Simone Stolzoff

I mean, there's different types of OCD and it shows up in different ways.

For one person, it might be certainty they're seeking about whether the door is locked or whether the stove is off.

And two things actually changed my mind about how I thought about OCD through the research.

One is it's much more of a spectrum.

It's not this sort of like binary thing.

There's people that have varying degrees of it.

And the second is it's not certainty per se that people with OCD are seeking.

It is the lack of anxiety that they get from that brief moment after they check the lock to make sure the door is locked, where they feel safe and secure.

So an analogy is someone that is addicted to heroin.

It's not necessarily the heroin itself that they're seeking.

It is the high that comes from the heroin.

And for people with OCD, often the certainty is like the heroin.

And what they're seeking is that brief moment of relief, a brief moment of, oh, okay, the door is locked.

That comes from having that sense of certainty.

But that certainty-seeking behavior becomes like an addiction.

And before you know it, you're locking yourself in your apartment for days trying to figure out the perfect MP3 player to buy.

This guy went from having a very successful career to being out in the world to agonizing for hours about whether he should take the 137 or the 205 train back home to see his family for Thanksgiving.

It's that assumption that if we just think hard enough, that if we just gather more information, we'll know for sure the perfect way to live our lives.

When in actuality, there's a level of uncertainty and chance that's inherent in any decision about the future.

Yeah, so there's this famous study where researchers had participants either have a 50% chance of receiving a painful electric shock or a 100% chance of receiving this painful electric shock.