Hey guys! I got this email from Chrissy Hodges (an advocate for ocd) and I thought I would pass it on to y’all. I know it’s long, but I found it very encouraging! In my own experience with OCD as well as many individuals I work with, the impact of trauma in our lives as a result of OCD symptoms and diagnosis is often grossly underestimated. In my message today, I wanted to validate that you are not alone in experiencing that trauma whether it is previous or ongoing for you. Believing and validating our experiences with OCD are so important in recovery and healing from the trauma of OCD. When I first received treatment for the debilitating symptoms of sexual intrusive thoughts, I wanted nothing more than for the symptoms to be gone and to never have to deal with them again. 'I'll be cured if I just do this treatment', I thought. I couldn't have been farther from the truth. Firstly, OCD has no cure, but it has effective therapy for incredible management of symptoms. It took several lapses of symptoms over the years after therapy to realize recovery from OCD is an ongoing process that I needed to learn as a lifestyle change, not just a quick fix with behavioral therapy. Secondly, I didn't allow myself to face and process the degree of trauma I had experienced at the expense of my OCD. Intrusive thoughts ARE traumatic! They change how we see ourselves, how we see the world, and how we believe the world would see us (if people knew what we are thinking). I lived for 12 years with undiagnosed, untreated sexual intrusive thoughts by just surviving everyday. That is a great deal of trauma to process and learn from. The diagnosis and the treatment was traumatic for me as well. Living with a mental illness felt isolating and shameful and I wanted to get as far away from that label a possible. The process of ignoring and denying it caused even more stress and wreaked havoc on my self esteem and ability to have compassion for myself and what I'd been through. I didn't realize how important it was to face and work through the trauma of what we go through with OCD until many years after treatment. I had never received supportive validation for what I'd gone through and survived. Without that validation from others, I couldn't validate it for myself. The reason I'm sharing this with you is because I wanted to validate how you feel if you've experienced trauma surrounding your experience with OCD. If you have, it doesn't make you weak, small, stupid, or less-than. I never realized how much I needed other people to validate what I had been through for it's torment and torture and have them assure me that it took strength, resilience, and perseverance to survive it. I needed to hear it from someone else so I could understand and believe it for myself. So today, I hope you will hear that from me. I know where you've been in your head with OCD. I know how tormenting it is. I know how lonely and scary it is. I know there are times you feel you can't hang on anymore. I'm here to tell you that you can and you will and you are not alone. You are strong enough, resilient enough, and you will persevere. My hope is you can find empathy and compassion for yourself through my message. What you have gone through with OCD and are going through matters. And you matter.