The 6 Ways OCD Keeps You Stuck (with Patrick McGrath) | Ep. 402

OCD can be a relentless mental health condition, keeping you trapped in a cycle of doubt, fear, and compulsions. In a recent conversation with Dr. Patrick McGrath, Chief Clinical Officer at NOCD, we explored six ways OCD keeps you stuck and how to break free from its grip.

In this episode, Dr. Patrick McGrath discusses how OCD traps individuals in cycles of fear and doubt and shares actionable strategies to break free from its hold.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why OCD makes therapy feel impossible and how to overcome this barrier.
• The sneaky way OCD uses feelings to create a false sense of reality.
• How the “fixing to get ready” cycle keeps you stuck and ways to take action despite uncertainty.
• The dangerous illusion of certainty OCD promises—and why you’ll never truly achieve it.
• How OCD unfairly blames you for everything and the importance of practicing self-compassion.
• The myth of “specialness” in OCD and how to challenge this isolating belief.

1. Discouraging Therapy

OCD has a sneaky way of convincing you to avoid the very thing that can help: therapy. It may tell you things like:

• “Therapy won’t work for you.”
• “They’re going to force you to do things you don’t want to do.”
• “What if they find out you’re actually the person you fear you are?”

These thoughts can lead to avoidance, but it’s crucial to recognize this as a tactic OCD uses to keep its hold on you. By seeking therapy despite these fears, especially Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), you can start to dismantle the power OCD has over your life.

Actionable Tip: If you find yourself avoiding therapy, write down the specific fears OCD is using to keep you away. Challenge these fears by reminding yourself that therapy is a safe space designed to help you.

2. Making Everything Feel Real

One of OCD’s strongest tricks is making its fears feel incredibly real. OCD feels real and creates a sense of urgency and danger, making it difficult to distinguish between feeling and fact. As Dr. McGrath points out, just because something “feels” a certain way doesn’t mean it is true.

For example:

• “It feels like I could hurt someone.”
• “It feels like I’m a terrible person.”

These feelings can be intense, but it’s essential to remember that OCD manipulates emotions to keep you stuck. Feelings are not facts, and it’s the emotional part of the brain that OCD hijacks to maintain its control.

Actionable Tip: Practice labeling your thoughts. When a distressing thought arises, say to yourself, “This is an OCD thought, not a fact.” This simple labeling can help you start to detach from the emotional grip of OCD.

3. Keeping You “Fixing to Get Ready”

OCD often convinces you that you need to be “ready” before taking action, especially in therapy. This cycle of “fixing to get ready” can trap you in a perpetual state of preparation, leading to procrastination and avoidance.

Patrick explains this as getting ready to get ready—an endless loop of preparation that never leads to action. You might think:

• “I need to be in the right mindset before I start therapy.”
• “I have to make sure I’m prepared for every possible outcome.”

Actionable Tip: Challenge the need to feel “ready.” Set a small, manageable goal for yourself, like scheduling a therapy appointment or starting an ERP exercise. Taking action, even when you don’t feel ready, is a powerful step toward breaking OCD’s hold.

4. Demanding Certainty

OCD craves certainty and tricks you into believing that you can achieve it. It’s constantly moving the goalposts, leading to a never-ending pursuit of assurance. The problem is that absolute certainty is an illusion—something we can never truly attain.

• “What if I didn’t lock the door?”
• “What if I offended someone?”

OCD tells you that once you find certainty, you’ll be able to relax. However, even when you achieve some level of certainty, OCD will quickly find a new angle to exploit.

Actionable Tip: Practice embracing uncertainty. Start with small exposures, like leaving a light switch unchecked, and work your way up. Remind yourself that learning to live with uncertainty is key to reducing OCD’s power.

5. Blaming You for Everything

OCD has a way of blaming you for anything that goes wrong, even when it’s due to the compulsions it pushed you to perform. For instance, if you lose your job because of being late due to compulsions, OCD will convince you that it’s entirely your fault for not doing things “right.”

• “If you weren’t so careless, this wouldn’t have happened.”
• “You’re to blame for everything that goes wrong.”

This self-blame can lead to a cycle of shame and guilt, further trapping you in OCD’s web.

Actionable Tip: Practice self-compassion. When you notice OCD blaming you, pause and remind yourself that OCD is the culprit, not you. Be kind to yourself and recognize that OCD is trying to manipulate your thoughts.

6. Presenting the Illusion of Specialness

OCD often convinces you that you are uniquely flawed or that the rules of the world apply differently to you. It fosters the belief that you’re “special” in a negative way and that you must achieve a level of certainty or perfection that others do not.

• “I’m different; I have to be sure.”
• “Other people don’t understand my situation.”

This belief can lead you to abandon your values and isolate you from others, as you feel your situation is too unique to be understood or treated.

Actionable Tip: Challenge the idea of “specialness.” Remind yourself that OCD is a common and well-understood condition. You’re not alone, and the rules of treatment apply to you just like they do to others. Seek support from those who understand OCD, and learn from their experiences.

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Transcript

Kimberley: Welcome back, everybody. Today on Your Anxiety Toolkit, we have the amazing Patrick McGrath. He’s coming back on the show. Welcome, Patrick. You are—I’m going to say you are, but just in case you don’t know who Patrick McGrath is, he’s the Chief Clinical Officer at NOCD, and today we’re talking about the ways OCD tries to keep you stuck. Thank you for being here, Patrick.

Patrick: Well, thank you, Kimberley. So good to be here and excited to chat with you once again. I think the first time we did this was at an IOCDF conference sitting in a hotel room with a beautiful view as we chatted about don’t try harder, try different.

Kimberley: Yes, that was a really fun episode. If people haven’t listened, you should go back because I think this is like a follow-up to that, if anything. 

Patrick: Yeah.

Kimberley: All right. Let’s talk about the way OCD tries to keep you stuck. Do you want to lead the way?

Patrick: Sure. Things that I’ve been talking about recently as I’ve built on “Don’t try harder, try different”—these notions that OCD doesn’t care about you; it really cares about itself. There are things that it is going to do to try to make sure that it sticks around because it does not want to go away. So, in order to stick around, it’s got to keep you stuck in what it wants you to do instead of you doing what you want to do. 

One of the first things OCD may not want you to do is to do any therapy whatsoever. It will tell you things like they’re going to force you to do stuff that you don’t want to do. It’s going to be a terrible experience. What if they tell you it’s not OCD, and you really are this terrible thing that you’re so afraid of? Anything that it can throw at you to get you to doubt therapy OCD wants you to do. And boy, isn’t OCD good at doubt, by the way. It’s very good at that.

Kimberley: Well, it also tells you you’re the one person it won’t work for, right?

Patrick: Yeah, right. “Why even give it a try?”

Kimberley: Like, “Don’t do therapy. That’s for other people. It won’t work for you.” Amazing. Tell me more. Tell me the other ways in which it keeps you stuck. 

Patrick: It of course wants to stick around, so it’s going to insert itself anywhere that it possibly can. Nothing is off limits for OCD. I think that it has a surprise factor at times for people and really, really scary factor. If it gets to the point that it is so scary, so surprising, and so triggering to that fight, flight, or freeze response, what do we hear a lot from the people that we work with? We hear, “But it feels so real.” This is another trick of OCD, is to feel so real. Because something feels so real, we start to believe that it is real. 

One thing that I get when I do my podcast or webinars too is that question, why does it feel so real? My answer is always the same, and that is because it has to. Because if it didn’t feel real, you wouldn’t need therapy for it. You’d be like, “Oh, there’s that, but that doesn’t feel real, so I’m just going to move on and not be too concerned or worried about it.” 

But Kim, the other thing that I think is always fascinating on that statement of “It feels” is there’s nothing that you couldn’t justify with the phrase “It feels like.” I mean, I could say to you, “It feels like it’s too hot,” and you would say, “No, it feels like it’s too cold.” Both of us have a valid statement that we’re making there, and we could go along with that, but it doesn’t actually mean something is too hot or it is too cold. It means it feels like.

One thing that we’ll see with people with OCD is sometimes they’re stuck in the phase of getting ready to do something. I jokingly call this “fixing to get ready to do therapy” for our friends in the south who have a great phrase there. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean I’m getting ready to do therapy. It means I’m getting ready to get ready to do therapy. I’m fixing to get ready to do therapy. It’s all these kinds of things that we throw out in front of us, like, “I can’t do therapy. I’ve got to get ready to do therapy, but I’ve got to get ready to get ready to do therapy first because that’s a lot to do.” Same thing I believe with this notion of “It isn’t this way, but it feels this way, and if it feels this way, well, that’s equal to it is this way.” Almost a thought-action fusion kind of concept. A thought equals an action. A feeling also equals a reality in OCD.

Kimberley: For sure. What specifically do you tell people when they say, “But it feels so real”? What might you tell them to help them manage this real feeling that they’re having? While it mightn’t be the truth, but it’s their real experience. What tools or strategies do you use with that circumstance?

Patrick: I’ve done over 10,000 attempts to rip the ceiling down on top of me and crush me to death with any of the members that I work with, where we stare at the ceiling and with all hope and might and wish or prayer, or whatever it is that we can do, we look at that ceiling and just do anything in our power by sitting there and thinking about it to get it to fall on top of us. So far, over 10,000 times in my career of doing that, it has not happened yet. I use that just as a way to prove a point to people that as much as it feels like it’s going to happen, it doesn’t mean that it does happen. We’re in a danger when we judge everything by “It feels like.” Again, we could justify absolutely any kind of compulsion to answer the “But it feels like this, so therefore I have to do this compulsion.” There’s nothing off the table then that you couldn’t do a compulsion to because it feels like.

Kimberley: Right. I feel like that’s another way, and often the rebuttal that I hear respectfully is, “But you guys can’t. But what if I am the person who brings it down?” There’s this personalization or this over-identification. What do you do with that?

Patrick: Well, that goes back to the first talk we did of what I call specialness, the idea that the rules of the world apply to me differently than they do to everybody else. I’ll say, “Well, you’re either the most special person in the world or you’re just like everyone else. You’re unique, but the rules of physics and everything else and chemistry don’t apply differently to you than they do to anyone else, even if you think they do.” 

Now, take a look at how easily we’re tricked into this. I could have you in a room, Kim, that is 100 feet on any direction from where you are standing, purely fat — or flat concrete. I’ve been talking so long today. I just said purely fat instead of purely flat. That was pretty funny. Thank you for laughing at that. We all goof. That was a good one, though. That might make the YouTube blooper reel there.

All right, let’s try that again. Purely flat concrete. You better keep that in the episode, by the way. I’ll take that. .

Kimberley: I will. That’s not coming out. 

Patrick: Oh, no, that’s not coming out. I put a virtual reality helmet on you, and I turn it on, and you look in front of you, and there’s a cliff. You will probably take a step back, even though you logically know that you are standing on a flat piece of ground. By doing that, I have tricked you, and emotionally now you feel as if you’re about to fall because what have you done? You’ve been trained your entire life that if you look down, there’s a cliff. You should take a step back so that you don’t fall. You logically know that this is fake. This is not real. This is a virtual experience, and you will still feel it. Why? Because your emotional part of your brain isn’t a logical part of your brain. Your emotional part of your brain doesn’t care if this is virtual reality. Your emotional part of the brain is a cliff; step back or you fall.

Kimberley: I think that’s the point, is that the feeling—it feels surreal is the emotional part as well.

Patrick: And isn’t OCD a master manipulator of emotions?

Kimberley: Yeah.

Patrick: So, if OCD knows this, that’s where it’s going to go.

Kimberley: Just yesterday I was doing a Q&A on Instagram, and surprisingly this is not common, but just yesterday it was the trend. So many people were asking, how do I not feel this feeling? How do I not feel guilt when I do exposure? How do I not feel panicked when I do exposure? How do I not feel anxiety when I go to the supermarket? I think that is a way in which OCD can target.

Patrick: Because OCD then at the backend spike will say, “Well, now that you’ve gone through therapy and this doesn’t bother you anymore, you must truly be the monster that you were afraid you were because you’re not bothered by it,” which is usually when I take my wallet out and I show them the card in my wallet that says, “I hope my parents die tonight. Please, God.” There’s a 666 on the card, which has been in my wallet for 18 years at this point that I carry with me on a daily basis to show people I would never ask you to do anything I wouldn’t be willing to do myself.

Kimberley: Amazing.

Patrick: And my parents are still alive, by the way.

Kimberley: I thought about asking you that question, but I didn’t want it to go down the wrong way.

Patrick: No, no. Because then my reply is, “But one day the card will be right.” So, that card has a one-time use for each parent. Maybe twice if they get resuscitated and they are brought back to life. I may kill them. They come back, and then I may kill them again with the card. It’s a possibility.

Kimberley: Yes. It’s so hard to reconcile what’s real and what’s not.

Patrick: Yeah. And even if you don’t have OCD, sometimes that can be difficult. What is that ad we saw today? A real ad or an AI-generated thing? We’re getting really good at being able to fool people, and our brains have already been able to fool us. Now technologies come along and could do so. And then OCD, because it doubts everything, doesn’t care how real something is or isn’t. It’s still going to say, “But how do you know? How can you be sure?” And so I think that that’s another way of getting people really stuck—the insistent doubt. I mean, it is the doubting disorder. What does the doubting disorder want? An absolute answer. What will it not accept? An absolute answer. Why? Because it doubts every answer you give it. So you can’t give OCD what it demands, even though it keeps demanding it.

Kimberley: How else does OCD keep us stuck?

Patrick: It blames you for anything that goes wrong, even if it’s the fault of it going wrong. If you lose your job because you are halfway there and you keep thinking, ‘Oh, what if I didn’t lock the door right?’ And then a wind blows and the door opens, and then the pets get out and they run out in the street, and they get run over by a truck or a bus or a car, and they’re dead, and it’s all me. But work has told me that if I’m late one more time, I will be fired. I look at the watch and like, as long as there’s not a train, I’m going to be able to get back home, check that lock one more time. And I go home, I check it, and I’m on the way back, and there’s a train. And they meet me at the door when I arrive eight minutes late with my stuff and say, “Sorry, this was the last chance.” OCD is not going to say, “I’m really sorry I made you go back to the house.” It’s going to say, “If you weren’t such an idiot and you had locked the door the right way the first time, you wouldn’t have had to go back and check it. It’s all your fault that you lost your job.”

Kimberley: Mean.

Patrick: It’s an ass. I mean, it really is. I’ve never met an OCD that once has taken responsibility for anything that’s gone wrong. It’ll always take the blame for things going right. It’ll say, “I’m the only reason why things have gone well in your life,” but it will never take the blame for anything going wrong.

Kimberley: Right. It just keeps telling you, you didn’t do it right; you could have done it better. 

Patrick: Oh, yeah.

Kimberley: Which, I think too, for people with OCD, that’s pretty convincing. When you’re trying to get certainty, that’s pretty convincing. That’s why it is. You get stuck in that. I know a lot of people who start to not just think that they start to truly believe this as well.

Patrick: Yeah. OCD’s smart enough to give you a nugget of dopamine rush here or there by, you do the compulsion, and you get this minute little, “Ah,” relief, but it only lasts for sometimes milliseconds. And then you find yourself on the hamster wheel of hell going through all of this stuff again. Therefore, it’s like a drug dealer in a way. It’s given you little bits of things, but it’s always leading you on to do more. Of course, you and I have never met anyone who’s done enough for OCD to say, “Okay, thanks, we’re good now. You’ve done all that I need.” You can have OCD for over 80 years of your life. I’ve met people that are almost that old, being that I’ve treated, who still in 80 years of compulsions didn’t satisfy OCD yet.

Kimberley: For sure. I mean, that is the hardest piece too, is that you could have done a little more, you could have done it a little better, you could have done it till it felt right. That’s absolutely all the way through it, I think, and shows up in so many different ways, which makes it harder to detect. 

Patrick: Yeah. Some of that comes from the lie that OCD tells that you do have the ability to achieve certainty. We unfortunately fall for that lie and believe that to be true. And that’s why we stay stuck on, again, the hamster wheel of hell, as I call it, where we know we’re running, we’re not getting anywhere, but if we do what OCD says this time, maybe we will move somewhere and get to where we need to go. But the hamster wheel is very well anchored, and it ain’t going anywhere, and you’re just spinning your wheels around and around and around.

Kimberley: Yeah. OCD has this way. Even when you get certainty, it always has another additional piece to add like, “But are you sure?” It’s got a strategy.

Patrick: Here’s the OCD backhanded compliment. “Nice job. Now round two.”

Kimberley: Yep.

Patrick: Right? And there’s an infinite number of rounds. “Great job. Now round 3,942.” And then once you get that one, there’ll be another one. But you’re edge and closer to that nirvana perfection, just right experience. You’ll never actually get there. I mean, think of it this way, Kim. Imagine applying to college, and when you go interview, they sit you down and say, “Ms. Quinlan, welcome to Crappo University. We’re so glad that you’re here. Just so you know, no matter how hard you try at Crappo University, you will never actually graduate, but we expect that you will be here for the rest of your life, paying us tuition, taking classes, and you’ll get so, so close. But you will never actually get a diploma. Welcome to Crappo University.” You’d be like, “This sucks. I’m not going to this school. This is crap.” Yes, it is crap. That’s why it’s called Crappo University. So, you would not go to that school. 

Kimberley: Right. But that’s interesting. Most people with OCD are incredibly intelligent, incredibly funny, incredibly creative. In that case, we would all go, No, thank you, Crappo University. That doesn’t sound right.” But it still has the ability to make it not sound appealing, somewhat, to draw you in. And that’s why I think this is so frustrating—because these are intelligent people.

Patrick: Yes. But this is not a logical problem; this is an emotional problem. And that’s why amazingly intelligent people get fooled by OCD all the time because OCD presents itself as a logical problem and makes it seem like the only way to solve it is with logic. But that is not how you solve OCD. You don’t solve it with logic because OCD logic is different than our logic who don’t have OCD. OCD logic has one more thing on it that non-OCD logic has, which is the “Yeah, but what if” question. And so, no matter what logical answer a therapist gives you, or a friend, colleague, or loved one gives you, you will always be able to follow it with, “Yeah, but what if?” And then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Kimberley: Yeah, and a whole flood of really, really uncomfortable feelings.

Patrick: Totally. I mean, they just come right along with it. In many ways, it’s a fascinating condition. September 1st will be 25 years I’m treating OCD, and I’m still not bored with it, and I’m still excited to work with people who have it because I love the fact that it is treatable. But I’m always amazed at how deep it can get people to go down its rabbit hole.

Kimberley: And to abandon their values, that’s the really heartbreaking piece. If you think about con artists or scammers, they can get you to do things you wouldn’t otherwise do, but OCD can do the same. It can get you to abandon your family, your life, your goals, your dreams, your values. That’s rough.

Patrick: Yeah. It’s Stockholm syndrome. You almost love your captor and do whatever it wants. I’ve recently come up with a really interesting way to get people to challenge OCD a little differently. I’ve had people who are on the verge of divorce, who have lost jobs, have been kicked out of school because of OCD, and they talk about how frustrating and angering and all these kinds of things it is. 

I was working with someone, and it’s just one of the, as you know, once in a while we get this little nugget that pops into our head while we’re in the middle of a therapy session. I was working with this person, and they were so frustrated because they were still washing their hands more than they wanted to. Again, it was interfering with their time with their children, their spouse was infuriated with them, the bills for the water and the soap. All this stuff was happening. I said, “All right, how many hand washings are you doing? Let’s get the baseline.” Once we had it, we established a number for the next day. I said, “Anything you do over that number, I want you to put a quarter in a jar, and at the end of the week, we’re going to take all the quarters and we’re going to write a check, and we’re going to send it to the opposite political party for which you’ll be voting for in the next election.” Well, they had to write a dollar 25 check to the group. They were not voting for. That dollar 25 was more motivating to them, it seemed, than the job losses, the anger of the spouse, the lack of time with the children. Literally, that dollar 25 pushed them over the edge of, “I hate this OCD so much. I will not send this group anymore money,” and they started doing less and less compulsions. It took a buck 25 for that to happen.

Kimberley: I’ve heard Shala Nicely talk about that too, and that’s really a really, really interesting way to hold accountability, again, when OCD keeps you stuck. I love it, especially in this heated environment right now.

Patrick: Right. It’s apolitical. I don’t care who we’re sending it to. I want the motivator there for somebody to make the change because that’s what’s so important. 

Kimberley: Yeah, for sure. How else does OCD keep us stuck?

Patrick: Well, I mean, we touched on a little bit, but just one of the lies that it tells that certainty is achievable about this thing that you’re having obsessions about. Of course, it’s a moving target because you’ll never achieve the level of certainty that you want. I mean, again, you and I have never worked with anyone who said, “I’m finally certain. Thank you so much for all the work you’ve done right now.” That’s not even the goal of therapy. The goal of therapy isn’t certainty; it’s accepting the fact that it’s okay not to have certainty. I mean, I may walk upstairs and fall back down the stairs after this filming here and break my neck. This might be the last time I’ve ever seen a life. It’s a possibility. But I’m not going to now crawl up the stairs when I go up the stairs. I’m still going to walk. I’m okay with not being certain about it. That’s fine.

Kimberley: I think the piece that’s so hard about certainty is when you see other people who seem certain about the thing that you’re uncertain about. My friend doesn’t have uncertainty about whether she’s going to harm her child. I should be getting certainty. Or my colleagues aren’t uncertain about how they feel about their husband or wife. I should be able to get certainty. And that can be so cruel in the comparison. I always say like, it’s not that they have certainty; it’s just that they don’t think about it. It’s just not in their vision.

Patrick: Yeah. Kim, you have children. I’m going to bet there are times you’ve just wanted to throttle them.

Kimberley: These are facts. These are facts right here. 

Patrick: Yeah. But you don’t, and you don’t have to now think about, ‘Oh geez, why did I think that? Now that I’ve thought that, will that make me do it?’ And ‘Oh, gee, what if I did and then I would’ve to go to DCFS and then they’d be taken away and they’d go to foster and I’d go to jail and I’d never see them?” That’s where OCD will take it. But for people without OCD, it’s not that they’re a hundred percent certain that they won’t ever do something. They just don’t even care. I think that that’s one of the hardest things for people with OCD. When I bring this up, usually midway through therapy, I’ll talk about, “Does it shock you that people don’t think about things as much as you do?” And they’re always like, “All the time, I cannot believe that people just go through life without thinking about all this all the time.” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s OCD.”

Kimberley: Yeah, for sure. It makes it so hard to reconcile when — again, I mean, we all know how many times has someone said, “I wish I had that OCD and not this OCD.” It’s the same thing; OCD makes it sound like this is very special and very specific to you. You must figure this out. We must get to a place of certainty and then we can go about our life. What would you tell people to do about this idea of you can go about your day or your life once you get certainty?

Patrick: Then you’re never going to live your life. There is no life of a hundred percent certainty. If your goal is a hundred percent certainty, you’re stuck where you’re at. I ask people, do you want to sit next to your tombstone wondering when you’re going to be six feet under it, or do you want to live your life and show up on the day of your death at your tombstone, saying, “Well, that was a great time”? People with anxiety and OCD spend their time worrying and wondering and doing all these things to try to prevent something from happening. People without OCD accept the fact that it could happen, and if it does, I’ll figure it out.

Kimberley: Right. Is there anything else that OCD does to keep you stuck? 

Patrick: I think probably just overall, going back to that idea of specialness, it really does convey the notion to people that they are special. The rules apply to them differently than they do to everyone else, that they could be perfect, which of course is, again, a joke because what is perfect, and is there anything all eight and a half billion people on the planet agree upon? I don’t think so. It’s tricky in the sense that it really can take neutral things and get you to believe something about them that is not neutral, that is bad and awful and horrible. And it’s always that. You and I have never once treated someone who showed up in a Zoom or in an office and said, “I’m afraid everyone loves me and thinks I’m great.”

Kimberley: Never once.

Patrick: No, no. There’s no such thing in OCD. It’s only worst-case scenarios that we’ve ever seen people who are worried and afraid of. And yet, I love to ask people, okay, then just find a newspaper article with the lead story, that is, that person with OCD actually went and did that thing. When you find me that article, then maybe I’ll change my mind about OCD. But until then, I ain’t changing my mind about OCD. I still find it to be a conniving jerk, and I’m going to do what I can to help people not be influenced by it anymore. 

Kimberley: I’m going to end it on that because I feel like that’s the perfect place to end. Where can people hear about you?

Patrick: You could check us out at NOCD.com, and if you’re looking for help for OCD or related conditions, we have therapists in all 50 states, and we also do work in Canada, the UK, and Australia. Been doing a podcast myself called the Get to Know OCD podcast. You could check it out. I did some interviews recently with Howie Mandel and Maria Bamford, and just got some other really exciting guests that are coming out as well. 

Kimberley: Me.

Patrick: Kim. Yeah, I’m just going to say that one. You just jumped the gun on me. There you go. 

Kimberley: I was raising my hand. It was me. It was me.

Patrick: Another one with you that you totally forgot about before we started talking about this, but that’s okay. I’d love you anyway. 

Kimberley: I dropped the ball. I did.

Patrick: No, but yeah, yours was amazing. It’s so nice to be here with you today as well too and get to just not only build our friendship, but spread the love to everybody else as well, which is great. 

Kimberley: Yeah. I do think the reason I love this so much is it really gets to the feeling of having OCD and that you do feel so stuck. You do feel so trapped and checkmated. So I love that you’ve addressed some of those things today. Thank you.

Patrick: Awesome. Well, thank you. Good to see you again. 

Kimberley: You too.