Stay ConnectedTune in each week for a deep dive into all things OCD with host Dr. Patrick McGrath, NOCD’s Chief Clinical Officer. We’ll be sharing inspiring real-life stories of people who’ve faced OCD and came out the other side, as well as practical tips for understanding and tackling OCD. We hope you enjoy the podcast and it helps you get to know OCD.
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Dr. Patrick McGrath has been treating OCD for nearly 27 years, and there are still parts of the job that never get easier. He’s watched people suffer for years without the right diagnosis, receive treatment from therapists who don’t truly specialize in OCD, and carry enormous amounts of guilt and shame over symptoms they’re afraid to tell anyone about.
But there’s another side of the job that never gets old: watching someone realize their symptoms have an explanation, that they aren’t the only person experiencing them, and that effective treatment exists. In this video, Dr. McGrath shares what nearly three decades of treating OCD has taught him about the disorder.
At NOCD, we specialize in exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, the most effective treatment for OCD—a treatment that can help you live a fulfilling life. If you’re ready to take your first step, book a free 15-minute call with us at https://learn.nocd.com/YT
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Santina Cilento works as a school psychologist, so she knew what OCD was. What she didn’t realize was that she had been living with it herself for years. The rigid rules, the need for certain numbers, the routines she thought were just personality quirks — none of it registered as OCD until the disorder shifted toward her health and became impossible to ignore.
In this episode of the Get to Know OCD podcast, Santina joins Dr. Patrick McGrath to talk about how health OCD took over her life, why constant checking never gave her lasting reassurance, plus how she eventually found the right diagnosis and treatment after spending years thinking she was simply dealing with anxiety.
At NOCD, we specialize in exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, the most effective treatment for OCD—a treatment that can help you live a fulfilling life. If you’re ready to take your first step, book a free 15-minute call with us at https://learn.nocd.com/YT
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A memory feels a little fuzzy, and suddenly OCD wants an answer. Did that really happen? Did you miss something? Did you do something wrong without realizing it? What starts as a small doubt can turn into hours of replaying events, checking old messages or photos, asking other people what they remember, or searching for some kind of proof that finally makes you feel certain. In this educational video, Dr. Patrick McGrath explains how false memory OCD can trick you into distrusting their own memories.
At NOCD, we specialize in exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, the most effective treatment for OCD—a treatment that can help you live a fulfilling life. If you’re ready to take your first step, book a free 15-minute call with us at https://learn.nocd.com/YT
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OCD can take something as simple as honesty and turn it into a rule: if you don’t say every thought out loud, you’re hiding something. That pressure can make people feel like they have to confess intrusive thoughts, explain every detail, or keep clarifying until someone else finally gives them relief. In this educational video, Dr. Patrick McGrath explains why that urge to confess can quickly become an OCD compulsion, and why learning to sit with the discomfort of not explaining everything can actually be an important part of recovery.
At NOCD, we specialize in exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, the most effective treatment for OCD—a treatment that can help you live a fulfilling life. If you’re ready to take your first step, book a free 15-minute call with us at https://learn.nocd.com/YT
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"Trust your gut” or “just stop thinking about it” — these might sound like helpful things to tell someone struggling with OCD, but they can actually make things worse. OCD already thrives on doubt, reassurance, and the urge to get rid of uncomfortable thoughts, so advice that pushes someone toward more certainty or more control can end up feeding the disorder instead. In this video, Dr. Patrick McGrath looks at common pieces of advice that aren't helpful for people with OCD.
At NOCD, we specialize in exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, the most effective treatment for OCD—a treatment that can help you live a fulfilling life. If you’re ready to take your first step, book a free 15-minute call with us at https://learn.nocd.com/YT
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Lynette Eklund spent decades building creatures and effects for some of Hollywood’s most recognizable movies, including Beetlejuice and Jurassic Park. Behind that career, though, was something she didn’t understand. Since childhood, Lynette had lived with rigid rules, terrifying fears around food, an intense need to avoid failure, and thoughts she knew didn’t make logical sense but could never talk herself out of. She simply thought she was “weird” — and kept most of it to herself.
It wasn’t until Lynette was 57 that she finally recognized those experiences as OCD. In this episode of the Get to Know OCD podcast, Lynette joins Dr. Patrick McGrath to look back at how undiagnosed OCD quietly shaped her childhood, relationships, and Hollywood career, why finally understanding her own mind took so much power away from the disorder, and why she wrote her memoir Weird in hopes that someone else might recognize their OCD decades earlier than she did.
At NOCD, we specialize in exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, the most effective treatment for OCD—a treatment that can help you live a fulfilling life. If you’re ready to take your first step, book a free 15-minute call with us at https://learn.nocd.com/YT
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Tandy Cyrus didn’t begin her career in mental health. She spent years working in juvenile probation, helping young people navigate difficult circumstances while slowly realizing she wanted to make a different kind of impact. But after the birth of her daughter, her own life changed. Severe postpartum OCD pushed her into treatment and gave her a firsthand understanding of how consuming the disorder can become.
That experience eventually led Tandy back to school and into a career as a therapist. Years later, while trying to help a client with significant OCD, she saw how limited specialized resources still were and how many people continued to misunderstand the disorder. In this episode of the Get to know NOCD Therapists podcast, Tandy joins Dr. Patrick McGrath to talk about the personal experience that shaped her career and the path that led her into specialized OCD treatment.
If you’re ready to deepen your ERP skills and work somewhere specialized OCD treatment is the focus — not an afterthought — explore joining the team at NOCD: https://learn.nocd.com/therapist_careers
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OCD isn't just intrusive thoughts. OCD can also create unwanted experiences that go far beyond thoughts — vivid images, uncomfortable feelings, intense urges, and even physical sensations that can feel incredibly real. And when those experiences seem to go against who you are or what you value, it’s easy to start questioning what they mean about you.
In this video, Dr. Patrick McGrath breaks down the different ways OCD obsessions can show up and why those experiences can feel so convincing. He also explains how people can get pulled into analyzing a sensation, reacting to an urge, or trying to make sense of an image — and why the real problem often isn’t the obsession itself, but the compulsions that follow it.
At NOCD, we specialize in exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, the most effective treatment for OCD—a treatment that can help you live a fulfilling life. If you’re ready to take your first step, book a free 15-minute call with us at https://learn.nocd.com/YT
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Feeling unreal, numb, checked out, or like you’re watching your life from the outside can be terrifying. For some people with OCD, that disconnection becomes another thing to obsess over — checking whether they feel “normal,” questioning whether they’re really present in their own body, and getting pulled even further away from the moment.
In this video, Dr. Patrick McGrath explains how depersonalization and derealization can show up alongside OCD, and why constantly monitoring those sensations can actually make the disorder stronger.
At NOCD, we specialize in exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, the most effective treatment for OCD—a treatment that can help you live a fulfilling life. If you’re ready to take your first step, book a free 15-minute call with us at https://learn.nocd.com/YT
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As the Lindsay Clancy case continues to receive national attention, references to “intrusive thoughts” have caused understandable fear and confusion for people living with harm OCD, postpartum OCD, and other mental health conditions. For someone already terrified by unwanted thoughts or images of harming a person they love, seeing those same words associated with an unthinkable tragedy can reinforce one of OCD’s most painful fears: What if having the thought means I could actually act on it?
Traci Ibrahim has lived with harm OCD for more than 40 years, experienced postpartum OCD after the birth of her third child, and spent decades treating OCD as a therapist. She explains why intrusive thoughts are not intentions or predictions of behavior, and why it is critical not to conflate OCD with the different symptoms and diagnoses discussed in the Clancy case. Traci is here to clear up all the misinformation spreading.
At NOCD, we specialize in exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, the most effective treatment for OCD—a treatment that can help you live a fulfilling life. If you’re ready to take your first step, book a free 15-minute call with us at https://learn.nocd.com/YT
Follow us on social media:
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