Episode Transcript
Mark Antczak: Hi, I'm your host, Mark Antczak, registered clinical counselor and clinical educator, and you're listening to Anxiety Canada's OurAnxietyStories Podcast, the OCD series. Each week we'll dive into personal stories, expert insights, and practical tips to help you understand and manage OCD. Whether you or someone you love is affected by OCD, this podcast aims to provide support, education, and a sense of community. Join us as we navigate this journey together, one podcast at a time.
Today I'm joined by Jason Adams, a dad of twins/husband, author of the book, OCDad: Learning to Be a Parent With a Mental Health Disorder, a musician, and a guy with OCD, in that order. He is a two-time presenter at the International OCD Federation's Annual Conference, and he has appeared on numerous podcasts including the CBC's Sickboy Podcast. He lives in a very asymmetrical house with his wife and twin boys in Ontario Canada. Welcome, Jason.
Jason Adams: Hello, great to talk to you.
Mark Antczak: I am obsessed with that intro, asymmetrical house. That's a very specific point you want to make.
Jason Adams: We bought a house that's now over a hundred years old. That's kind of my tongue in cheek screw you OCD stereotypes ad right at the end there. Yeah.
Mark Antczak: Really living by the standards of exposure therapy.
Jason Adams: You got it. Yeah.
Mark Antczak: You will live in a perfection, basically.
Jason Adams: Yeah, very few right angles in this house. Yeah.
Mark Antczak: Jason, welcome to the podcast. We're so, so happy to have you here. You have such a unique background and you have so much expertise to pull from just from some of the lived experience and so much of the therapy that you had gone through. Why don't we start by you telling us a little bit about how your OCD started and how it shows up or how it showed up at the time? I'd love to hear a bit more about that.
Jason Adams: Well, let's differentiate between expertise and lived experience. I've got lots of lived experience for whatever that's worth, but yeah, here we go. So, I often differentiate between OCD post-diagnosis and then OCD that I have since gone back and recognized from earlier in life. So, the short answer of how my OCD journey began was about, so in 2019, my wife and I had healthy twin boys, who are now just over five years old and wonderful little characters and they're happy, healthy boys. But from the day they were born, I had a massive spike in, at the time, what I would just call mental health symptoms. So, I think that generally speaking, they would resemble sort of an anxious depressive episode.
As I began that trip into fatherhood, I just noticed major spikes in worries and anxieties, ranging from when my boys were going to sleep, I needed to check their breathing three different times, three different ways. If I didn't do all three, I couldn't sleep. I was struggling with really intrusive thoughts about things that just weren't relevant at that moment. I was picturing my kids drowning, I was picturing my kids falling from heights, and that would be while they were laying in their crib, not near water or a height. So what that was leading to was a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of irritability, a lot of tension.
And three months into fatherhood, my wife and I just kind of sat down and had a bit of a come-to-the-table conversation of just, "Something's up. We don't know what, but something's got to change because this is not a happy, healthy existence." So that was when I went to the therapist that I still work with to this day in a much different capacity, but that I still work with. And the first session that I went and saw him, I laid everything out on the table and just said, "Here's what's going on. I don't know what this is. I need help." And he wrote down the title of a book on a Post-it note, passed it to me and said, "Read this and come back in a week." And the book was Overcoming Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder by Jonathan Abramowitz, (correct title: Getting Over Ocd: A 10 step workbook for Taking Back Your Life)
which again, I highly recommend. If anyone's only going to listen to the first five minutes of this podcast, just take that, buy that book, have a read through it, if nothing else.
It's an excellent resource. And at the time I looked at it and sort of said, "OCD? What are you talking about?" And he said, "Just read it and come back in a week." Read the book and I remember writing in the margins, "OMG, this is me." I shared some snippets of it with my wife and she went, "Oh my gosh, this explains so much." And from that point on, we began the therapy journey. So, what that looked like for me was a year and a half of private therapy, I did a group therapy program. And so my journey with it from that point onward has been a myriad of just ups and downs, learning about myself, learning about OCD, what it is, what it is not.
And ultimately, it stemmed from struggling to function as a dad and then by extension struggling to function as a person. And the biggest thing was the intensity and the severity of the symptoms affecting all aspects of life, affecting how I was as a dad, how I was as a partner, affecting my ability to function at work. And I'll fast-forward to a few years later, and here we are in a happy, healthy place, but that's where it all began.
Mark Antczak: Okay. Yeah, I could imagine you opening up that book and you reading some of those pieces, the extent of validation, the extent of relief you must have felt in that moment, just being able to resonate with so many of those things to kind of think like, "Holy crap, there's an explanation for this, or there's a name for this."
Jason Adams: Yeah, it's funny. I think the two things I would point to, one was I was really unaware of the range of domains that OCD affects. So I knew as much about OCD as I would say just the next person off the street who had seen it portrayed in movies and TV shows and things like that. So I knew about symmetry and I knew about contamination, and I knew about counting and repetitive movements, things like that, the stereotypes. But, I didn't realize even the just-not-right feeling, I tell everybody like, "One, for you to understand is the just-not-right feeling." I didn't understand how to categorize my feelings in terms of intensity and frequency and severity, even just emotional energy spent, impact on day-to-day life, all those things.
And the second thing that I always point to is there's a sense of relief when you read something and you say, "Okay, these symptoms are common enough that scholars have agreed that it's a thing and they've agreed enough that it's a thing that it's made its way into manuals. And that means that there's a whole group of people who have actually done research on this. It's a thing, it's not debated, it's been agreed on that it's common." And if you go back into the history of OCD, you find evidence of scrupulosity and intrusive thoughts and compulsions way back into religious scripture. You find it in, I should say writings about religious scripture. You find it in early medical diaries and journals, and then obviously you find it in the DSM eventually. So there was also just, "Wow, this is a documented thing." And there is some relief in that that experts have described this as well, not just me.
Mark Antczak: Yeah. And so the way that you described the ramp up really seems to have been triggered by you becoming a dad, and for all intents and purposes, I don't speak from lived experience, but I could imagine that being a dad is quite an aggressive transition where it's a really big shift in your life. I would imagine that there is an egregiously large amount of stress and anxiety that comes with being a parent and it being quite normal. So I'm curious, how were you able to make a bit of a distinction between, "Okay, this is normal dad fear stuff," versus like, "This is something else"? How did you determine that?
Jason Adams: Well, I mean, you touched on a couple of things that I think are really important. It is a massive transition, and there are several reasons why I think that is. Now, again, and I'm speaking as a dad of twins. That doesn't mean that this doesn't happen for dads of single babies, moms of single babies for that matter, or triplets or whatever it might be. There are some massive transitions. One thing that I always point to that I think is worth considering is the simple effects of sleep deprivation. It's worth mentioning that not getting as much sleep as you used to may lead to a spike in symptoms. It just does. And I was putting the milk in the cupboard, I was forgetting words, I was running into door frames. I had all those funny aspects. But at the same time, sleep deprivation was leading to your ability to manage stress drops, your ability to cope with what may have otherwise been manageable symptoms, drops. And that's what I meant when I talked earlier about OCD symptoms that I can recognize retrospectively.
I can remember as early as grade six, seven having certain symptoms of wanting to relieve the just-not-right feeling or worried that I had offended God and having to perform rituals. But what I think the transition into fatherhood does, is it removes your ability to use poor coping strategies. So I can recall, I'm a teacher, I've been a teacher for 15 years, and I can recall, for example, being at school and if I took a sip from a water fountain, I'd have to do it seven times. If I didn't, I'd have to start over again. And I was able to hide that pretty well, and it wasn't a big deal. It would leave me mentally exhausted at the end of the day having to fight, say, symmetry compulsions or counting compulsions, whatever it might be. But I could go home and sleep for the weekend if I needed to, right?
Mark Antczak: You were functional at the time.
Jason Adams: Yeah, I was functional. I was able to mask those things. And then once I became a dad, that doesn't happen. You don't sleep, you don't sleep for whole Saturday obviously. So the sheer fact that you are dealing with exhaustion and your old coping mechanisms aren't always applicable, it sometimes just leads to a bottom out. And the clinical term that I've learned is just onset incidence. So I always tell people, I think I came into the world with the wiring, I really do, but my symptoms did not become clinical until the onset incident of having kids. And that doesn't mean that I blame my kids for giving me OCD. That could be a good comic strip too, but what it does mean is that becoming a dad removed my prior coping mechanisms and took up enough mental and emotional energy that I wasn't able to cope with those symptoms anymore.
And I knew I wasn't able to cope with them anymore when the symptoms became intense enough and frequent enough that they were interfering with day-to-day function. And that's what I tell everybody where I say, for example, "Well, I was having constant worries about my kids drowning." For a while, I couldn't even say the words, "I'm afraid of my kids drowning," because it felt like I was manifesting it in real life. And my friends would say, "Well, I mean, I'm afraid of my kids drowning too." And I'd say, "No, no, no, you don't get it. I can't even say the words out loud because I'm worried that if I say the words, it's going to lead it to happen in real life."
Mark Antczak: Make it real.
Jason Adams: And my friends would look at me and say, "Well, what are you talking about? It's not going to matter at all. Your words aren't going to lift the kid up off the mattress and throw them in a pool." And I would say, "No, don't even say that. That's making me uncomfortable." So it got to the point where it was restricting day-to-day functioning. I also noticed that it was changing my relationships with the people around me, it was making me short with family members if I thought that they weren't being cautious enough about intrusive thoughts that I had and wanted to prevent.
And then the other thing is that it just made me an unpleasant person, partially because of fatigue, partially because I was just constantly on edge and reacting bigger to frustrations that I may not normally have reacted to. So, when I noticed the frequency and intensity and then sort of auxiliary effects of all that building up to the point where the people closest to me were saying, "This is not good anymore," that's when I knew we were at a breaking point.
Mark Antczak: Right. You pointed out quite a number of clinical concepts there. And for those listening, we really have a classic example of that thought-action fusion piece, which is quite unique to OCD. "Oh, if I think, there must be some reality component to. It'll make it actually more tangible or more likely to happen." But we're also really speaking to the notion of resilience when we start talking about sleep.
And I remember even in private practice being so fascinated by this concept because we all at the end of the day, have some form of susceptibility to different kinds of mental illness depending on our parents, depending on the genetics that we inherited, depending on our life circumstances. And in your case, it sounds like there was some wiring that was fairly functional. It had some pretty significant quality of life impairments, but it was, again, functional being the key word. And then you have this tremendous event where sleep was impaired, which we know makes us a lot more susceptible to anxiety, and all of a sudden all of those things that made you functional were no longer working. And then I guess you landed where you were.
Jason Adams: Yeah, I think that sums it up really well. And, I always tell people that because if you just looked at my resume objectively, there is zero self-aggrandizing meant by this, but I have a Master's, I've been a teacher for 15 years, I don't have substance abuse problems, I'm financially stable. All those factors that we sometimes associate with instability or with being vulnerable to mental health struggles, I didn't have any of those, or at least not the stereotypical ones. And, I think that that's why I think that it's important that people consider this idea of an onset incident and also think often about that whole notion of frequency, severity, and then the amount of emotional energy that it's taking to manage those symptoms. Because again, I was successful on those surface-level factors, but it was taking weekends of sleep to manage all of that, and that's not healthy or sustainable.
So, those are some of the things that I always encourage people to think about. And certainly, in my case, it was a shock to the system to have to, again, I was forced to admit that those systems weren't working. And again, in retrospect, I can think I remember being a kid and thinking, "Oh, all those times when I would swear and then I would sneak off to the bathroom and pray for forgiveness because I swore, interesting." And I'm not even an especially religious person, but that just felt like the right thing to do. And with thought-action fusion, I mean, that had been an absolutely massive one. I can remember being at sports games and thinking they lost because I thought, "This play might not go so well." And certainly with my own boys, with my kids when they were born, that was one of the big factors like, "I can't think about them suffocating too much, because that means it's going to happen." All those things. Again, I think lots of parents have those worries, but understanding that line I thought was crucial. Yeah.
Mark Antczak: And what I find so interesting too, regarding that severity and degree of impairment, everyone's going to have a different threshold of what they deem as sustainable. And from what I'm hearing you describe, so much of your life was having these coping mechanisms that did impair your life, but it was in a way that still felt manageable or still felt decent to keep up with. And I find everyone has that moment where they're like, "Oh my God, my hand just cracked open from how dry they are because I'm washing my hands so much." Or, "Wow, I just went to my neighbor's house to ask them if they'll say a prayer with me to protect my parents." But they really kind of have that defining moment where they're like, "Ah, crap. It's been taken too far."
Jason Adams: Yeah, I agree. And I think that that line can sometimes be shown to you by a partner as well. I think a good therapist can certainly do that as well. My therapist was fantastic with helping me put these different compulsions and intrusive thoughts into a bit of a hierarchy and to classify them. The book by Dr. Abramowitz was excellent for that as well. And I think you're absolutely right, I think that also speaks to the culture of parenthood and sort of saying you expect some level of stress and struggle, but you also have a mindset going in that you're a provider. And especially for dads, not just for dads, but I do think there's an element of you're a protector, you're a provider, which is to say that moms don't feel that. I mean, don't get me wrong, but I'm just saying that I personally, the mindset that I approached it was, "I'm a protector, I'm a provider, I've got to be the strong one here."
My wife was, she nursed our boys for 14 months. She was recovering from delivery, she was up all night. It's kind of I'm taking care of her so she can take care of them. And I wasn't doing well with that. I wasn't doing the job that I wanted to do with that. And the interactions that I had with my wife around that were also part of what showed me my boundaries and limits with that. Sometimes it does take somebody to say, "Look, I get that this might be all right for you, but objectively this isn't good."
Mark Antczak: Yeah. And I'd love to focus on that a little bit because I think that's a very underrepresented topic in the world of OCD, is how OCD takes up so much space and how it impacts the folks around us. And from the sounds of it, it was kind of one of these moments where your partner really had that come-to-table moment and said, "Listen, this is not really working. Let's figure this out." Can you speak a little bit to what it was like to have them bring that up with you? What was it like to receive that kind of feedback and what did you do about it?
Jason Adams: Sure. And I'll speak to that with two factors in mind. One is that the thick of this for us was during COVID, so lucky. So, the reason why I mentioned, and then the second thing is that I'm speaking now with lessons that I've learned in retrospect, not things that I did right at the time. So I mean, I'm just going to lay it out there and talk about what I didn't do right, and then what I've learned is right, okay?
Mark Antczak: Of course.
Jason Adams: So I first and foremost, if nothing else to anybody who is managing OCD treatment and they have a partner, I think it's crucial that your partner has somebody to talk to who's not you. And the reason why I say that is because OCD is a bit of a family affair at first, because very often partners will be accommodating struggles. And I mentioned that from just personal experience from folks that I talked to in my group therapy program and then just even with the reading that I've done and clinicians that I've talked to, it affects families. And there was likely some accommodation of symptoms going on, which is another clinical term, obviously, but my wife didn't have somebody to talk to in the early going partially because of COVID, but partially, and this is the first mistake that I made, I got very sort of clingy and self-righteous about it. "This is my thing, I'll tell people on my terms, I'm going to talk to people about it once I'm healed."
And that wasn't the right decision in retrospect. It made sense to me at the time, but it was about a year and a half after I had finished writing my book, for example, that my wife said, "Look, I had no one to talk to. I was miserable." And I think that someone to talk to, be it a friend or another therapist would've provided her a bit of venting space to talk about like, "These are the times when he's driven me crazy with whatever it is," which I think is healthy to a certain extent, a bit of healthy venting. Not brewing up a plan to leave or communicating genuine worries without your partner there, but just sort of, "I'm exhausted and annoyed by all this." My wife didn't have that, and I do think that's healthy.
The second thing is, we didn't go to therapy together. I would tell her about what I was doing in therapy, but I think that had we gone to therapy together, we might've made progress as a couple faster around my OCD. I've since heard of things like family contracts, for example, where you will lay out, for example, if somebody has intrusive thoughts around contamination or intrusive thoughts around making sure doors are locked, you might quantify the number of times that a partner is asking for a counter to be cleaned, or the number of times they're asking for a door to be locked, or the way that they're asking for proof of the door being locked. And then together, you might put limitations on that.
Well, again, in my wife's case, she didn't have a say in that. I did my therapy and then I came to her with the progress that I had made, and that's something I regret. So, in the early going, what it looked like was the kids would be put to bed, I would dash off and do my therapy exercises for an hour, be that journaling or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, CBT exercise, and then I'd come down and talk to her about it. Or I'd go to therapy, she'd watch the kids, and then I'd come home and talk about it. What I just described though, in terms of going to therapy together and making sure she had somebody to talk to, those are the things I wish I had done.
Mark Antczak: Of course, yeah. And you said it better than I think I could. That notion of hindsight bias. We are going back with new information that we now have after going through that experience, and we think, "Why couldn't I have just done this? Or why didn't I do that?" I think it is important to acknowledge that in that moment you were making the best decision that you were making at the time or that you thought you could make at the time. And I would love to hear a little bit more about this symptom accommodation piece, because again, I don't think a lot of folks bring family or partners into their therapy journey or into exposure. It sounds like you're describing a lot of reassurance mechanisms, a lot of compulsion specifically that your partner helped enable. So can you walk us through some of the typical strategies or things that you would get her help on?
Jason Adams: Sure. And again, things that I would get her help on, those were, I would say in my case that I was demanding reassurance from her, whether she knew it or not. And I think from her perspective before she knew that I was diagnosed with OCD, it was just sort of, "Why are you being so demanding with needing to know how I did things or insisting that I do things a certain way?" And it's worth noting that as well, because she had a suspicion that I was being unreasonable about certain things, but we didn't have labels for it at the time. And then even later on, it came down to me telling her about these labels that I had learned as opposed to her having somebody to talk to.
So, as far as the accommodations that I was requiring of her, I would say the two biggest ones by far. So, one was asking for reassurance around how certain key times would go. So bedtime and feeding were the two biggest ones for me. I had major intrusive thoughts and obsessions around bad things happening to the kids while they were sleeping, be it rolling over onto their face and not being able to breathe, being smothered by a toy in the crib. I would hear a cough and think that meant choking, things like that. So I would ask her what she did at bedtime, go in and check. If she got frustrated with reassuring me, I get really frustrated back. "I don't understand how you can't reassure me about this. It's our kid's safety."
And again, I think that it is normal for couples to have disagreements on how something should be done and for one partner to be more particular than the other. That's very normal. But this was something that was creating chronic tension, this was something where I was not taking her at her word, and this is something where I was having to double-check. I was feeling the need to double-check on things that she said she had done, which was creating tension around, "Do you trust me or not?" It was creating trust issues. So that's the first way that accommodations were happening.
And then the second one for me, which was quite interesting, it was around trusting what she said around whether I was doing my job as a dad and whether I trusted that she was doing her jobs as a mom. So for example, if I was doing a cleaning chore, if I was helping her with something to do with the kids, if I checked in with her to say, does she have everything she needed, the kids have everything they needed? She would say, yes, it was fine. If I thought that she made a strange facial expression while she said that, if I thought her tone of voice was different, I was needing reassurance even just about the level of care that I was providing and that she was providing. I was needing constant reassurance around that just right feeling. I would say, "Something's off here. Are you happy with this?" "Yes." "Are you happy with this?" Yes. "Do you need this?" "No." "Do you need this?" "No."
And I needed her to help me resolve that just-right feeling. So again, it wasn't specific. The reason why I differentiate between the just-right feeling and the intrusive thoughts around bedtime in particular is because that just-right feeling, that's one of those ones that's almost extra irrational. You sort of say, "Yes, you did a good job helping me. I'm fine." "Are you sure?" "Why are you asking me again?" "Something just doesn't feel right." And that feeling for somebody struggling with OCD, the feeling that something's just not right and if I don't get constant reassurance about it, if I don't get that quick hit of relief, it can lead to constantly questioning your partner, it can lead to constant compulsions, it can lead to redoing things that your partner has already done.
And, again, the reason why I describe it somewhat ambiguously and just say that just-right feeling is because it can apply to anything. In my case, as I said, it applied to, "How did feeding go? How did this go? How did that go? What about what I did here?" So I don't want people thinking that it applies to just one particular area of parenting. Those are the two biggest ones for us where I was leaning on her too much.
Mark Antczak: So, really kind of defining it in those moments where you feel like you are leaning really hard, where you feel like you're relying on your partner in an unsustainable way. We see a couple of steps that you're describing here. We're seeing you having awareness of the fact that what you're asking for is unreasonable, or what you're asking for is a lot more than is okay for all intents and purposes. And we also see that there needs to be a desire for your partner to feel entitled to what they give you and to also restrict how much of that they give you too, which I could imagine when you first started that process, it's probably quite challenging.
Jason Adams: Oh, absolutely. And because we didn't have someone guiding us in a process to set those kinds of limits, it essentially came down to husband-wife arguments. And, again, I'll go back to like when you're both overtired, it's again, any couple will know whether you have kids or not. When you're tired, things are more volatile. And we were lucky. I mean, we didn't get to the point of talks of separation and things. We argued, but things never got drastic to the point of hardcore screaming arguments or things being thrown. We didn't get to that point. But as I say, we did get to the point where it was kind of like, "Okay, this is going nowhere. You've got to go talk to somebody." And that was three months in, so it's not like this went on for years and years. That was three months, which in the course of anybody with newborns will tell you, it feels like forever, but it's really a little snip at a time. Didn't take long.
Mark Antczak: Yeah. And I imagine with how sleep-deprived you both were, that little piece of time probably felt like a bit of an eternity, so I can fully appreciate that piece.
Jason Adams: Yeah, the old cliches and adages are true. Somebody would say, "Oh, by the time they're 12 weeks, they'll have a sleep schedule." And you're going, "That's over 80 days. Oh my God, don't tell me that." But it really is one of those things where in retrospect, you look back and it is short. But I don't often say that to people because I think it invalidates what they're feeling at the moment because in the moment it does feel like a grind, but I don't think I'm speaking anything new to any parents out there when I say that. We all go through that, but as I say, that added element of us, because at that point, we weren't debating anything about how best to care for the kids. We were just trying to sort rational from irrational from me to her. And that's not where you want to be as new parents.
Mark Antczak: Right. For our listeners, would you be able to give a bit of a back-and-forth example of what a successful symptom accommodation exposure would look like? So, where you were able to take in that limitation that your partner was imposing and your partner was able to reel in some of that reassurance, what would that sound like?
Jason Adams: Yeah, I'll mention two. One thing that I will say that we learned to do, and it helped with accommodation, although it's not strictly like an accommodation contract, it's not strictly a family contract, but we agreed on certain phrases and descriptions where if I had an intrusive thought come in, sometimes around my wife, I would just go very quiet and sort of say like, "Just give me a minute, just give me a minute." She'd be like, "What?" She'd be very confused by that. What I learned to say to her was, "I've just had an intrusive thought. I'll manage it. I need a couple minutes. I'm going to go use a couple strategies, I'll be right back," kind of thing. But just putting those clinical terms on it said to her, "Oh, okay, so it's not something I've done. It's just that's what's come up. I know you're managing that. I can hear that you've got a constructive solution for it. Go take the time you need." So I just mentioned that right off the bat, that bringing some clinical language in an agreed-upon phrase was really helpful for us.
And then as far as agreeing on limitations for things, yeah. So something as simple as limiting the number of times that you can ask for reassurance, and that was one that we used quite often. And it can come down to just quantifying. You asked me if I swaddled the kids seven times. I need that to come down to once. Maybe it's not going to go from seven to one, but it's going to go from seven to five, then maybe five to three, maybe week by week this is going to go down. And then from my end, what that would look like is, that's, again, where you're getting into kind of those ERP techniques of maybe you're sitting with your journal and you're rating your anxiety, Subjective Units of Discomfort Scale, we call it SUDS. I think it has other terms in different manuals, but I would rate it.
And essentially, what you do in those cases is you agree, "Okay, maybe now I can only be reassured five times and then that discomfort that I'm feeling, I need to sit with that and wait until it either becomes boring or I just watch it fade away," which is usually both. It usually fades away because it starts to feel boring. But something as simple as that, just quantifying the number of times that you ask for reassurance on something. And then using that kind of guided practice of, "Okay, if I can only get five times of reassurance, okay, how's that going to make me feel? How long is that going to take for me to let those feelings subside?" And then just reflecting on that with your partner afterwards saying, "All right, today you only reassured me five times. Here's the feeling I had, here's what I journaled out while I was feeling it, and here's where it started to subside off. Okay, now I'm good if you only do this five times."
And I'll say, "Okay, then our next phase is going to be, I'm going to drop it to four, I'm going to drop it to three." And I do find that repetitive work with a framework like that and going back and forth with your partner, "I can handle this many times. Okay, I can deal with it this many times." That's what that looked like for us. And I will say as well, and this speaks a little bit to I think the dad mindset and some of the shame that comes along with struggling with mental health when you first become a dad was that I did some work with my therapist around being able to take constructive criticism from my wife, which is not to say that... And I'm not talking about sort of, "You have OCD, you're nuts, you're driving me crazy." It wasn't that.
It was hearing things like, "When you ask me for reassurance seven times, it's causing a lot of stress and draining a lot of my energy." And you can say those things with love and you can say those things constructively, but when you are mixed up in maybe mental health symptoms that you haven't fully defined yet or had somebody help you define when you're tired, when you're caught up in, "I need to be a protector," and you haven't actually weighed those thoughts against your partner's opinions, you can get very defensive and that shame can turn into pushback, it can turn into guilt and all those things can manifest as like, "I got this, leave me alone. No, you can't criticize me. I'm trying as best I can. Don't you see that I'm trying as best as I can?"
And that's just something else that I always mention to people around like, "Do some work around that." Because your partner might say, "Look, this seven times is exhausting. I need to cut it to five." "Well, what do you mean I'm exhausting? I'm trying so hard to..." It's like your partner's not telling you you suck. Your partner is trying to explain the impact of your actions on their wellbeing. And, again, I say that knowing that now, but I didn't know that at the time. And so I'm now in a good place with that, I wish I had been in a better place back then. So hopefully somebody can learn from that.
Mark Antczak: Yeah. Again, hindsight bias coming in hot, right? Where we really kind of see how pronounced the role of fame and guilt have in this OCD journey, especially as parents, especially when resource that orient themselves around resilience gets strained, where we have decreased capacity to deal with those things. It sounds like by being able to kind of identify those moments when they happened and being able to come up with a bit of a system that you both agree on consensually is really kind of the key element. And you also circle back at the end of the day or periodically to say, "Hey, we've been doing this for this specific trigger. This is how I've been feeling. Let's maintain status quo so I could work on it a bit more. Or let's scale it back a little bit more and keep on chipping away." Really sounds like a collaborative team effort there.
Jason Adams: I think so. And I think just joined learning about what OCD is and what OCD is not is really helpful with that because there's so much information out there about what it is and what it is not, and that takes away any of the subjectivities of, "You're just being difficult, you're this, you're that." It's like, well, again, if you have a framework and a clinical definition that you can both work from and you can both learn about the nature of the symptoms, it helps with your reactions. We talked about this right at the start of our conversation about learning that the reactions that you're having is very empowering.
An example that always comes to mind for me was that, and I mentioned this in my book, is that I never understood that thoughts go away if you just let them. It doesn't matter what the thought is. I think in some ways I was always striving for that because I've always been drawn to Eastern philosophy, I've always been drawn to Buddhism, I've always been drawn to the nature of the mind. And I think in some way I was subconsciously maybe trying to access that. But in my case, as I say, it took a clinical setting and it took guidance around OCD to really experience that for myself. But even just understanding that I think from the person experiencing OCD, that's very, very powerful because you learn that these patterns you've had are not permanent.
But also, the person who may be accommodating certain OCD symptoms can say, "Okay, so there is a documented solution. This is what I'm waiting for this person to experience, this is what I'm going to help this person experience, and also this is something I can base my expectations on. It's out there, there's proven therapies, cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure and response prevention therapy. They work and okay, so then as a partner you can say, okay, this is the goal I'm reaching toward. And I think in both cases, that brings a lot of hope back into the picture.
Mark Antczak: Absolutely. And you're really pointing to, I think one of the most foundational mechanisms in OCD treatment, which is the role of acceptance.
Jason Adams: Oh, yeah.
Mark Antczak: You're kind of talking about this idea of, "These thoughts, I just want to get rid of them, I want to push them away." And we have this thing in cognitive therapy called the paradox of thought control, where anyone can really experience this, where the more you try and push anything away, whether it is a specific intrusive thought, keeping in mind OCD is all about unwanted intrusive thoughts or whether we're trying to force a specific reality or sense of discomfort or anxiety out of our body to get that sense of reassurance, it's always going to come boomerang back with a vengeance unless we practice that acceptance piece, unless we lean into it, which is so much easier said than done, as I'm sure you know.
Jason Adams: Yeah, I do. And again, that's another thing that I try and share as much as possible is that growth and change hurt a little bit. On my blog, there's one about why therapy might not feel good at first. I really do think that old patterns die, and there's a grief to that process. Like when you engage in therapy and when you engage in really analyzing your own thoughts, there are old patterns that die off. And there's a bit of grief and pain with that. And I know for me personally, there's this moment of, "Well, if I'm not the thoughts that I had before, you are always told trust your gut, you're always told yourself best." And when you learn that some of the thought processes you've been having are maladaptive, that they aren't serving you, there's a bit of, I don't know, identity crisis might be too full-blown of a term because I don't think it's that.
But there is a little bit of like, "Well, then how do I trust myself? How do I..." And the reason I mentioned that is because that was my initial reaction. There is acceptance that, okay, what's not working here is becoming very apparent, but there's also hesitation and pain and growth with that. And then just because it doesn't feel good at first doesn't mean that positive change isn't on the way. So there absolutely is some acceptance that you're on the right path. And again, working with an expert and consulting expert resources can really help with reassuring that. And also, again, talking to your partner about how they're perceiving the changes. That can be good reassurance when you feel those hesitations because, again, for a condition where the just-not-right feeling is such a huge part of it, you have to sit with a lot of discomfort in the early going.
So it's almost counterintuitive, but as I say, I do think it's worth it. And with the acceptance comes a little bit of clarity of thinking. So for example, what I've learned to differentiate between is, "Okay, the intrusive thoughts that I've had and the compulsions that felt right, that's not the core of me." So questioning those processes, what that's doing is removing a maladaptive thought process. It's removing a process from your mind that does harm in your life. It doesn't mean that you're going to fundamentally wake up one day you were a firefighter and the next day you want to go off and be a lawyer. It's not like that. You don't wake up a completely different person, but what you do is once the emotions around your symptoms start to subside, once you get over that grief of admitting that you're suffering and recognizing that, yeah, you have thought patterns that aren't serving you, then you start to say, "Okay, now I actually recognize them when they come up.
What I often describe to people now as intrusive thoughts for me are a lot like a mosquito now where it's kind of like it's there. It's not as if I don't notice that it's there, but kind of I like, "Ah, I know what this is. Go away. Just leave me alone. Leave me alone." Whereas before it was this all-consuming, "Oh my gosh, I can't think of anything else besides this." So it very much has just changed the relationship with things. But the first step in a lot of that is, you said it perfectly, is accepting because once you remove all those tense emotions around it, then you can start to analyze it and then you can start to recognize it without a huge emotional reaction clouding your perception of it. And all that happens, as I say, with a good process, with a good book, with a good therapist, with good conversations with your partner.
Mark Antczak: And truly, even this piece on the identity crisis, I think you're pretty close and on the dot, because I think one of the most surprising things I remember learning about, especially when I got involved in treating OCD, was almost kind of this inevitable identity crisis that does pop up because so much of your life becomes centered around you spending not just small amounts of time, but sometimes eight, 10, 12-hour periods focusing on thoughts, ruminating with mental compulsions, or utilizing physical compulsions. It's a life that you develop and really center around your identity. So much of your life goes to serving that function. And then when those symptoms start to alleviate, as you say, we all of a sudden have a lot these empty gaps in our life, in large part our identity, and I think it's a very reasonable thing to be scared of not knowing what could fill that, right?
Jason Adams: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think as well that one of the things that I studied a lot in therapy is the understanding that nothing is zero risk. In theory, me sitting here is not a zero-risk activity, and that's the exact opposite of what OCD symptoms want, but there's an acceptance with that as well. And again, on the other side of that is I think a level of confidence and a level of self-acceptance that are well worth it, but again, I don't even know if surrender is the right word. I'm not really sure that it is, but I think it's closer to acceptance that there are activities in the world that you can maybe admit truths that you maybe understood before, but we're afraid of admitting. But there's growth in that too, because one of the examples that I talk about in my book is rock climbing. I mean, I was never a big heights person to begin with, but the reason I mentioned rock climbing is because when I looked at that through a therapeutic lens, it helped me understand the difference between risk and hazard.
So for example, falling in a rock climbing gym or on a rock climbing wall, there's always a hazard of falling. That's a hazard, hitting the ground, but the level of risk changes depending on the factors that you put in place. So if you've got a good harness, good ropes, good instructor, etc., etc., falling is a hazard, but the risk minimizes. But when you have OCD, you don't differentiate between hazard and risk. So if you bring that back to the way you parent your children, when people are talking about, "Well, what's the difference between typical parenting worries and OCD?" It's like if you're not differentiating between hazard and risk, for example. I know for me, I didn't want to take my kids to certain sections of the park because there were oak trees and the acorns had fallen from the oak trees and I was picturing them turning blue from choking. I was having intrusive thoughts about that. So my compulsion was to just direct them away from it.
But in cognitive behavioral therapy, the one I did, I think it was called cumulative probability, where basically you outline every single event that would have to happen for my kid to choke and turn blue in the face, and then you rate the possibility of those by percentage, "Well, I'd have to let them pick up an acorn. Well, there's a reasonable percentage of that. I'd have to let them put it in their mouth. Well, here's the percentage of that. I'd have to let them swallow it. Well, here's the percentage of that. I'd have to ignore them when they first start coughing or choking. What's the percentage of that?" So those types of things. Again, once you get into that mindset of like, "Okay, I can accept that this thought exists and I can start to analyze it," those are the really cool things you can start to do. But as I say, it takes a little bit of breaking those initial barriers to get there. But as I say, believe me, man, if I can do it, I hope and encourage anybody listening that they can do the same thing.
Mark Antczak: Yeah, two huge nuggets. And based on what you're sharing, so much of what you're mentioning here really resonates because I'm mentioning most of this stuff in sessions. And two nuggets that I always live by is first and foremost, certainty is never possible and anxiety is really quantified with us trying to relentlessly chase certainty or we're chasing something that's impossible. But also the bigger one, and I actually had a client share with me that they tattooed this on their wrist as a reminder, not that I'm advocating that specific strategy, but healthy fear-based thinking is not based in the possibility of something going wrong, but rather the probability. So really emphasizing hazard versus risk, right?
Jason Adams: Yeah.
Mark Antczak: We're allowed to take reasonable precaution, we are allowed to do things that can greatly reduce the risk of something bad happening. But outside of that, that's the definition of what we do to live, right?
Jason Adams: Yeah. And I think this is a later stage thing, but again, it's partially associated with that identity loss. And you think to yourself, "What am I inviting into my life if I don't take these precautions? What am I inviting into my life if I don't check that the door is locked 15 times?" Which I have done in the past, I have spent 15 minutes leaving the car running and running back to the door. And you sort of say, "What am I inviting into my life if I don't do that?" And later in the journey, because to somebody in the midst of a compulsion like that, to simply walk up to them and ask them this question, I think is infuriating. But something I think to look forward to if anybody's considering a therapy journey is you do start to realize things you can now do or changes you can now make because you're not doing those things.
So by only checking the log once, what are you actually gaining? What are you enabling to happen in a positive direction by only checking the log once? What are you enabling in your relationship by not asking your spouse to reassure you seven times? What kind of data are you able to be because you can sleep soundly because you've put them to bed and you're not up for four hours straight fighting intrusive thoughts? As I say, that's a later stage thing, I think, and to somebody in the midst of compulsion is going to be going, "Screw you, you don't know what I'm going through." But as I say, I just mentioned it because I can sit here right now and imagine what it was like to be on one side. And I can say honestly, that I do see a more relaxed, confident approach that I have to some things.
And again, I still see my therapist every two to three months just for check-ins. And I do still sometimes use my CBT exercises just on the go. So it's not as if these things ever fully go away, but I do feel a lot more relaxed and confident about it, which is one of the reasons why I choose to share it is that I try and just straight up to say, "Look, therapy's hard and it sucks sometimes. It's not as if hard times with your partner don't come, and it's not as if things ever fully go away, that's why I use the mosquito analogy." But having things at the level of the mosquito, just I can swat it away, that's a really good feeling because you've gone from a place where something is chronic and having major effects to being able to say like, "I got this." And that's a good thing.
Mark Antczak: Yeah. Jason, you are such an inspiration with all the effort and the bravery involved in this work. It never ceases to amaze because this is really tough work, and I think you are a testament to how well these exercises work.
For our listeners, if any of this resonated with you, please check out Jason's book, OCDad. A lot of these concepts are explained in layman's terms in ways that are a lot more accessible than sometimes the clinical terminology can be stated, and it also sounds like you have a lot of free resources available on your blog, ocdad.ca. So please feel free to check that out. But any kind of final thoughts from you, Jason, that you'd like to offer to our listeners?
Jason Adams: Yeah, theocdad.ca, ocdad.ca. Get the book, OCDad: Learning to Be a Parent With a Mental Health Disorder. So yeah, that's on Amazon, all major book retailers. And I just always encourage people whatever format or if somebody you know happens to have a copy borrowed from them, whatever you got to do. The angle that I present for the book is just that it's the resource I wish I had. I been doing all these different CBT and ERP exercises and journaling about them and never been able to find a book on having OCD as a parent. There's lots when you have a kid with OCD, but not about if you're the parent who has OCD. So eventually I just looked at these stacks of exercises and said, "If I'm going through this, this might make something that works for other people." So along those lines, I mean, the two things I say really that I like to leave people with is that there is major power in getting your thoughts out and on paper, the worst place for them to be is in your head.
So whatever format you can use to get them out and be able to think about them without thinking them at the same time, it's a very powerful exercise. And the other thing is that keep that distinction in mind that we talked about earlier where if you're unsure whether what you're experiencing is a mental health symptom or not, there are folks who make their living and spend their lives studying exactly that. And it's really, really worth talking to somebody, whether that is a book borrowed from your public library or a private therapist, there's a huge range of resources out there, ideally for all income levels as well. So take those two steps and there's also a contact section on my webpage, reach out. I'm not a therapist and I don't claim to be, but I'm a guy who's been through some of this and is still going through it, and I'm always happy to talk. So there we go.
Mark Antczak: Excellent. Thank you so much, Jason. Really appreciate your time. Thank you for listening to OurAnxietyStories, the OCD series. If you'd like to support this podcast for Anxiety Canada, please go to anxietycanada.com where you'll find a lot of the resources we talked about today. Thanks, folks.
