Intrusive Thoughts Unmasked

Episode 21: John, Stephanie, & Ryan: How to be a supportive sibling to someone with OCD SO MANY THANKS to these wonderful individuals for coming on to share their personal experiences of what it's like to live as siblings of someone who has OCD. This episode revealed so many of the issues many of us face - as people who LIVE with OCD - and those that are desperate to support us and help u...

Episode 20: This is a storytelling episode. I've been hearing from clients and many people that summers are super triggering because of the pressure to travel or the feelings of sadness/envy of people who are traveling and portraying that life is impeccable because of their trips! Travel is hard, y'all. There are a lot of expectations and it's a complete disruption of your routine,...

Episode 19: The OCD Haze:  This terrifying state of mind and being when you are trapped inside of symptoms and it feels like there's no way to connect, no way to ever go back to who you were, and life will never be the same. It's almost impossible to describe and hard to remember when you're out of it, and hard to remember what it's like to be normal when you're in it.  In...

Episode 18 This week I'm sharing about an incident that has happened recently. People in my life found out about my OCD themes and all of a sudden questioned whether I'm 'safe' to be around. This was devastating for many reasons...but after the initial shock...I knew what I had to do.  This is one of the biggest fears many of us have. To be misunderstood. To be not believed tha...

Episode 17: A Day in the Life of OCD Relapse I know you DON'T want to listen to this one especially if you're feeling good, haha! However, it's so important to know the truth about OCD. We will experience symptoms again. You will be in a position at some point where you will need to remember the tools that work for you and that there is absolutely hope for you to move through sympto...

Episode 16: Taking Back What OCD Spoiled In today's episode, I wanted to share a story with you, especially since right now I'm in Seville, Spain and the first time I was here, OCD almost ruined what has turned out to be a lot of love for this country and my experiences here.  I wanted to share this with you because every time I'm here I remember just how far I've come since th...

Episode 15: What 'Real Recovery' Means to Me In today's episode, we have 4 guests who live with OCD sharing what 'real recovery' means to them. What does real recovery even mean? The actuality of being in recovery with OCD can often be vastly different than what we imagine, and this can sometimes cause confusion, distress, and even grief. We sometimes look at OCD as a prob...

Episode 14: Today we are talking with Natasha Daniels, therapist and advocate and educator for parents who have kids with OCD / anxiety. Natasha is a parent of kids living with disorders and she also lives with anxiety. Today we have a discussion that ranges from the emotional journey for the parents and obstacles they deal with, to attachment styles and how it can sometimes be difficult to unders...

Welcome to Episode 13! Today is a day of storytelling. I was on holiday last week in the Bahamas...a very sacred place of annual rest, relaxation, and ... um, yes - often painful realizations after time spent without distraction and intentional introspection.  When I'm alone with my brain, very wild things happen apparently, and today I'm going to tell you a couple stories about what I&a...

`Today's episode is SO important and I applaud the guests for sharing their detailed experiences with the theme of Harm OCD. We hear about this subtype a lot, but are we really sharing the details of what it is like to experience it? It's shameful and scary to talk about! While we sometimes hide behind the label knowing it's a pretty big genre of people with OCD...how hard is it to...

Hello! Yep - if you listened today and thought, what in the world is this, you heard my original recording of the intro and outro instead of the episode including me having to look through all my phone stuff because I had low data storage.  Instead of beating myself up, I'm turning it into a self-compassion exposure. I explain what happened when I found out and I'm also including the ori...

Episode 11: What Self-Compassion Means to Me This is such an important topic for those of us that live with OCD and intrusions! Why? Because OCD makes us believe we don't deserve compassion - and why?! We didn't ask for this disorder, we didn't do anything to make this happen, and it's not our fault. But by default, so many of us fall into this belief that we don't deserve...

I am excited to share this episode, it is a personal account of the different masks I have worn for decades trying to gain external validation. After my experience with OCD and my childhood experiences, I began looking to society and the world to build my worth - externally. This is impossible, but I did not know that. Not having the ability or skills to see any sort of worth in myself, I tried co...

Episode 9: What Mindfulness Means to Me I'm so excited to publish this episode, as I believe mindfulness with OCD is SO confusing and has so many different meanings. Mindfulness absolutely is a concept, but is it what we believe it to be because of what we hear, or what we misunderstand?  The speakers in this episode are able to give their own definitions based on lived experience and share w...

Episode 8 We talk with therapist and advocate/educator Jonny Say of the Integrative Centre for OCD in London. Jonny is a regular contributor for 2026 and will engage in several discussions over the course of the year.  Today, we discuss one of the many complex emotions we experience with OCD, particularly with sexual/violent/taboo intrusions - shame. This is an emotion that can take many forms at...

This is part of the series of: A Day In The Life of... And today we are talking about what it's like to be hospitalized for OCD. This is an experience that is not uncommon but is hugely stigmatized. Hospitalization is a source of shame, stigma, and fear about how people will view us, what it means about us, and then the traumatization of what it is like to be in many of these centers/hospital...

In this episode, we talk to Alie Garza. Alie lives with OCD and is an OCD Therapist and her story is filled with inspiration and resilience. Alie disclosed her intrusions to a trusted community, and unfortunately received a response many of us dread and fear.  Rejection. Ostracization. Misunderstanding. This is something that so many of us fear and keep us silent and behind the mask! The reason I...

Why the mask made sense, and how I learned to live without it In today's episode, Chrissie talks about the many scenarios we may not even realize we are wearing a mask, but yet we still feel the toll of it, whether that be with shame, feeling dismissed, or feeling unseen.  This episode is about storytelling the different times in life where OCD wasn't necessarily the driver, but definite...

Acceptance can be both freeing and challenging, especially when living with OCD. There are many misconceptions around what it means, not only in our personal lives, but how it integrates into our lives on the recovery journey.  Today on Intrusive Thoughts Unmasked, four guests explore what acceptance means to them and some key factors in how they have gotten where they are today in that relationsh...

In episode 3, we introduce a regular contributor, and one who is very well known throughout the world in the OCD community, Dr. Steven Phillipson.  Steve is the founder of The Center for Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy in New York City, New York. He is the author of many articles bringing awareness to individuals living with intrusions with mental rituals which describes the community name that...

Living with taboo intrusions brings added layers of shame, guilt, and self-loathing - and living with POCD - intrusions about pedophilia with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - is a theme that can be tormenting and isolating. This theme keeps people silent. It keeps people frozen in fear of the 'what if people knew I had these intrusions?'  So, they stay silent. They stay alone in these tho...

"Hiding the Truth I Couldn't Allow the World to See" In the debut episode of Intrusive Thoughts Unmasked , host and creator Chrissie Hodges shares two pivotal chapters of her life, the times when the mask she wore felt like the only way to survive. Believing she had to hide her true self to be accepted, Chrissie built personas that promised safety but delivered isolation. Through ra...