rituals, reassurance seeking, repeated checking that happens internally as much as it does externally.

And that's not how people often see it.

Some people spend years not recognizing their experiences as OCD because it doesn't match the cliche.

The way that a young girl's experience with ADHD didn't match the cliche back in the day.

I know I've spoken about my experience with OCD in the past, but I literally didn't know I had OCD until I was 23 or like 24.

And I literally, I studied psychology.

Like I worked in mental health research.

And I didn't realize this.

And the reason why was because the description and the way people talked about it was so narrow.

Psychologists before this gave me so many labels for what I was going through and none of them felt accurate.

And nowadays it's like so insane to me.

Then it wasn't picked up.

I think I've talked about this in an episode before, but I used to have to pray in the exact same way every single night.