A lot of people make a lot of assumptions about obsessive compulsive disorder.

What do we really know?

I'm Maura Erin's Mealy, and this is the anxious achiever,

the show that looks at the intersection of mental health and work,

and asks, how can we do both better?

Understanding more about mental health challenges, whether they're your own or those of the people

you work with or the people that you care about makes us better people and leaders. And today

we'll be talking about the latest understanding of obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. There's the

pop culture version of OCD, maybe a quirky sitcom character who has to wash their hands all the time,

annoys their roommates, and then

there's the reality. Michael Alcay is a psychotherapist with expertise in a number of areas,

but today we'll have him here to talk about OCD and what he's learned in working with patients.

He's the author of the book, The Upside of OCD.

Flip the script to reclaim your life.

I'll Say argues there's a lot of wisdom and creativity

that lives with an anxiety that should never be discarded.

And OCD is no different.

We'll also talk about the symptoms and treatments of OCD

and how it plays out in day-to-day life. Here's our conversation.

One of the things that I love so much is that you ask us to think of OCD as a frenemy, which I thought was just perfect. Like, why should we think of OCD as a frenemy, which I thought was just perfect. Why should we think of OCD as a frenemy if we have it?

Well, it's so funny. We're so used to it as being talked about it as an enemy. Even as a psychologist,

I'll say that, right? Even psychologists want to even like, you know, no CD. Like you want to get rid of your OCD. It's a terrible thing. But there's, there's a hidden messenger sort of along the lines of, you know, roomy and the guest house, right? Be careful. This guest might kind of sweep you over your house, but it might be a wise guide from beyond. And as in most of anxiety, it's one of the reasons I sort of love your work about

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