OCD and Oversharing: How to Open Up Wisely

Music. Hello and welcome to the OCD and Anxiety Podcast where we explore how to have a more positive relationship with anxiety disorders taking back control so that you can start living the life you choose and not the one chosen by your fears.

Hello and welcome to episode 487 i hope that you're doing fantastically well today wherever you are and if you are struggling though with ocd or anxiety and you would like to get some support with that well i offer a free discovery call to get that you can head over to my website robertjamescoaching.com. There's a link in the show notes. And on to today's episode. Should you open up to other people about your OCD and your challenges?

Well, this is a really good question because sometimes it is important to do that, but at other times it can end up a bit of a compulsion. So in today's episode, I'm going to be talking about how you should approach this delicate subject of speaking to people about your struggles with OCD and anxiety. If you find this podcast helpful, it would be amazing if you could leave us a review. It really does help, whether that's on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I would really appreciate it.

And if you have any questions at all about anything I speak about today, do please let me know. Off we go.

Opening up and telling other people about our struggles with OCD and anxiety can be a powerful and liberating thing to do but I think it's very important that we we make sure that we're sharing things with the right kind of people you know of course I don't think it's a good idea to keep these things completely to ourselves certainly for myself for many years that's what I did when I was a teenager and in my early 20s in the UK.

It felt incredibly difficult to kind of share any of this with people because there wasn't so much information about OCD and anxiety back then. People didn't really talk about it in the same way. There wasn't social media. And so it felt incredibly hard for me to really open up about these things. And I think that kind of made it worse for me for many years. And in fact, you know, I went to the doctor and kind of told them I was struggling with anxiety, but they didn't diagnose the OCD.

And it took a long time for me to realize that I actually had OCD. It wasn't until I was 30. You know, and so because I didn't speak to people about it, because I didn't open up about my struggles, you know, it was something that I think was unduly hard. And it took longer for me to be able to realize what the issue actually was.

And, you know, to a certain degree, that was kind of unnecessary I could have perhaps got the right kind of support earlier but at the same time you know I don't think it's a good idea at all to kind of open up and be vulnerable to to everybody because many people simply don't understand things like OCD they don't really understand anxiety perhaps they might like to but OCD is quite a difficult thing to understand and you know we know that because people like to make jokes about OCD.

People, you know, make throwaway comments about it. You know, I'm so OCD and these kinds of things, you know, and of course, when we hear that, it can be quite frustrating because. You know, people aren't quite realizing quite how challenging OCD can be, how awful it can be to experience intrusive thoughts and get caught in these loops of thinking and rituals or whatever your compulsions might be.

And so, you know, Sometimes if you share with the wrong people, they may judge you in a negative way, they may not fully understand it, they may gossip about you, and obviously you don't want that. So I think it's really important that if you are going to share about OCD to somebody, it needs to be somebody that you really trust, a close friend, somebody in your family that cares for you. You know, somebody who is going to hold that information in a positive way.

Of course, that ideally would be your partner that you're able to kind of share. With them about your struggles.

So i think you know it's important that we do share uh you know because it can be it can be liberating not just to hold on to that yourself and you know for somebody else to kind of know that you're struggling for them to hear about what you're struggling with but for them to to not judge you and to to demonstrate that actually they they still love you exactly the same they still like you exactly the same despite the fact that you uh you struggle with ocd and i think for some people you

know that that feels amazing when they realize when they realize that i think so many people hold on to this idea that you know if people knew i was struggling with this they wouldn't like me anymore or they would think i'm a bad person or they would think this or that and the reality is you know often completely different to that that people have a lot of compassion for you perhaps they've struggled with anxiety themselves for example and it can help you to kind of accept yourself

a bit more that being said i think it's also important to point out that we can overly share sometimes and you know this can be particularly relevant sometimes in close relationships like you know in you with your partner at times we can kind of overshare the ocd you know we can be looking for reassurance from our friends from our family we bring them into it too much or maybe even, you know. Kind of going onto the internet and sharing a bit too much there.

I think the important thing is that, you know, you recognize that OCD is so sneaky. It's so good at getting us to perform sneaky compulsions. And, you know, if we're just trying to get reassurance all the time by speaking about it all the time, that probably isn't going to help us.

It's just another way that the the ocd is expressing itself you know so if you are going to open up about it and kind of speak about it it's worth um thinking about why am i doing this am i doing this in service of you know just trying to communicate with somebody to to kind of you know to to for them to fully understand me you know from a kind of positive place or am i doing this from a needy place, from a place of OCD. I'm trying to get more certainty about something.

I'm trying to reassure myself about that particular obsession. If that's the reason for why you're doing it, then of course it might be better to kind of let that go. One particular person that it would be ideal for you to open up to about your struggles with OCD and anxiety is a therapist. If you can find somebody that really understands OCD, that you can really trust, speaking to them about the problem.

Somebody who really understands it somebody who knows when you're looking for reassurance and actually doesn't give you that reassurance you know who helps you to to kind of figure out you know what are some good exposure activities for you to do or how to apply acceptance commitment therapy to to your ocd that's kind of the most productive thing almost that you can do uh you know with with your ocd that's the right kind of person that you want to be sharing this stuff with But likewise,

you know, it can be helpful to kind of educate the people in your life about OCD so that they know that they shouldn't be giving you reassurance. And if you're a family member of somebody with OCD or a close friend. You know, kind of educating yourself a little bit about this can be helpful. So that if you are speaking to somebody about it, that you don't give them reassurance. Reassurance is one of the most common compulsions in OCD. And unfortunately. Friends and family are often culprits.

You know, what they're trying to do is they're trying to help the person who's struggling. Maybe the individual has asked for some reassurance about their particular situation.

Obsession maybe they're fearing they're contaminated and they want some advice about that or maybe you know they're they're kind of wanting you to reassure them that the oven is definitely definitely off in this situation you know is it necessarily helpful for you to to kind of give that reassurance if you're just feeding that OCD loop so of course speaking up about OCD you know not kind of keeping it to yourself I think this is really really important

but just making sure you're sharing with the right people people who are trusted people who care about you make sure that you're not looking for that reassurance all the time and actually you know you're sharing about your struggles but you're not kind of bringing other people into that kind of compulsive process you know making sure that you're you know you're kind of sharing with a therapist ideally because they can kind of guide you in the right way and you know i think

if if we if we do that I think actually sharing is an incredibly important part of the process of learning to overcome and manage OCD. So many thanks. Please do remember, if you are struggling, I offer a free discovery call to get that. You can head over to my website, robertjamescoaching.com. There's a link in the show notes. And many thanks. I will see you next time. And now just a quick reminder of my disclaimer.

Any information that you view on my website, Instagram page, Facebook group. Music. Looks like in real life. Yeah. And I also have my personal website, which is just SarahMichelleBose.com. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much again. It's been great talking and all the best with everything. Thank you. Thank you so much. Great. Lovely. Really, really nice conversation. Oh, thanks. Thanks. That's a really inspiring story. And I'm really happy to hear that your daughter

is doing so well. No, it's really great. Yeah. What were the uncertainty that we're up against all the time is she basically now she has a fake heart valve. And every time she grows bigger, she outgrows the valve. So when we go to her appointments, it's like, is it time for her surgery or do we have another year or what does that look like?

And so like, we hope tomorrow that we still have more time, but we won't know until we're there so we do a lot of prep work with her just to like mentally prepare her for the day i know that sounds crazy at two and a half but it makes all the difference so hopefully it'll go well yeah yeah that must be very challenging ongoing process but yeah it's a lot to sit with lots of uncertainty yeah yeah yeah wow what story and well i i wish you all the best and yeah so in

terms of this podcast i'm going to release it if you're happy on the audio podcast but also on youtube oh yeah so yeah if you if you could send me maybe maybe your booker already sent me a picture but yeah that would be ideal for the thumbnail for for youtube and then any information that you want me to to put in the show notes as well just just let me know that as well. And I'll, I'll put that in there too. All right. Sounds good.

All right. But yeah, great talking to you and so nice to meet you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Sarah. Take care.