Alegra Kastens (OCD Specialist)
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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Buck Rogers and I'm joined by John Lightyear. Hi there. Hi. Hi, Buck. Hey, how are you, John? Doing great. Doing good. You ever go by Jack? Because that's a common nickname for Jonathan. Too presidential. Oh.

I guess that makes sense, but I don't know why you would want to be presidential. You're already going by Joan. I do not want to be president. Well, not president, but presidential. Ooh, fine line. Okay. Today we have Allegra Castins. She is a licensed therapist and an OCD specialist.

a mental health advocate and a writer. And this is great because as people may remember, if they heard the fact check, I had apologized for perhaps misrepresenting OCD in general. It was recommended we get an expert.

And Allegra is the consequence of that recommendation. We learned a lot. And it was awesome. Yes, yes it was. Oh, such a good episode. She has a podcast called Books, Looks, and Lobotomies. And that is everywhere you would get your podcasts. Recommend that. Allegra was just a fountain of information and I learned a ton. Me too. So thanks everyone for recommending that we get a specialist. It was very interesting. Please enjoy Allegra Kastens.

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He's an Ob-Chair expert. He's an Ob-Chair expert. He's an Ob-Chair expert. Do you have everything you need? Water and everything? Yes. We've got three coffees. We've got water. We like to make sure everyone's prepared. Yes. Caffeinated. I've been dabbling with different types of caffeine drinks. Last week I asked for Cortado. What's that? It's different levels of milk.

Oh, okay. But still tea base? No, coffee base. Oh, coffee base. Yeah, but I didn't like that. Okay. As you'll see, Allegra, I've got Herbamante tea mixed with some Perrier. This is a straight up chai tea. That's an old fashioned black cup of coffee. Chai? Did I say chai? You did matcha. I did. Matcha, sorry. But I was scared. You never drink chai. Chai's too much. Oh.

- I could have a sip or two of it, but 10, 12 ounces? Don't you think it's a little... - No, I love it. It's very sugary. - It can be. It's an Indian tea. - I love the color of your hair. - Thank you. - I used to dye my hair a very similar color for years. Mine was Outrageous Cherry Revlon.

That was my mix. Okay. I used to do L'Oreal High Color, but now it's The Salon. And Allegra, you're the first Allegra I've ever met. Really? Yes. That's so interesting. Tell me about this name. It's actually a wild story. I was supposed to be a boy. The umbilical cord was in the way. So when I came out and I was a girl, they had no idea what to name me. Okay. And I was supposed to be James III. Meaning they literally were taking a sonogram of the umbilical cord thinking it was a penis. It was a penis, yeah. And quite a long one. You would have been stacked. I would have been in doubt. Okay.

You have a different profession. Literally. And then I came out and they didn't know what to name me since I was supposed to be James III. So they heard the nurse at the hospital call her daughter Allegra and they were like, fuck it. Wow. That's funny. Wow, wow, wow. They could have stuck with James III because I love James for a girl.

That's controversial, but I like it. I like it. Yeah. Well, that tells me a lot about your parents, though, I think, in a capsule. Like, that's pretty loosey-goosey, willy-nilly. Like, that's a chill set of folks if they're like, they hear a name on the fly and they're like, fuck it, let's go with that. For the rest of her life. Chill would be one word. Okay. Yeah. A big euphemism? There are a lot of other words that are used. Have you met another Allegra? There's famously Allegra buses. They're a great manufacturer of motorhomes. Interesting. I've met another Allegra.

I was a publicist, so there was, I'm going to forget her last name. She's married to, and I'm going to forget this guy's name. I don't know how I worked in PR. I forget everyone that I worked with. But her name was Allegra with two L's. And I think maybe the bus has two L's. But this is a ding, ding, ding because you guys both presumably have a PR degree. Yes.

And so does Monica. I also have a PR degree. You were employed as a publicist. Oh, yeah. I was a talent publicist for years. Here? Yeah, I lived in LA for six years. Oh, my God. Were you working mostly with actors? I had a few actors. Like, I had Andrea Barber from Full House. Oh, yeah. I'm not allowed to say that I have a favorite, but she was my favorite. Okay. You just can't say who you hated. I wouldn't.

I've heard. Oh, my God. But you can say who you love. She was just lovely to work with. So where are you from originally? Orange County. I grew up there. Oh, you did? Yeah. So like totally Southern California my whole life until four years ago when I moved to New York. Okay. So Orange County, what city specifically? Orange. Orange. Yeah. The city of Orange. Mm-hmm.

Where did you go to school? I went to school in Ohio for two years because I played soccer. And then I quit after my freshman year. So I moved back to California and went to Cal State Fullerton. But then I dropped out to work in the industry. And then my OCD, I just couldn't do school because of it. Okay, so as I was learning about your story, I know what your specific version is. But I guess it sounded like you were phrasing it in at least one of the documents I read that it was onset late. I had an onset at 19 and it was in March.

0.2 seconds. Whoa. Everything changed for me. Really? Yeah. So you didn't have any as a child? I definitely had some symptoms when I look back, but it wouldn't have been enough to diagnose me. During soccer, I had weird stuff where I would stand in the soccer store for an hour and I'd have to feel out every jersey until it felt right. And it was distressing to me. Of course. In eighth grade, I had two weeks where I was picturing my math teacher naked and like she wasn't cute.

To me, she wasn't. It wasn't for erotic purposes. No, it was highly distressing. God bless Miss Chen, but it was a wild ride in eighth grade. So I had that for two weeks and then it went away and I never had it again until age 19. And then I had it

every second of every day. And was there an inciting incident? I'm not sure of what order we should go on, but I'm definitely curious the physiological components of this and then also the nurture components, if something could trigger it, all this stuff. I will say I was anorexic at the time and it was untreated. So I do think an untreated eating disorder with malnutrition and everything else it did to my brain contributed. Sometimes I

I wonder if I wasn't anorexic, would I have suffered so badly with OCD? I don't have the answer to that question. And obviously it's too late to know, but that 100% played a role in something that probably would have manifested anyways. Right. Okay. So as you already know, I'm going to botch a lot of this. I'm cobbling together what I've been told over the years and then my own personal experience with these different things. Of course.

One thing that made a lot of sense was, okay, so I think I even told you in an email. So I had a litany of ticks. Really time-consuming. I'm writing about it right now. It was like the amount of energy that was put into both the ticks and then hiding the ticks and trying to find time to let a bunch out and all this kind of stuff. It was very all-consuming. I met

a fellow actor, and she said she had this compulsion of pulling her eyebrows out. And she said to me, and she obviously had done work in this, I hadn't, she said, well, you know, OCD generally is born out of a total loss of control and you latch on to something to attempt to control. So look, that might be completely wrong and I'm making room for that.

But when she said that, I did go, oh, when did they start? Oh, yeah, it was definitely in the moment that a stepdad arrived in my life. Maybe it's just completely correlated, not related. But is there any truth to that, that sometimes these arise out of moments of feeling no control or a lack of control? Well, I will say we don't know the exact cause of OCD, but environment can absolutely contribute to the onset.

So I would never say that having a lack of control would not be a cause or a correlation. I don't think it would be the thing alone because research points to genetics and also, what is it called? The brain. So yes, that thing that's responsible for fucking my life up. Well, there's like addiction as well. It's like a combination. It's a combination of a lot, but that does make a lot of sense because for some people, OCD can be the brain's way of trying to protect you, even though it's doing a really fucked up job at it.

Yeah. Again, only because I'm writing about it right now, I'm also putting together pieces that I wouldn't have thought of. Because when I'm writing about it, I'm kind of forced to try to explain the experience of it. And the easiest way I could think to articulate it is I would start the day with neutral luck. Like I woke up anew. I had neutral luck. I couldn't do anything that would give me good luck, but I could do a million things that would give me really bad luck.

And meaning something terrible would happen. So I think that's where then the environment's like, well, things were unpredictably bad happening because of this stepdad. And now my reality is unpredictable bad things happen and then somehow luck. Like magical thinking maybe or compulsions to prevent that bad thing from happening.

Yeah, it's just like really trying to understand why is this so unpredictable and where is this all going? And it's very tenuous and I've got to be on it. And then also, so the first one really starts with I scuffed one foot on the way to school. And that's a failure on my end. I'm supposed to be walking without scuffing my feet. So I've done something wrong too, right? Like there's some kind of guilt that I've done this. And now I have to scuff the other side to both make it equal, even, and erase it. There's like an atonement. There we go.

Right. Or like a neutralization. Or a punishment. Yep. And then this just would ratchet up all day long with the amount of things I was juggling. But then I heard, I was watching a 60 Minutes on people with super memory, and they pointed out this correlation between people with super memory and OCD that they over-index in OCD if they have super memory. So then I thought, well, maybe there's a physiological component that there's a part of the brain that

maybe a little more developed than it should be. I don't doubt that for a second because if it were just environmental, wouldn't everyone who had the environment that you had or I had growing up have OCD? And they don't. There are people who have really traumatic childhoods and don't develop OCD.

Yeah. Is it rare that someone would have an onset at 19 or is there nothing normal? Is there anything, are there any trends that we could say? 19 is actually a really common age. I found out from a lot of my clients. It's usually young kids. So it starts in childhood or young adults like 19 to sometime in your 20s. I have seen older adults like even at the age of 65 have an onset, but that's definitely not the norm. And I don't mean norm as in. Right.

Yes, exactly. It's not as common. Yes, there we go. Usually it's younger children or even early adolescents. The same with schizophrenia, which is interesting. It can come on. It has a window. Yeah, but it can often come on later in 20s or late teens, showing no symptoms before. I feel like there's two camps with OCD. Some who will say, I don't know what it's like to live a different, like I've always had OCD. And then there are the people like me who I had it before. So I knew what it was like before. And there's always the argument of which is worse.

Well, I could easily see one blessing of that. And as I've read what you've written, I recognize that for a lot of people, they don't know they have OCD, which prevents them from seeking treatment. They think they're just goofy or wrong or a pedophile or a murderer or a rapist.

So in some way, your version does seem at least like minimally you would know there was a period of your life where you didn't experience it versus if you have no memory where you haven't. I think it'd be easier to make the argument. I am a killer. I am a pedophile. It definitely was helpful to have that before because I knew it wasn't me. But then in my brain, I thought, did I just turn into a pedophile? Does that happen? It really did help, but it didn't help enough for me to set the thoughts aside. Okay, so...

This has been happening while you get your degree in PR and you start working. Yeah. And then I had to drop out of school because I couldn't read books because of OCD. I would read a word and it would get turned into a sexual thought. I couldn't watch TV. So the films for my film classes, I couldn't watch because...

It sounds like I'm seeing things I'm not, but my brain would turn something on the screen into something sexual in my mind. And so I started avoiding all kinds of media that wasn't related to my job because I had to do my job. And I was failing most of my classes and had to drop out. Okay, so it was having a big impact. And then you leave and then you get this job. And then does it escalate to, we would say, an

recovery like a bottom, even though that's obviously not very clear. People have multiple bottoms. That's kind of a stereotype as well. But did it reach a nadir where you were like, oh, fuck, I have to seek some kind of treatment for this? Yeah. So trigger warning suicide. I think it was about a year into not knowing what was happening.

I wanted to kill myself, not because I wanted to die, but because I saw that as the only way out. And so I remember thinking, I need to either figure this out or I'm going to kill myself soon. A year had just been way too long of experiencing sexual thoughts and images about kids and family members and animals. So I wanted to die. And then...

It was a colleague of mine at work. I was standing outside crying one day, which I rarely did. All of my symptoms were internal, so nobody knew I had OCD. I didn't either at the time. And she said, I think you need to see a therapist. And she called her therapist who then recommended a therapist in his office suite. And that was kind of the moment that I started seeing a therapist. But I don't think that that was my bottom per se. I think I had a few bottoms. Yeah, yeah, right.

And is it hard to find someone that specializes in OCD? Is it a pretty small field of people that are qualified for it? Yeah, there just aren't enough OCD specialists. And then even people who say that they specialize sometimes don't. You'll look at their Psychology Today page and there's 40 different diagnoses. And you don't specialize in schizophrenia, OCD, bipolar. Right.

That's too many of those specializing. Right. So even people who do often confuse OCD with either OCPD or something else, or they just treat it like generalized anxiety when it's not. So it can be really difficult to find someone who gets it and then who also utilizes evidence-based treatment. Right.

Okay, so at what age do you start a course of treatment that you feel like is effective or on the right path? I want to say it was 22. And then you, I'm presuming, decide then you want to go get your degree in psychology.

Yes. I didn't want to specialize in OCD treatment at first. I thought that everybody else's thoughts and obsessions were going to stick in my brain. I didn't want the murder thoughts. I had enough OCD. That makes total sense. I'm not going to try to get sober in a crack house. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. It might look good one day. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. So I was worried that I would pick up obsessions or compulsions. And then I realized this is my passion. This is what I want to do. Yes. Okay, sorry. And not to keep making it about me, but it was contagious for me. So I would randomly bump into a kid who also had an eye blinking thing. And I was hiding mine. But if they were in full flare up, it would be contagious to me. And then we would kind of escalate each other in a way that...

Like where our heads were going to explode. No, that makes sense. And I know people will say compulsions aren't contagious, but my brain was so sticky that they did feel contagious to me. I remember reading The Man Who Couldn't Stop. I don't know if you've read that. No. It's a book about OCD. He was afraid that he was going to get HIV AIDS and he had all of these different kinds of mental compulsions. I started reading that and then I worried that I was going to have that mental compulsion and then I started having that mental compulsion. And I had like a meltdown in the Target parking lot after reading four pages of that book.

So I get that they're not contagious, but for some people whose brains are really sticky, then you're like, I don't want to be doing that whole ritual. And then you find yourself doing it. This might veer out of OCD, correct me. But one aspect of it for me is simply knowing what the worst thing I could have or do is, is in itself contagious.

Sticky. Giving myself something to worry about is almost irresistible. So yes, if I heard like, oh my God, this happened. And the next thing they know they were doing this. I just would run towards that. Like, okay, well, that's another thing we got to stay on top of. Literally. Especially when your nervous system is hyperactive and the fear center of your brain is misfiring. This is just so tricky because as soon as you're saying it, I'm like, I feel like that's hypochondria. Because people say I have hypochondria, which feels like that.

Now I learned about this, so now this is going to happen to me. I'm scared it's happening to me. It's happening to me. Right. And...

So hypochondriasis or health anxiety or even health OCD, they can appear similarly, but OCD is different than health anxiety is different than even tics or Tourette's is different than trichotillomania, like hair pulling. What a word though. Say it again. Trichotillomania and dermatillomania. So even tic disorders are very comorbid with OCD, but they're not the same thing. Same with hypochondriasis. And they're like cousins in a way. Yeah. A lot of similar features. Interesting.

Yeah, I can imagine where someone had tics, but they didn't have the component that was the tics were controlling for another feeling. Right. And there is a kind, it's not a diagnosis, but a lot of clinicians use it. It's called Touretic OCD. So it's a name for a blend of tics and OCD where it's not just a tic presentation, but it's also not just an OCD presentation, which I'm not diagnosing you, but maybe you had something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so now I think would be a lovely time because I think a lot of people are upset. Really what happened, and this was lazy and not meticulous of me, but Camila and I had been talking about many things. I'm talking about addiction. I'm talking about tics. I'm talking about a lot of things. And at some point later in the conversation, I just simply say personality trait, which to be clear, I do not think OCD is a personality trait. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

What I probably meant to say is that all of my different isms and compulsions and this and that add up to my personality, which I now have a lot of gratitude for personally. But one of the things that was very common in the comments for people who I had offended was you're confusing OCD with OCPD, which...

Certainly at times I do do that. There's no question I do. And so it was very helpful to read the difference between those. And it would be, I think, very helpful if you told us how those two things are different. Totally. And what they stand for. Yeah. First and foremost, I'm so grateful that you're having me here doing this. I am not out to cancel you or I'm not the language police. So I just want you to know that I'm very sensitive to language.

describing OCD accurately just because there is so much misconception around it. Even Khloe Kardashian constantly uses Khloe CD because I like to organize my cereal pantry and it leaves people so confused and without a name for the condition. So thank you for doing this and for owning up to that. I think that's the most wonderful thing in the world. Okay, great. Yes, and I think you're hilarious and I love this podcast.

Oh, thank you. I just want you to know that. It must have been even more upsetting if you liked it and I didn't. I've had to backtrack things that I've said. I totally understand it. With OCPD, so number one, it's egocentronic a lot of the time. And what that means is if someone has a preoccupation with control, perfectionism, organization, orderliness, they tend to think that that is the right way to be.

That's so key. We've got to triple down on that point. It's very in keeping with their overall value system. That's exactly it. It could impair other people. I also want to say that. I'm not saying that OCPD is a likable condition. And actually, someone was upset about my video about you because they thought

I was saying OCPD is likable. That's not what I'm saying. Like dismissing that. What does it stand for? Sorry. Obsessive compulsive personality disorder. This is what you have. Okay. When we're talking and we use these terms and you'll go, I'll be a little OCD in this thing. Got it. Yes. Where you might see excessive list making, excessive attention to detail. People who say, I really need my spreadsheets to be in this way. They get mad at others often who don't

align with the way that they view things. There might be excessive devotion to work. So much perfectionism that can interfere with the person's ability to get a task done. But they think it's kind of like my way or the highway. This is how things should be done. There's a lot of inflexibility and a lot of rigidity. I think people often also don't talk about OCPD accurately. But when people are saying, I'm so OCD, I think

think what they're saying is, I'm detail-oriented. I like to organize. Well, that is not OCD. OCD is an egodistonic condition. Well, now I will say this, and this is a time I misuse it. I am so uncomfortable when things that are hanging are not level. And I'll go, oh, this is my OCD. But that's my OCPD, if I was going to say it. Yeah. Even. Because it should be level. In your head. I don't disagree. You know, like, I don't think...

I want it level, but it should be crooked. I think I want it level and it should be level. Totally. And that might not be distressing to you at that time, where if someone had, let's say, just right OCD or perfectionism OCD, that would distress them and they would feel the urge to do that over and over and over again until an internal sense of rightness is achieved.

So there is that aspect to OCD, but it's also a very small sliver of how OCD can manifest. And is it fair to say as well, it's also spectrumy. So it's like, even as you're describing it, like, yeah, I want it level. It should be level. Also, it's deeply unsettling in a bad luck way.

So it's like maybe it's just like inching towards, is it a spectrum, I guess? That's a really great question. To be diagnosed with OCD, obsessions and compulsions have to take up at least an hour of your day or cause clinically significant distress or impairment in functioning. So yes, technically speaking, now there are more severe levels of OCD. Some people require residential treatment, whereas others can be treated in an outpatient setting once a week. But if you meet

criteria for having OCD, there has to be some kind of impairment in functioning or distress. That's a great metric to an hour a day. Yeah. Because right now, not a chance. Yeah. I'm not spending, no, five minutes of my days. As a kid, it was a couple hours a day. There we go. Right. Yeah. Interesting. I cut you off twice. No, no, no. Well, I've been eating this burrito. I stopped, but I was eating a burrito kind of

obsessively. It was all I was eating. And then I thought something weird's happening where this is becoming obsessive, but it wasn't causing me any stress. But I also wasn't like, this is the way it should be. Everyone should be eating burritos every day. So it was just kind of this like neutral obsession, sort of. But then I stopped easily. So maybe that's also part of it. Maybe the word would be just better used habitual. Like it became really habitual. I love that. Yeah. But it was a little more. There was some suspicious going on. I want to dissect your brain. So was it a safe food for you?

for you. There could be so many reasons that people, I'm not saying you have an eating disorder, but people with eating disorders have foods, for instance, apples for me. I had safe foods that I would eat constantly. So there are a number of reasons that you could be eating one particular food. It could be sensory issues. So I would be curious as to why a burrito for so long. Not that we have to do with therapy. We're not leaving here until we figure out why Monica ate that burrito 14 days in a row. It was weird. It was weird. Dax is like, please give therapy. Yeah.

It was so weird. Yeah. I mean, it started out as just tasty and then it became like, well, this is, I really don't know what happened, but I needed to have it every day. And then it became the only thing I was eating every day. And then honestly, part of it, I was getting so full on it.

I think it was like, this is kind of a hack. I just have to eat this once a day. And then it started to feel like, I think this is weird for me. This probably is becoming unhealthy. I don't have an eating disorder. I've never struggled with that. But this is feeling a little... Adjacent. Adjacent in a way that...

I'm not comfortable with. Right, because you need more food than a burrito during the day for sure. I do think so, yeah. And it could be a fixation. I mean, I sometimes will eat Chipotle multiple times a week. You know, it doesn't have anything to do with my OCD. It's just a fixation on what tastes good. Yeah. Could be that too. But we often use obsession or I'm so OCD to describe so many things that just aren't. Yes, yes, yes.

Now, and we're getting along so well, and I like this so much, truly. Were you worried? No, not at all. I don't think you would have come if you weren't. Yeah, yeah. I think that said everything about both of us that we would want to sit down and chat. One part I can't relate to tremendously, but now that I've read a bunch of what you've written, it certainly makes more sense. But if I hear a guy on a podcast saying he's an alcoholic because he drank too much one Saturday night, I don't care. I can't relate to...

Being upset people are using it wrong and I'm curious why it's upsetting and I think it's well-founded and I just love for you to explain So if we're gonna go with the addiction and the alcoholism example I think most people know what addiction is and I think that there's a difference with OCD if I could have from day one

known that that was OCD, I would have saved myself a lot of pain and suffering. And I didn't. It took aspects of my life that I will never be able to get back. And the OCD community in particular gets very activated about that because there just is very little representation. You have such an amazing audience. By doing this episode, you're saving so many lives. So I think people especially want people who have platforms to talk about the condition at

Like maybe in 20 years we'll be in a spot where it's like...

It really impacts people's lives and it prevents them from getting the help they need. Well, what I really got a lot of understanding out of was you writing about the five taboo and very common OCD obsessions because it started to make a lot of sense, which is if your garden variety knowledge of OCD is checking the locks twice, or as you say in media, what's most commonly presented, and certainly I agree that

is someone washing their hands a lot. That's like what we like in movies. Well, first of all, it's very visual. Yes, right. The internal stuff is a little bit harder. So if the common colloquial understanding of OCD is that, then when you're wrestling with these five taboo OCDs, any one of them or a combination of them, you think you're uniquely broken, not that you have this thing, because this thing is checking your door locks, which you don't do. So you don't even know...

And then I was like, yeah, that makes a ton of sense. That's very, very valid. Right. The locks and the washing and the sanitizing, such a small portion. Not necessarily small in terms of not a lot of people have it. But if we're looking at just writer contamination obsessions, there's also violent obsessions, postpartum obsessions, sexual obsessions. OCD spans so much more than that. But that's all we hear about as if that's 100 percent of the condition.

Right. Now, okay, I'm going to go through the five taboos because, yeah, this must be so distressing to be trying to evaluate what you are in spite of all these intrusive thoughts. Right.

And I also think just really quick, because I found myself figuring out the difference as I was reading. Obsessive and compulsive, these are kind of two pieces of something. It's an order. Yes. So obsession is repetitive, unwanted thoughts, images, or urges that are intrusive and often distressing for the person. So it's recurrent. It's not just one thought that pops in. Like I think I heard you say, well, I have intrusive thoughts from time to time. We all do. People without OCD can let them go. Yeah.

Like that was an odd thought. And you move on with your day. For the person with OCD, it sticks, it multiplies, and it replays all day long. That is the obsession. It could be a what if. So what if I'm a pedophile? It could be a sexual phrase. I used to have so many of those. And then that causes a lot of discomfort, whether that's anxiety, panic, guilt, shame, and the person feels compelled to perform the compulsion.

the physical or mental act that the person is performing to neutralize the obsession, to prevent that bad thing from happening, to solve the obsession, to alleviate the discomfort. And that just reinforces the obsession and you're stuck in that. Yeah, so that's great. So I guess when I was thinking about it, it was like the compulsivity is what you're observing, right?

But that might not even be reflective of the obsession. They might not be connected, you're saying, right? Well, just like, yeah, if you were observing someone from the outside and you notice that they have some of these compulsivities, it's not so intuitive. It's like how they're choosing to regulate and address and fix and nullify the obsession isn't

so direct. It can be, but also it might not be. Right. Some people with sexual obsessions will wash, let's say, their vagina or penis after having an unwanted thought because they think that that's the thing that neutralizes it. To the outsider, it would be like, why are you washing that during the middle of your workday 18 times? You would think they were a germaphobe. There we go. So you can't always tell. Or it could be if I don't tap this wood, then...

I'm going to snap in my sleep and kill my child, right? And people wouldn't think that the tapping of the wood has something to do with that. And you also don't always see people's compulsions. Mine are all mental. Nobody would have ever known that I was performing compulsions because they all happened in the mind. Mm-hmm.

Did you know? So when I said I have intrusive thoughts. Totally. I do. And at this point, I do think they go away. But I did have a period of time after a major family incident where I was having intrusive thoughts. I could not stop. And the thought was, what if I kill myself? Because there was a suicide incident. And I thought this was PTSD. Yeah.

For a while, but maybe it wasn't because it would just be like flashes of what if I've done that, but not will I do it? It's just if I look down and it had happened sort of thing and it was constant and it was debilitating. Absolutely. But I don't think I had any compulsions to neutralize it.

that I know of. Okay. Were you ruminating? Were you analyzing? For sure. Boom, compulsion, right? So if you're trying to figure the obsession out in your mind, like, well, would I do that? Congratulations. I did it. Yeah.

And I didn't know when I was struggling that I was doing mental compulsions. I thought it was all obsessions, but I was trying to solve it in my head, trying to get rid of the thought even if you're trying to suppress it and push it away, mental compulsion. But it's tough because there are also intrusive thoughts with PTSD. So I see why your brain went there. Maybe it is that. I don't know. And intrusive thoughts with PTSD tend to be more so about the trauma that occurred and

and the person might be avoiding things because they don't want to relive that trauma, where OCD is more this irrational fear that is popping up. Seems like a weird combo, maybe. I was going to say, I see both in yours. Not that I'm diagnosing you. No, no. You're allowed to, by the way. We're happy to take any diagnosis. I mean, your license is your issue, not ours. So feel free to let the diagnoses fly. I feel like I want to know more.

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Okay, so another really relevant part of all this, and you said it a second ago, but I think it's worth really drilling into, and maybe we could start, there's five, but pedophile obsession seems the best place to start to illustrate the difference between an OCD or a pedophile OCD person acting

versus a pedophile. You just dropped it quickly, but there's a great term. Ego dystonic versus ego syntonic. Okay, so give us a picture of what someone struggling with pedophile obsession is going through and how much it doesn't align. There are a couple of moving parts to this. The first is the ego dystonic nature of OCD. And what that means is the obsessions are opposite to the person's values, desires, self-concept, desires.

what they know about themselves. So they're having all of these unwanted thoughts that don't line up with who they are. Could be, what if I'm a pedophile? It could be, what if I snap and sexually molest a child? What if I molested a kid in the past and I just forgot? So there's kind of different variations of it. And...

It is the farthest thing from a pedophile. People with POCD commonly avoid kids because they want to make absolutely sure that nothing bad happens to the kid. Or new moms who have this will lock themselves in their bedroom and make their partner take care of the kid because they want their kid to be safe. People with POCD often don't want to see kids because they don't want to have the thoughts.

That differs greatly from a pedophile who does align with the arousal, the desire, the attraction to prepubescent children, even if they don't act on it. Well, I was going to say, even if they don't act on it, they're masturbating to it. Often masturbating to it, or they still know I am attracted to children. And that's not the person with OCD. The person is doubting what they know when they have OCD. It's what if I'm a pedophile, even though I know that I'm not?

And it's wild because it's like, but don't you just know that you're not? But when you have OCD, it is not that simple. I knew I wasn't. But when you're being bombarded with a thousand million intrusive thoughts a day, I get like naked images of children pop into my mind. And then you feel something because you're having a sexual thought. It's not as simple as don't you just know that you're not? It's a doubting disorder. And your brain is...

Not firing in the way that someone's brain without OCD is. Like this abstract fear based in nothing. Based in literally nothing. But then I'm sitting there all day long like, am I a pedophile? Even though I know I'm not. Seems like the biggest waste of your time. But I just couldn't get it out of my mind.

Yeah, and you would, although this could be part of the compulsion, I was going to say you would never go search for images like a pedophile would. But also, I could see a part of the compulsion, which is I actually need to look at those to prove to myself I don't.

Yes. Like it. I'm so glad that you said that. And there was actually a battle in one of my videos in the comment section the other day. So most people with POCD don't. That is a huge fear of theirs, even so much so that when they're watching porn, if the word teen is in, I'll have clients come in and say, oh my God, am I a pedophile? Because I watched one that said teen and it's like, they're over 18. I mean, I would hope. I will say that there are definitely some people who have

looked at it to prove to themselves that they are not. And that is a whole different beast because then they feel so much shame that they've done it and they're not pedophiles, but you are so deep in it. You are struggling immensely. And you think by looking at this thing, I'm going to finally have the answer. I'm going to know that I'm not. Now what probably happens is you feel something down there because when we have sexual thoughts, even if we don't align with them, we tend to feel something.

I would even argue like that is the perversive nature of suppression almost. There's something really interesting about suppression and fear that it's all together somehow. Oh, for sure. There are people with OCD who unfortunately have looked at that compulsively. That does not mean that they are a pedophile.

They don't align with it. Even if they're having a groin response, again, trigger warning rape, people who have been assaulted, they might orgasm because the body responds. So even feeling something when you have a sexual thought doesn't mean you desire it or align with it. Yeah. Or whatever, want to experience that in your life.

Real life. Oh, God. Yeah. So, yeah, we went through some of them, but I wrote down some that I think are interesting. Well, also, could you explain to us the difference between these two very common things? There's the what if and then there's the command obsession. So there's like two different. Thank you for it.

Columns of this I think that some people think that to have an obsession it has to start with what if or to have an intrusive thought it has to start with what if like what if I'm a pedophile people also get intrusive thoughts like you are a pedophile or People with harm obsessions might get intrusive thoughts like kill them or rape them where you feel like it's your brain telling you to do something or that you want to do something that you absolutely don't it's still an intrusive thought and

And it doesn't mean that you're any more likely to act on it. And I think those scare people more because it's like if my brain is telling me you are a pedophile, then I really must be. Your brain is telling you all the things. Right. How do you know what's real and what's not real? Right. So it might not show up as neatly as what if I'm a pedophile. It might be you are a pedophile or sexual images of children or sexual phrases or even like noises in people's minds. Very graphic. It's not a fun time.

Okay, and now at the risk of perpetuating another stereotype, I can't help but resist the overlap between that and the call of the void, which is something I think people are very familiar with. And I'm wondering how you think about that. So a lot of people experience standing on a skyscraper.

And the voice is telling them, jump off the building, jump off the building, jump. Now, I get that a ton. I can almost not stand on a tall building because my brain's screaming jump. I wonder if that could help people understand this, because although that's probably not OCD, and if you're only on top of a skyscraper and it's happening, not a disorder. But if you've experienced that, perhaps that's a way you can kind of understand that. I'm so glad you described that, because when you said the call of the void, I had no idea we were talking.

I was like, oh my God, this is going to be the one question I can't answer. They call that the call of the void. I have new language. That's wonderful. So that is exactly it for people with OCD. And I don't necessarily like that we describe OCD or obsession sometimes as urges because I think that implies that a person desires it. When we hear, I have the urge to go to In-N-Out or I have the urge to have sex with X, Y, and Z, we think of that as you really want to do it.

For the person with OCD, it's more of a really strong feeling internally that's paired with a scary thought, and they don't want to do it. When you're standing on a tall building, you might feel this internal pull, but it's not an urge per se because you're not wanting to jump off the building. For the person with harm OCD who's holding a knife and they have this buildup inside where they feel like I could just snap and do it right now, they don't want to do that.

It's the perfect example, except for the person with OCD, it's all consuming. And all the time and a myriad of different things, not just a tall building. Yeah. Yeah, but I like call the void and I often use it to explain how I'm feeling in certain other situations. It's like I identify the thing I don't want to happen the most, which is fall off this building. And then the brain starts relentlessly telling me to get it over with and do it. Or like shouting out a slur.

Yes, exactly. I get it on airplanes. I've gotten it at weddings where it's like, just yell this word out. And I'm sitting there like, don't do it, don't do it. And now I know what it is. So it doesn't bother me as much. When my OCD was bad, that consumed me. Like it might happen.

Oh, yeah. So much so that I was worried that I would pick up my phone in the middle of the night and call someone and like say something. It got wild when my OCD was bad. And again, there's the version of that that most people can touch, which is like you walk into a room. There's four people. One person has no legs. And you're like, oh, don't say anything about legs. Don't.

And don't talk about running. Or don't look. All these things, like you're just completely consumed with what you shouldn't do. And then you feel like you're doing it more because you're thinking about it. Yes. Totally. And that's why thought suppression doesn't work. When we tell our brain, don't have that thought, don't have that thought, we're thinking it more. Hmm.

Which is why people with OCD, they try to suppress them and then it just gets worse and worse. How does Tourette's fit into this? Really great question. So Tourette's or tick disorders, they are a separate diagnosis, but very comorbid with OCD. With Tourette's, there tends to be what is called a premonitory urge that precedes the tick.

So it's this kind of buildup of tension in the body. It's more somatic than it is a cognitive obsession. And then the person performs the vocal or the motor tick that often feels sudden and involuntary. And then it kind of gets out that energy. And they can come in episodes where you have a lot of them. A lot of the times kids at school, which you were talking about, will suppress them during the day and then go home. Let them rip, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Go full throttle. Yes.

You're ticking for hours. My poor family. Poor you. That is so awful. But then there can also be that Touretic OCD where there's kind of a mix where the person has that premonitory urge. So they feel the somatic buildup or tension and then they perform compulsive tick-like behaviors over and over and over and over again until it feels just right.

So it doesn't always fall neatly with Tourette's or OCD. It can kind of be a mix. Yeah, the reason I ask is I was assigned this documentary in a psychology class, and it was like a two-hour documentary on Tourette's and this convention that the people in this doc all met at. And they showed the check-in process at the hotel, and they had warned the staff like, hey, this is a Tourette's convention. You're going to see a lot of things come. And sure enough, once they identified in these workers whatever it was,

that could be called out that they knew they shouldn't. That was very common. That's why I was wondering how much of it's like, so they've assessed the same thing, like don't talk about this right now, but then they talk about it. And so it's adjacent. I know the physical thing very clearly, but then there's also this mental component where like, don't do this. And then now I'm doing it. Oh, for sure. And that's part of why I didn't want to be an OCD specialist because I didn't want to pick up on that or sensory motor obsessions. Have you heard of that?

No, tell me that. Okay, so that is when you have a hyper-awareness of automatic bodily functions and then you obsess about what if I never stop thinking about this? So blinking. As you were talking and you were talking about tics, I noticed my blinking. The worst thing you can do is become aware of anything in your body. Literally. Yeah, yeah. And that can look like tics too where the person is aware of their blinking and then they're blinking their eyes multiple times to try to stop having that awareness of the blinking. It is OCD, but it can appear tic-like.

There's a lot of overlap between a lot of these conditions. Oh, God. Now I can't. I'm going to make more. I had a client once with that. What you do is just if I think about it, I think about it. Right. OK, that's helpful. If I think about my blinking, if I blink a million times today, I do. That's how I get through it. It's just like whatever. You don't give energy to it. You just accept it. Exactly. My only one I still have a touch of is I'll get acutely aware of my bladder. Oh, pee?

Yeah. I start obsessing. I'll be on an airplane. If it fucking kicks off on a flight, I'm so sorry if you're seated next to me, but I'll have to go every 12 minutes. Oh, yeah. I'm just like, oh, fuck. And that is a compulsion, right? Yes. And sometimes it can almost feel psychosomatic where you probably don't even have to pee, but you're thinking about it. Well, the proof is in the bowl. Yeah. Like, I'll pee three ounces. I'm like, well, that wasn't worth a trip to the fucking head. Totally. Oh, man. Yeah.

I think that one started on talk shows. Like, I'd be so afraid that I'd have to pee once I got out on the couch that I'd start peeing every five minutes in the green room. I think a lot of people can relate to it before sleep. Oh, for sure. Oh, I think there's more. Like, I got to go back. Oh, wait one more time before. I wish I could reach in and squeeze my bladder and wring it out. It probably wouldn't work because it's not related to the pee. It's more of a, I have to do this so that I can.

Right or no? Yeah. No, totally. I'm hoping that by peeing, I'll be disconnected from my surveying. I'll get this pee out and then I'll finally unplug from focusing on the sensation. Like right now, all I can feel is my bladder. Yeah. Well, Angie, if you think about- There should be a bladder warning to this episode. Bladder blinking. Bladder blinking.

But if you're getting up and you're constantly going to the bathroom, that's kind of reinforcing that awareness. Yeah, exactly. So that's the other thing. That's why response prevention, cutting out compulsions is really helpful. So it's not the getting up and going to the bathroom probably that's going to help you. It's the, okay, I feel something and I'm going to try to go to sleep anyways. To disconnect from that awareness. That's a tall order. Yeah, it is. That scared me. That's like a...

Sponsor tell me I got to pray every morning. I'm like, oh, we got to do that. Meditation, I think. Don't you feel like it's gotten better since you've been meditating? Well, unfortunately, it's just so far away from when I meditated in the day. It's like the end of the day. I'm starting to obsess that I'm not going to get a perfect night's sleep. All the things that are going to fall apart because I don't get the good night. And then all of a sudden it all gets hung on this bladder. Of course.

All roads lead to my bladder. I guess so. But present moment awareness, the more you strengthen that, for me anyway, helps with some of this where I can be like, whatever I feel, I might have to pee, but I'm not going. I'm going to come back to the present moment. Yeah. Mindfulness was huge in my own recovery. It helped me so much.

Well, earmark that because I want you to walk us through the kind of course of action. But in effort to destigmatize this stuff and let people know that what they're dealing with is common and has a solution, I think we should go through a few more of the taboo ones. And you point out at the beginning of this piece I read,

that the stakes seem incredibly high, and they are, in that the fear of I'm going to go talk to somebody and tell them I'm thinking about killing my baby, you're immediately thinking you're going to have the police called on you. Yeah, that's why I didn't want to

I knew I was having these sexual thoughts about kids, but I wasn't going to go tell a stranger that and then risk them saying, you're a pedophile. I'm calling the police. And unfortunately, it does happen where doctors and clinicians who don't understand OCD treat someone with suicidal obsessions as if they actually are suicidal, violent obsessions as if they are homicidal. It does happen.

Right. So you're saying one feared outcome would be getting the police called on you, but then another one would be a 5150. That's happened for people who have suicidal obsessions and they're not suicidal. Their brain is going kind of like you were talking about. What if I kill myself, even though they don't want to? My heart and compassion goes out to the doctor sitting on the other side of that. They're like, oh, my God, if I don't do so. I mean, that's a very hard call to make. I think you're on the other end. I'd rather be wrong.

And they're alive. I'm sympathetic to... Of course. Yeah, that. And that's why this is so important because more doctors need awareness about OCD and what's egodistonic versus egocentronic. Right. So if someone who has suicidal ideations also is thinking...

And the world would be better off without me. My family would be better off without me. Like things would be better. Like this is in accord with my principles. Would that symbolize the difference? Yeah. For instance, people with suicidal obsessions, they're hiding their knives. They're throwing away sharp objects. They're doing whatever they can to not die because they don't want to die. I've had clients stop driving because they're afraid that they're going to open the door on the freeway or turn their car into the median. It's the exact opposite of someone, let's say, who is suicidal with a plan, means and intent.

They are planning and intending to kill themselves if they have that plan. Someone with obsessions, I don't know why I'm having these thoughts. I don't want to die. This is Monica. Yeah. I think you've probably gotten close to removing knives from your house. Oh, 100%. There's definitely moments of like, that needs to be far away. For no reason. But it feels so real. It's so scary. It's the scariest feeling. Okay, so violent obsessions...

is one. This is to harm themselves or others. What if I kill someone? What if I stab someone? What if I'm Jeffrey Dahmer and I'm lying to everyone and I just don't know it? Jeffrey Dahmer got enjoyment out of killing people. He wanted to do those things. He planned everything

actions to take to kill people. Someone with violent obsessions, like someone with suicidal obsessions, they're hiding the knives. They're avoiding being around people. They no longer go to the subway station in New York because they're afraid they'll push someone. It's the exact opposite. You can really take over your entire life. Yes. This is not someone who desires hurting other people in that way.

I feel so bad for those people because, yes, how are you to know that's not how Jeffrey Dahmer felt before he snapped and did it? You know what's wild, too, and I should not be saying this because I'm going to trigger everyone. There's a Jeffrey Dahmer interview where he talks about obsessions and compulsions. And I'm like, babe, no, you're a serial killer. Uh-huh.

Obsession being compulsions. Okay. Doesn't have to be either or though. If it's OCD, if it were harm obsessions, he would not be killing people. So in that case, it would have to be either or. Now he could have, he talked about it as the compulsion to kill and his obsessions about killing. And it's like, but you align with that. That's egocentronic.

If it were OCD about something else, that would make sense. I more meant he could have had separately OCD about one thing and then over in this quadrant. No, he was talking about his obsessions and compulsions to kill. I'm like, babe, you like to cut people up and eat them. This is not OCD. In fact, thank you for giving us the worst example of that.

It's like him, Hitler. There's a handful of people. They really did us a service in talking about things. Or honestly, though. Let's set the bar over here. Pedophiles to me, I always tell my clients, POCD I think is the most stigmatizing and shameful because even murder sometimes you can explain away. There's justified murders. There we go. There's never justified pedophilia. That is the one thing that society hates the most for good reason. Yeah. But with murder, like I used to want to have the harm obsessions instead because I think people are more...

of that than pedophile obsessions. It's the number one. And look, I have on here many times said like, I have enormous compassion with pedophiles. I don't have to fight the urge to do that. That's not what I desire. No one picked that. It's true. It's a fucking death sentence. Yeah. Any ism I would get struck with, that would be my last pick. I'd rather be a murderer. Oh, okay.

A million percent. Yeah, I know. Any day of the week. So I agree with you. And I think even if they want it and they desire it, societally they're aware, there's still got to be enormous shame on the backside of all of it. It's disturbing. It's awful. It should not happen. And I have so much compassion for. You can have compassion and still want people to be put in jail. Yeah.

That's my take. And it would be so hard to be born that way. That's my point. I don't think anyone picked it out. No. And we don't have compassion for them and they deserve treatment and care too. And to be put somewhere safe. Yeah. So that they're not harming people. Protect the public. Of course. Exactly. Okay. Postpartum obsessions. Yeah. I don't know why I'm just arbitrarily saying I feel like this one would be the most common of these five you've listed. Is it more or less common than the others?

Probably about the same. And it tends to be a mix of sexual and violent obsessions for people. So what if I throw my baby down the stairs? What if I want to microwave my baby? And a lot of new moms can get these kinds of intrusive thoughts. So if you've had that thought, it doesn't mean you have OCD. For the person with OCD, it's all-consuming. There's the onset after giving birth.

It can also be, though, the safety of one's baby. So it could be harm befalling the baby. What if my baby stops breathing during its sleep? And then I have clients who stare at the baby monitor for eight hours watching their baby sleep. Or what if my baby chokes? I hate to say it, Monica, but I can see that happening to you. Me too. I already live like that a little bit anyway, not having any kids. I do feel a lot like what if that

falls right on your head. Yeah, it's not great. Yeah, you're worried about family members all the time. Yeah. You think I'm going to die all the time. Yeah, and it's so painful because it really robs new parents from having that experience that they want to have with their newborn. The compulsions that you listed are really heartbreaking to think that there are a lot of

parents that don't want to be alone with their baby. Oh no. They have people come over like their parents compulsively. They're afraid that if they're alone, they'll snap and do something. They don't want to spend time with the baby because ultimately they want their baby to be safe. This is so opposite to their values. I work with a lot of moms who have had to grieve that postpartum period that they didn't get and that they watch other people get with their baby, that euphoria, that bliss.

Don't have it. So that's postpartum OCD. Is there postpartum chemical stuff that's going on that would cause you to actually act on it? Or is that separate? Not with OCD. There could be postpartum psychosis. I'm not a psychosis specialist, but...

From what I know, the person is experiencing delusions or hallucinations. So that's what we commonly hear of when it's this new mom drowned her babies in the tub. It's psychosis. That is very different than OCD. The person with OCD has insight. So they know I'm having these thoughts that I don't want to be having. With psychosis, there's an absence of insight and the person tends to believe the delusion or the hallucination. The baby's spirit possessed. Right. Exactly. That's not OCD.

But people worry that they are experiencing psychosis and that if they tell a doctor, their baby will be taken away. So it's a painful spot to be in. Oh, I would be terrified if I said all this out loud. Child protective services. I mean, everyone has a heightened fear of that. Out of nowhere, Delta was maybe three at this point. A babysitter came over, friend of ours, daughter. And she gets there and she's right in the kitchen. But Delta's only three, so she doesn't give a shit.

She goes, I'll call her Bridget. I don't want Bridget to babysit me. I said, why? She's right there. Bridget's wonderful. I don't like Bridget. Bridget, I'm going to show you my daddy's penis. And I was like, oh.

All I think is like, oh my God, is Bridget going to think in this household, I'm punishing people by showing my penis. What will she surmise from that statement? And I'm like panicked for three hours that I'm going to have child protective. And that's nothing. That just burbled up out of nowhere. No, I'd be worried about that. Yeah. That's terrifying. I'm going to show you my daddy's penis. She was kind of obsessed with...

Your penis. Butts and penises. Yeah, yeah. She used to tell me, Tia, I'm going to smack you in the penis if she's mad at me. Yeah, it's so bizarre. That is wild. Yeah. Quite an imagination. I'm a child of the 80s, and that was during the moral panic on Satanism and a moral panic on molesting. And so, like, all these teachers got thrown in jail. And the tiny things that people could get incarcerated over when you're now a parent and the 10 kabillion things they say out of nowhere all the time. Do you have kids? I wish. No. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. It's just like once every four days, you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Where did that sentence come from? The little gears inside just fucking put that together. Yeah. And you go back to the 80s when I was born. I was like, yeah, I think they put people in jail for a little less than that. Okay. So incest obsession. Oh.

Oh, gosh. I guess that would probably for me be only second hardest taboo other than pedophilia, which is like we all have a pretty huge incest taboo. Oh, yeah. What if I'm attracted to my parents? What if I want to have sex with my parents? I definitely had that. And it was so awful. Images just sickening. Nobody wants to think about their parents having sex. And then when you're thinking about what if I want to be the one having sex with. I can relate on that one. It's sick. Yeah. I'm like, oh, please.

Please. Yeah, a lot of my worst nightmares. People are like, what's your worst nightmare? And people are like, oh, I got chased by this guy with a knife. I'm like, no, it's always I've had sex with a family member. A thousand. I wake up and I want to die. Yeah. And I was so worried that I would dream about the obsessions that I couldn't sleep. Ooh.

I stopped sleeping for so long because I was afraid that I would have sex with a child in my sleep or have sex with a family member. And sleep evaded me for a really long time. Which probably made it all worse. Oh, I was a mess. No, I don't want to make light of any of these, but I will say bestiality and necrophilia obsession. I just feel like of all these that would be easiest for me to talk myself out of, it would be these. You think? Yeah, exactly. But no. No.

So when I tell you the things that I believed, no, I had the dog ones too. I had insight. I knew I wasn't, but I really thought I could want to touch my dog's vagina. Or when you're in it and it's feeling so real and your adrenaline is so high and your brain is misfiring, you believe it. You're panicked. You're in the amygdala. Like you're not in the frontal lobe. There we go. You're in the fear center. And that's why often when people say, but just tell yourself that you're not, you know, you're not. Well, I can't connect to that when the fear center of my brain is active. Those are two different parts of the brain.

And one is better at hijacking the other. That's exactly it. And then when you're getting images of you touching dogs, oh God, I would get so many thoughts about my boss's King Charles Cavalier. Is that what they're called? Never forget. That's an honest, never very perverted breed.

Okay, so you get on the path of a diagnosis and then presumably some schedule of treatment or some approach. So maybe let's start with what is the history of even trying to treat this? How new is this speciality?

I don't know exact dates, but from what I've read, exposure and response prevention, which is the treatment with the largest evidence base, I think has been around since the 80s. But when I worked at UCLA at their intensive outpatient program, we saw people who were 75 years old who just had never had treatment or language for it. So it is

relatively newer. And there are other treatments that can be effective too. Is the approach you just said at all similar to immersion therapy? I hear this immersion therapy. It's like if you're afraid of germs, they'll make them stand in a trash can. Absolutely. But it's more gradual. So expect

Exposure is exposing yourself to the feared stimulus. So that might be cooking with a knife if you have violent obsessions. And then response prevention is cutting out the compulsive rituals. Those two things paired together. So for someone with pedophile obsessions who is avoiding TV like I was, it might be watching a TV show with kids and then not ruminating and not checking to make sure that I'm not aroused by the kids.

Right. So how does one do that if it's in your head? Well, here's the thing. We can't stop intrusive thoughts. We can stop mental compulsions. Mental compulsions are active. If you are choosing to solve a math equation, you can stop doing that. Hmm.

Right? Or even people who worry. You can say, I'm not going to figure that out. I'm not going to check. I'm going to come back to watching this TV show. This is a benign example, but I will have arguments with people in my mind that are forthcoming or I've decided are forthcoming.

And so I'm building my case and I have exhibits and I've got like 12 pieces of good evidence. And then by the time I get to the 12th, I get worried. I forgot the first one. So I go back through and I will find myself on hour three of having an argument with somebody that ultimately will never happen. But I just keep building my case. And I would call that rumination. And I have to say to myself,

Court case is over. You can fear this inevitable outcome and you can whatever, but the actual court case building has to stop now. Is that similar? That's exactly right. So if the obsession is what if I'm a pedophile, let's say that thought pops in, which it did for me. I can't control that because it popped in. I can control my response to that. I don't need to engage with that compulsively. I don't have to ruminate. I don't have to check. I can trust in what I know about myself and keep watching that TV show as the exposure.

Would this fall in line with CBT? This sounds very CBT. Yes. So that's the behavioral portion of cognitive behavioral therapy. There is a cognitive component to OCD treatment too. I think a lot of people, when they think of CBT, they think I'm going to give you a worksheet. You're going to challenge these unwanted thoughts and then you're going to get better. And that's not the treatment for OCD. So there is a little bit of cognitive, but it's heavy behavioral as well. You just gave me one, but could you give me some examples?

Examples of steps you took and when you started feeling relief in that timeframe. I know you consider yourself extremely lucky in having gotten your arms around it in like a year and a half of work. Oh, no, it was not a year and a half. Oh, was it? Oh, yeah, no, no, no, no.

Or maybe it was that you sought treatment. Yes, exactly. So I got diagnosed within a year, which is truly a miracle because a lot of people go 10 to 15 years. That's the average. And that year for me, like I said, I was ready to kill myself. People that go 10 to 15 years not knowing, I have so much respect for. I did see one OCD specialist at first. It just wasn't working. He was really sweet. He compared his balding to my obsessions. And I was like, sir. He's like, well, you know, I'm balding. I tend to think about that a bit. And we're not comparing balding.

you're balding to my pedophile obsessions. And then he charged me for that phone call. And I'm like, but you were talking about your distress, not mine. And he pushed me into exposures and I didn't know I was doing them. So that was kind of my first OCD specialist. I stopped working with him. And then I saw one

About three years into my suffering, and that was what changed my life. And this person's approach was? Psychoeducation at first. So educating about OCD, which sounds ridiculous, but when you don't know. It doesn't sound ridiculous. We just learned so much today. The most liberating part of reading the AA Big Book is going like, this is an illness. Yes. Oh, okay. So it's not a moral failing on my end. That's.

That's why I like being diagnosed with it. I respect Camilla not wanting to call it a disorder. And if I have clients who don't, that is fine too. I love calling it a disorder because it's not me. So a lot of education about OCD, then some metacognitive therapy, which is ultimately thinking differently about your thinking.

which can be helpful. So again, this might sound ridiculous. I didn't know that you could have thoughts that weren't true. I thought because I was having these thoughts that they were inherently true, especially because I was having them 40 million times a day. And then I learned that feelings are not facts. But really quick, let's spend one second on that. The stakes are high to acknowledge that what you're thinking is not real because it then calls into question all the other things you're thinking. What is real? You're compositing reality in your head.

So once you open the door to the fact that I'm an untrustworthy observer of reality, the whole house of cards feels like it might collapse. Right. That's a big one. I don't think that's trivial. And people with OCD and even people in general have to learn which thoughts are worthy of paying attention to because there are some thoughts that are helpful and true. With OCD, not so much. So that really helped me learning that.

feelings are not facts was really helpful too because it felt so real to me and I couldn't understand why it felt like I could be a pedophile and I wasn't. Learning that really helped and then a lot of mindfulness work which I didn't want to do at first. Yeah, no one does. But it got to a point where...

I would come into her office. I would just sob on the couch the whole session. She would tell me to chill. That's how activated I was. I probably wouldn't say chill to a client, but she was like, you need to chill. Oh, boy. Did she ever say take a chill pill? No, no. I'm like, don't tell me to fucking chill. Yeah, it's not going to work. But it was a turning point in my treatment because I came in and I was finally graduating with my bachelor's degree. And that was a big deal for me.

and I wanted to go to the graduation and not have intrusive thoughts. That was my whole thing. I kept saying to her, can I just stop these thoughts? I want to have this one day. You want to be present. And she finally looked at me and she said, you are going to have the thoughts and you need to accept that. And I said, I don't want it to be a shitty Sunday. And she said, Allegra, I've had a lot of shitty Sundays with OCD. You need to accept that the thoughts are going to be there.

And that changed my whole outlook on living with OCD. And that was the thing that made me start to notice my thoughts without judgment and start to allow them to be there without suppressing them. And it really helped because I put a lot of energy into trying not to have those thoughts. So I went to graduation and I was having thoughts about like fucking my cousin and whatever else was coming up. And I was like, well, that can exist. And I'm going to throw my cap in the air. And it helped me immensely. ♪

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Mom, Dad, you should shop Amazon for back to school and save some money. See, I'm currently obsessed with superheroes and need all the superhero stuff. Superhero launch box, superhero bag.

but next year it'll be something else. Maybe dinosaurs? I don't know. I'm not a fortune teller. But I can tell you not to spend a fortune and shop low prices for school on Amazon. Okay, good chat. Amazon, spend less, smile more. This summer, during the biggest sporting event of the year, Peacock turns to two broadcasting legends for the Olympics coverage you can't find anywhere else.

I think they mean us. Oh, s***.

Have you ever done Transcendental Meditation by chance? No. Okay, so the big breakthrough in that for me, this is very similar, which is in the past when I would try to meditate, I would start thinking about things and ruminating on things. And I'm like, well, I can't because of this. And I would fight that. And then in TM, they're like, don't fight it. If it comes into your head, go ahead and entertain it. But then also...

Just try to come back to your mantra. Don't fight it. Okay, I gotta pay my taxes. And then you're just saying your mantra. I didn't, I made one up. Yeah, you're not allowed to say it. I did tell Lincoln the other day though. Oh my God. That's how much I love her.

You can't share with, is this AA or? This is TM. This was my experience with TM. I don't know if this is everyone's, but I was given my mantra and she said, here's your mantra. And you're not to tell anyone. I would tell everyone. I would call my therapist. Do you know what my mantra is? She's like, babe, you're not supposed to say it. You're like, I know. That's why I'm definitely going to say it. That's why I'm telling you. Well, it's really funny because of the other people I know who do TM, we would never do it. And I have one friend who tells everyone and I'm like, this is crazy.

Because I've got to hold on to some of the magic voodoo. I really want to know it. I'm sure you can get it out of Lincoln. I can't believe you don't know it. I know. That's wild. Well, I did make one up that I did tell you. Making up is worse. Well, no, I was using it for a while and it worked. But I think maybe because I told you it stopped working. No, no, no, no.

Anyways, though, the permission to not fight it was such a breakthrough and it's very counterintuitive. It's the most counterintuitive because of course I wanted to stop having thoughts about children and animals, but the more that I fought with it, the more of those thoughts that I had. What you resist persists. That's exactly it. That's a big motto. And I say that to clients often.

So when you say it's okay to have these thoughts, it doesn't mean I need to engage with them. So I wasn't at graduation ruminating about the thoughts. I let them exist and I came back to the present moment, which was graduating. Yeah, you can almost think about it as like you're in a room, a fifth person enters. You don't like that person. But it's like, yeah, they're here.

Okay. But I'm not going to try to remove them. I just accept that they're there. And now I'm going to focus on the four people I like. That's exactly it. And then you're not bothered as much when you're not attending to the person that's there. It's like, you can be here. It's not my preference, but I accept it. There we go. And that's, I think, why a lot of people don't like the word acceptance with OCD. They think I'm saying, accept that you're a pedophile. No, I'm not saying, accept that the thoughts are true. I'm saying, accept that you're having them. Those are two very different

And that you're likely powerless over having them. That's exactly it. Is there anybody trying to pinpoint, like if you were to look at this from more of a psychoanalytic approach, if Orna were here, like I do wonder if Orna would be like, do you know Orna? No. Do you watch Couples Therapy? Couples Therapy.

I can't watch that for my own reasons. This is not OCD, but I get really fixated on being single. And so I don't want to watch, I don't want to watch couples therapy because I'm like, I want to be in couples therapy with someone. It sounds nuts. I have my own issues. You won't want to be in a relationship. It might be the antidote. It might help. I

I'm sad when I watch things with couples. I just need to get the fixation under control. That's why. I actually think this would be the antidote. Monica loves it. I love it. And you feel both, though. You do feel like, oh, man, there is something special about partnership. But then you're also like, oh, my God.

God, it's hard. You're not seeing their picnic. You're not seeing the day they got married. And my brain always goes to the honeymoon phase. So it might help. I probably need it. Yeah. No one's in there because it's going spectacular. It's like in AA where it says, it's the loser's club, not the winner's club. No one's set out to join AA. That's incredible.

But at any rate, Orna, who we respect greatly, she's very into psychoanalysis. She's a therapist on the show. Are you even open to the notion that there's something underpinning all of it and that that could be addressed? There are a lot of different theories. Psychoanalysis is likely not going to treat OCD first and foremost. And I think a lot of people will say what caused it doesn't necessarily matter because we're treating the symptoms of it. Ah.

I think a lot of people get triggered by psychoanalysis because they think that the therapist is saying there's meaning to these thoughts and we need to figure out the inherent meaning in them when I don't think there was any meaning in me having sexual thoughts about kids. However, I'm not going to say that there's not

something underlying that could be addressed. I don't think I had predominantly sexual obsessions for no reason. I think that there was probably something in my upbringing that contributed to that. And I think if you looked at it from a psychoanalytic lens, there would be that viewpoint. Now I also know that I have a brain that functions very differently from other people. So I don't think it would have been the cause, but I think looking at what could be underlying sometimes is helpful to people.

Yeah, I don't think it would be linear. Not at all. But some psychoanalysts do think, like I had one when I was getting my hours and I was an intern who said something about she thought sanitizing represented something. It didn't make sense to me, but I think some psychoanalysts do think there's some kind of

meaning behind why someone's doing these things. I think in my most optimistic view of all of it, and we talked about it with Orna, I actually don't like that these two approaches are positioned against each other or that they're binary or that you should do one or the other or that you can't look at yourself from every conceivable angle and have a toolkit. I just don't love that there would even be

any kind of pitting one against another. Two thoughts about that, because I agree with you. I think that we're treating the whole person. And I think sometimes clinicians forget that. I'm a big fan of using different modalities. And I think a lot of the times therapists get really married to one modality. And we also do want to use what's evidence-based. And so if we're using something like psychoanalysis to treat OCD and there's not a lot of evidence and it's not working, a lot of clinicians try to use just general talk therapy. And what ends up

happening is they're just sitting there compulsing with their client. Yeah. Right. It's like, but you're not a pedophile because of this. And let's reassure yourself. And that's actually making the person's symptoms worse. So I think that there does need to be a blend of a lot of things, but it has to be something that's actually going to help the client.

I would imagine there would be a preferable order, even if you're going to do both. I would think you would definitely want to do your approach or a CBT approach and get it in a manageable condition. And then maybe look at, are there other things, which has been helpful for me because I do think that even for me, there's this underlying, what if I'm bad? And that definitely stems from childhood. Yeah.

That's huge. Like, big one for me. So looking at that has been helpful and looking at just how that shows up in other areas of my life. It wouldn't have helped during my OCD treatment per se, but now that my symptoms are under control, it is helpful for me to look at maybe why I still get stuck on things sometimes. Yeah. To be fair to Orna, she also said she often refers people to CBT people. Oh, yeah. I don't have a problem with it.

Listen, I could probably be in psychoanalysis. Is it a treatment for OCD? Probably not, but I probably need psychoanalysis. So I'm not at all against. Well, for me, like, okay, I started going to AA 20 years ago, almost to the day, and it solved all of the burning rooms on fire in the house issue.

And it worked for so long. But then after those fires are out for a long time, you're like, oh yeah, I can hear a dripping leak. There are other things I want to tackle or explore. And AA actually doesn't have any kind of prescription for that. And so I like then adding that aspect to it.

Yeah, and I think even OCD clinicians, I don't want to get canceled for saying this, but I think sometimes can be very narrow and it's like we're just treating the OCD, which is great when we're treating OCD, but we have to remember that they could have PTSD, they could have other things that also need to be managed or just even managing the emotional impact of OCD. There are clinicians who say OCD can't be traumatic, it can just be distressing. I've had big T trauma, what people call big T and OCD a thousand percent was more traumatizing.

I would go through the big T trauma a hundred million times again if it meant not living with OCD. Yeah. And clinicians don't address that piece of it sometimes. It's we're only going to do the OCD behavioral stuff. And then the client is left with, well, my symptoms are dissipated, but now I have all of this emotional stuff that I want to work through. What do I do with that? Yeah.

Yeah. So glad we did this. Oh, me too. I feel like. Yeah, it's been really fun. So informative. I definitely didn't know about all this at all. I'm going to have to clean up my talk a bit. Sometimes we just talk. I know. And say stuff. I know, I know. But it's good we get to correct. Like I said, it's amazing that you've done this. What's really funny is, you know, we interviewed a sociopath. And this is not to compare these things at all.

But in learning about sociopaths from a diagnosed sociopath who's also a clinical psychologist, I'm like, fuck, yeah, you're born that way. No one picked it out. Now I kind of have compassion for sociopaths. Now I can't even use the word sociopath the way I want to use it. Listen. What's left? Yeah.

I know. And that's what I was thinking, too. I was thinking Dax probably thinks that I'm one of those people who says we can't use any kind of word. I'm not because I've been suicidal for much of my life. I talk about suicide in a way that sometimes I joke about it. Sure. I've dealt with it. But for some people, they really, really don't like that. So I'm not one of those people that's like, we can't ever use language. I just want to make sure that we're using language accurately. But I liked in your Paris Hilton episode when you talked about falling on deaf ears. You're like, but I was deaf. So can't I? Yeah.

So can't I say that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like that sometimes about suicide is like, can't I speak about suicide in ways? Oh, I was molested and I love molesting jokes. There we go. I got about 20 of them and they're so funny to me. Can I tell you one of them? Sure. Well, is it going to? Oh, I'm fully healed. I'm like, my ovaries are on fire. If I don't meet someone tomorrow.

My therapist is getting a raise because I'm coming in more. Okay, trigger warning to anyone who doesn't like molesting jokes. There's a young boy and a Boy Scout leader and they're walking through the woods and it's late at night and the little boy says...

I don't like it out here. It's really dark. I'm pretty scared. And he says, how do you think I feel? I got to walk out of here alone. Oh, God. Wait, why don't I get it? Because he like rapes and kills him. Oh, no. It's horrible. Oh.

For me, having OCD, I feel like I should have gotten that and I didn't. My brain's gone to worse places. How did I not get that? Interesting. Okay, that'll be the last one. Yeah, let's maybe take a break from those. Let's end it there. This has been awesome. I would love to talk to you anytime you want to talk. Oh, I guess I have one last question because you are the founder of the Center for OCD Anxiety and Eating Disorders. Yes.

Just really quickly, eating disorders, you kind of talked about it at the very beginning, but tell me why that would be falling under your purview or it would be a part of the Center for OCD and Anxiety. Because I lived with an eating disorder, I think I have a lot of passion for treating that too. And while it's not the same as OCD, I did have obsessions and compulsions with anorexia. So OCD and eating disorders are just two of my main passions.

They work very symbiotically, I would imagine. And it honestly felt similar to me. OCD was a million times worse. And I actually tried to force anorexia again because I wanted to get rid of the OCD. But it was like I couldn't stop thinking about food and body. And then I compulsively exercised and restricted and

They did feel very similar where there was also like a snapping point in my brain where everything changed. I would say too the thing about an eating disorder in OCD is that for me, my compulsions were so tangentially linked right to the obsession. Again, the scuffing and the tics and why that solved the other thing. Whereas that one's like so directly related. So I would imagine the satiation you get from controlling the eating when it is your obsession is,

is so direct. Does that make any sense? Yeah. It's not hard for me to imagine

how that would work and feel for me. And I think that that's where it also differs a bit from OCD is that A, it's more egocentronic sometimes for people and B, it's rewarded. So I think what you're talking about is yes, when I restricted and compulsively exercised, I lost the weight that everybody had told me to my whole life. I got complimented. Yes, it was a disorder, but also when I stopped eating, I saw the direct result of that and it was very hard to stop. Yes.

Okay, so please check out the Center of OCD, Anxiety, and Eating Disorders. And also, I think people would love to follow you on Instagram because you're talking a lot about this topic all the time. So what's your handle? At Allegra Castins. One L, y'all. And with a K, Castins. Yes. And I'm writing a memoir as well. It's not going to be out for two years. Oh, cool.

How do you know it'll be out in two years? Spring of 2026 is the publishing date. Okay. I have a deadline. So you're acting to it. I see. Yes, which it's going. I'm like my publisher, don't listen to this. Yeah. It's actually not going. Well, Allegra, this was so fun. It was amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. All right. Take care. I sure hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs. Monica, comes in and tells us what was wrong.

I can feel myself already going into some stuff. You love to go in to stuff. That's right. Get right into it. Because you just held up your coffee mug and it says, too legit to quit. Yeah. Which I reminded you. You didn't need reminding. I just said, that's MC Hammer's quote. And did I tell you about Michael Buffer? No. Do you remember Michael Buffer? He said, let's get ready to rumble.

Yes, I know that very well. So at the hotel I had described as Soviet, there was like metal plaques on the wall of celebrities that had stayed there. And Michael Buffer was one of them. Oh. And he wrote, let's get ready to rumble. And I had...

A few thoughts. One is like, so great to have a catchphrase. You know what to write on those things. Sure. Right? You never have to make something up. You're not like, hmm, what am I going to say to this hotel? Yeah. You can't say good luck. They're a hotel. You don't wish a hotel luck. You could say good luck, but it feels ominous.

Yeah, yeah. And almost like patronizing. Yeah, passive aggressive. Yeah, okay. Earmark, I now am remembering one of my USO stories. But okay, so anyways, Michael Buffer and then the rest of the gang didn't remember who he was. So I was saying, you know, he said, let's get ready to rumble. And then I was telling them he used to get a million dollars to say that. Do you know that? Like before the big fights, like Tyson Holyfield, he was getting a million dollars to say that.

And they kind of didn't believe that. So then I had to do some research and I looked him up on Wikipedia and he copyrighted that. Oh. And through the licensing of that one sentence, let's get ready to rumble, multiple different sources say he has made $400 million. Wow.

Isn't that great? Good for him. I guess he invented it? Or did someone tell him to say that? Had he heard it somewhere else? Right. I mean, that person just didn't copyright it and get popular saying it? Is he living with guilt is what I'm asking. I don't think so at all. I think 400 million bucks. He's still traveling. He's clearly in Bergen, Norway. Do you think we could do that with Ding Ding Ding?

We might as well give it a shot. If Buffer made $400 million on Let's Get Ready to Rumble. I'm just going to start copywriting everything I say just in case. You should. I wonder if the copyright office is flooded with people. They're like, hey, I just thought of this. Been there, done that.

And they're like, no, no. Okay, I got to tell you the one really quick, though, because I was on a USO tour. And this is a little bit mean, but bear with me. And when you're on a USO tour, we were in Afghanistan. And every time you stop somewhere, they ask you to sign stuff. Like you end up signing so many tanks and like maybe the inside of helicopters. You sign a lot of stuff.

Again, I don't have a catchphrase. I don't know what to say. You could say you've been punked. You know, I think I wrote that a couple times. But then it was like they didn't get punked. They're fighting. It was challenging. Okay, so what I found out was that Larry the Cable Guy was going to be there in two weeks on the next USO tour. And once I found that out, everything I signed, I wrote, get her done, Dax Shepard.

Because I was like, of course he's going to have to sign this stuff. And that's his catchphrase. And he's going to be like, what the fuck? He can't write get her done. That's what I was going to write. And then he had to think of something. Maybe he wrote, you just got punked. Maybe. I'd sure like to know if he did ever come across that signature. I feel like he had to have. Yeah.

Because everything I was signing had been signed. There was about 20 other signatures from other people. Why didn't you just sign your name? Well, because you got to write something. You can't just write Dax Schiff. I think that's...

I think that's the pitfall. Like, just sign your name. Put a heart. Well, I do do that. Or a smiley face. Here's the extra problem that compounds all this. My signature, my, quote, autograph is illegible. You've seen it. It doesn't mean anything. So I often, in those situations when it's like on a USO tour, I sign it and then I have to write DAX because I'm like, this means nothing. Right.

And then maybe with a catchphrase or some kind words, I don't know. Sure, sure. But I wrote get her done everywhere I went. Yeah, that is mean. Or funny. Is it funny though too?

When you think of Larry the Cable Guy reading his catchphrase, like if I knew Michael Buffer was coming the week after and I wrote Let's Get Ready to Rumble every time. You'd owe him so much money. I wonder how they even. Oh, my God. What are the rules? Like I can understand not going on television and saying it at a fight, but can no one in the world say Let's Get Ready to Rumble without paying him? Well, now I'm worried. That we owe him money? No, this is news. We're covering it. Okay.

We're now a news show. We're allowed to say it on the news. Yeah, you can say anything on the news. You can sing happy birthday. You can? I don't know. What I do know is if you have a documentary, any music you'd have in a movie, you have to get licensing for from the artist or whatever the publisher. But if you're making a documentary and you're walking through the streets of New York and Beat It is playing on a loudspeaker, you're allowed to have that in there.

Really? It's not called eminent domain, but it's one of those words like that. Like where it says it's unavoidable. You didn't put it there. I don't know. Well, this is a doc, so it's fine. Yeah, this is currently a doc. And the news.

It's a documentary about the news. Let's get ready to rumble. Stop saying it. I'm worried. And get her done. Oh, my God. Do you want to put any out there? No. I'm going to be karmically well, and I'm just going to say ding, ding, ding, sim. Those are the two. Reverse back. Reverse back. Yeah. I got one today. Oh, you did? Mm-hmm. Oh, what could feel better? Yeah. It's been tough figuring out her order lately, so I was pleased.

She's getting spicy for the summer. Yeah. I feel bad because I did publicly say I think she hates summer. I'm taking that back. Oh, you did. Oh, did you say that on Synced? I thought I said it here. Maybe I said it on Synced. Maybe you said it on her text chain. You definitely said it on her text chain. Oh, well, I said it again. Oh, man, I'm getting caught that I said things twice. You're never allowed to say anything twice. Ha ha.

And if you do, you have to copyright it. But I take it back. But for a while, she was feeling real feisty at the beginning of the summer. And I don't blame her. It's hot. Like, it's hot out. And people get crabby and testy, including me. I've decided that I want to go somewhere for a couple days. You got to get out of there. I got to get out because my apartment is so hot.

Hot. And then outside is so hot. There's nowhere to go except my bedroom is kind of, if I keep the door closed and the fan on, it's okay. But then I'm just in my room. Like I'm depressed in there. Well, I don't want to be critical of your apartment or your apartment building or the management of it. But it is curious that they mounted one air conditioner in your whole apartment and they put it in the kitchen. Exactly. Where no one sits to watch TV and no one sleeps.

It's an interesting spot for it. Yeah, bad spot. Have you considered moving your bed into the kitchen? Think about it. That's a good thought. No, I just got to go. I got to leave. I got to get out of here. Traditionally, this is when I would spend a lot of time at the movie theater. Like when I lived in Santa Monica with no air conditioning, come September when it'd get blazing, I'd see a couple movies a day just to beat the heat. Mm-hmm.

Not going to do it. I'm not in the mood for movies right now. So you haven't found a pool since I last spoke to you, I'm guessing. No, I have not. Really? Yeah, I haven't. And you don't like my idea of checking into a hotel? I might. I might. I looked into going to a hotel. I won't say which one. Okay. Ice cold air conditioning? I assume they have great air conditioning based on...

The brand of the hotel. I'm not going to finish that sentence. But I assume they have great air conditioning because it's a hotel. And I've never been to this hotel, so it might be a fun thing to do. Now, what? You want to talk about it? I want to talk about something. Yeah, let's talk about it. I think at this point it needs addressing. It comes up every four seconds.

Yeah, so go ahead. So should we tell the full story or the version? Yeah, let's tell the full story, I think. Okay, full story is you were joking. You were making a joke. I made a bad joke on our fact check. Involving one of our advertisers. Yes. To be clear, because people heard it, it's also gone now. So if you try to go back, you can't find it. But it was, to me, it was obviously a joke. But-

That wasn't so clear. Right. Well, there was a handful of people in the comments that said something about that. And then so the advertisers saw that. And so we got contacted. So we're like, okay, no problem. We'll take that out. That was a joke. But if it doesn't sound like one, we'll take it out. And then because you knew that those comments that we're now kind of defending and or evaluating whether or not we act,

You decided to break your abstinence and read the comment section on that episode. Yes. Okay. Take it from there.

It was awful. It was really bad. I also felt validated in why I don't go there. Right, right, right. Well, let's just be clear. It wasn't bad about that joke. Well, some people were mad about that joke. And that's, I feel like, how it started. And then it was just a major pile on.

Um, of how I'm not relatable anymore and how I, you know, only talk about fancy things and why don't I get a fashion podcast? And, um, you know, we talk about, actually, we do talk about this a tiny bit on an upcoming episode a little bit during the episode with the guest.

Yeah, so this is a nice precursor for that, I guess. Yeah, Easter egg. But yeah, but so it was... You were really sad for a couple days. It was really rough. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was not easy to see all those things. And then, of course, you feel like you have to defend yourself. Yeah. But I know that...

that that's not what I want to do and I don't want to engage there. But of course I did comment because I couldn't help it. And then I was like, well, this is how it happens. And like, this is exactly why I don't do it. Because there was like different streams of anger towards me. One was the sponsor. Then there was this unrelatable thing. And then there was this other stream of people being mad that I don't look at the comments and,

Right. That I tell you not to look at the comments. So there was this whole thing happening there. That was like the last thing I read, and I was just like, I raved at that point. And I also was like, are you kidding? Just look at what this page is. Why would you want me to see this unless you fully hate me, which maybe you do, but also –

You know, I also get really... Definitely defensive, I guess, is the word. But it's more than that when I'm reading the stuff. Well, it's also hurtful. Oh, God. I mean, I was so hurt by it. It was so painful. Yeah. But...

But I also feel like stop listening. If you're going to be the type of person who listens and then does this, I don't want you. And this is mine. This is mine and yours. You don't get to come and tell me to do a fashion podcast. Like, no, no, no. We created this. I think you're misunderstanding. I wasn't hired to. Right. Oh, God. It's just. Yeah, it was just it was a lot. It was tough. It took.

A bit to get over. Oh, by the way, I've been impressed and proud of that you have. Thanks. Yeah. I really couldn't say much. I'm like...

You know, I'm just trying to point out that these are generally people that want the shit you're talking about. And they're very jealous. And that's what it is, you know? Yeah. Someone said I need to stop talking about being on vacation and the podcast. And yeah, I wanted to go like, you know what? You produce 165 episodes of a show a year. And then you can tell me not to go. And I felt the same way. I'm like, what are you...

But there's nothing to say other than, well, it gets better because I've been blasted and it does dissipate. Well, I'm just not going to see it. Like, I don't have to see it and I'm not going to. And when people are like, we like that Dax looks at this and engages and we're mad that she doesn't like it. And like, whatever, one of them said, why is she so upset about the beats? It's just like...

I mean, it gets so crazy that you feel totally untethered to earth when you're starting to read these. Like, you're starting to believe. You're like, wait, was I mad about the beets? What are the beets? Because you were reading comments. You were reading comments on the show. The food, the food beets. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. And one of the comments was like, I don't think you've given beets enough of a try or something. And I was like, what? But...

And obviously they could tell that I was not super into the segment where you're reading comments. Yeah, right, right. Which is true. Yeah, yeah. But they happen anyways because I like—

And it's everything's fine. This is the bigger issue, I think, which is like everything's fine. Like I still read the thing about the beats. I want to do it like you'll let me do what I want to do and I let you do what you want to do. And we don't have to be one thing. It would be so boring if we were one thing. And it's all fine. You get both things. Like either people are mad at me for being too mean to you or they're mad at you for being too mean to me.

And it's like, well, in every one of these scenarios, you have your champion. Like, you already got your person. Do you want us to both be the same? Yeah. I'm just not into it. Like, I'm just not into this negativity. It's not for you. It's not for me. Yeah, and you shouldn't read. And you wouldn't have read other than we had this thing. Yeah. Joke gone bad, as we say. Bit gone bad. Yeah. But I got it. I've been meaning to tell you this for a while off air, but we're talking about it. Mm-hmm.

You know what's the craziest thing is often instead of blocking people now, I just hide them, right? Like if their comments are terrible, I'll just hide them. But then what's interesting is then all the hidden ones are at the bottom and I can read those. And what's so bizarre, and this is kind of illuminating, is –

Some of these people who wrote just horrific things like almost threatening either of our life or safety then go on to write like 100 nice comments. And what I really realized, like, I also don't think – I'm not defending people who go on message boards to be mean. But I also – it's occurring to me. A lot of people have no clue when they are.

Being man. Yeah, because like the tone of a lot of these people that I've hidden, then the rest of their stuff is like really nice and flowery. And I'm like, how is this the same person?

They're super positive now. They were crazy negative before. And it's like, oh, that was them on that day. Who knows? I guess what I thought was when I was going to hide people and then they wrote like four other terrible things, at least no one would see them. And I would go like, okay, kind of three strikes you're out. That doesn't really happen, which is so interesting to me. Is

Is that making sense what I'm saying? It does. But to me, it's all then it's just because they want a reaction. So they're throwing all the spaghetti at the wall to get one, whether it's good, whether it's bad. It's just like I'm doing all of it. Or they don't. They have no clue what they're saying is so hurtful. That's also like an option, I think.

They don't even think anything of what they wrote. I don't know. There's a total disconnect between some of the things they say some of the times and other times. I just find that fascinating. I was expecting it to all the hidden ones to remain toxic, and they're not.

Yeah. Anywho, we're getting a little too granular. What you were about to say is it fucked you up, and now you're afraid to say you're going to go to a hotel. That's what all this is. And I'm afraid to say a lot of things. That you go to a hotel with air conditioning. Yeah.

So this happened a bit, whatever, some weeks ago. And of course I was like, well, we're going to need to talk about this. And then when the next time we recorded, I thought about it. And then I thought this is such a waste of 99.9% of the people who listen to

It's a time and they don't deserve it because most people aren't engaging on those comments. And so to give so much time and energy to that teeny tiny percentage that is being cruel, it feels unfair to the people who aren't.

Yes. And so many more people defended you than were critical of you. I just, I don't want to give them energy to like figure out what they mean. So the main reason that before when me and you have had these types of conversations that I have encouraged you not to, but then have, you know, been like, well, whatever, you're going to do your thing. You want to do it. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Is because I don't want our show to change because of it. Right. And, and,

I've been skeptical that it's possible to look at them and not change.

And so then when I looked, I was like, yeah, I'm not going to say where my shoes are from. People are asking, but I'm not going to say. I'm not going to say that I want to go to this hotel and where it is and how fun it is. And that sucks because I also know there's a big group that wants to know that and wants to see the outfits or know about them. So it's just this bizarre balance thing.

I think that one of the more hurtful ones was about, well, there was some that I found misogynistic. Those were rough or like double standardy. Then there was some basically that I betrayed them. And I was like, hmm.

I've never not been this. So I haven't. You've been living at the mall since you were a kid. I'm not been like, I'm a huge man of the people. I've never been that. Even when I worked at SoulCycle, I wasn't that. Like, that's not me. And so I haven't betrayed anyone. I've just attained a little more. So I've had a little more access. But I've stayed pretty true to

to my values wants needs all of that stuff and like ah that's all i can really do well this hotel with the ice cold air conditioning sounds like a fortune shut up god you're trying to take me out never is that groot yeah yeah i'm with groot

Of course I'm with Groot. Because you're his granddad? Yeah. I asked, because she tossed him to me and he landed perfectly in my nook. And I said, oh, he landed in my nook. And then I said, wait, is Groot a he or a she or a they? And she said, no.

Groot's a Groot. She goes, Groots don't have genders like we do. I was like, okay. I mean, Groot is a tree. Really? Oh, by the way, we haven't figured out what kind of boy I am because you're a cookie boy. Amy Poehler is a bedtime boy.

And you're just a boy. No, I'm a lake boy. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Finally figured it out. I'm a lake boy. Boy, do I love a lake. I get in there and just paddle around like a little dog, like a little lake dog. Yeah. Okay. Wait, hold on. I have a little more to say about the other thing, which is so this hotel. Yeah. I want to go to, I want to go just for a couple of days and I'm going to have to probably go by myself.

Okay. It's a very complicated thing to talk about. But you just... It's universal. I mean, not universal, but it affects a lot of people on both sides of this. But, like, I want to go with a couple people that I know could go...

Right. But you don't have to pay for them. Exactly. And it wouldn't even be responsible to ask them to go. Yeah, right. You would have to offer to pay for them to go. Yeah. And it circles back to all the things we've always talked about on here, which is like, what's the point of going to this nice place if you're alone? Although you're reading all fours, so I feel like if there were ever a moment where you...

Could be a lot like you had a reason to go alone. It's also an interesting thought for me because I love going places alone. I travel alone all the time. Yeah, you go to New York. I love it. But for some reason in this particular circumstance, I don't know why. Maybe it's just my current headspace where I'm like, oh, I want buddies there. Like I want my friend. I want to bring friends. Right. But that.

Would mean that I would be paying double for something that's already a lot. And what is this? Like, it's just all confused. It's I'm confused.

Yeah, yeah. And you know how I did it for years and years and years, which is just I paid for people to go everywhere. And then some of those people ended up really resenting me for that, which I couldn't really make peace with. I'm like, why? Why are you resentful towards me? Yeah. It's really complicated.

Yeah, than meets the eye. Yeah. Basically, there's some people that I can do that with and there's no resentment. And there's other people that they resent me when I do that. So it's very confusing. Yeah, but then this is how weird silos happen. And then it's like then only rich people can travel with rich people. Like that's awful. Yeah. I don't want that at all. I enjoy the people in my life. And there's varying degrees of financial success within that. Yeah.

I don't want to change any of the people around me. So that's for me to then decide, like, do I pay? Do I go alone? I don't know. Yeah. I don't have a very clear answer. Yeah. I don't think there is one. And maybe it just depends on the day. Yeah. Totally depends on the day. I really think it's person specific. You know, I have a

A very successful friend who's much older than me who said to me at one point they had had a bad experience with some family members they supported and then those people were really mad at them and they were talking to their therapist. The therapist said the key is that relationships have to be reciprocal.

So if it can't be financial, it's almost on the person who's got the money to figure out how the other person can reciprocate by some other method or that's when it starts getting really fucked up. And I thought that was really interesting. I heard that a few years ago and I think I feel like I observed that. There's also resentment that comes up.

from the other side yeah there can be oh yeah yeah oh I have friends all the time who'll be like yeah I lent so-and-so money they were broke but then I saw they bought a new car you know those little things that happen and then I'm like yeah you can't ever lend anyone money you just have to give give someone money and literally think yeah they might go buy a fucking four-wheeler with it I don't know yes a hundred percent that's really a good lesson and no string that's attached

Yep. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Yes. I also think the unavoidable thing is you do end up having more control than is healthy in a relationship because basically you're picking, right? Like if you're going to invite people to where you want to go, you've just, you have picked. Yeah. And even that's a weird dynamic. I know. Because what if you said like, hey, whoever, do you want to come with me to X? And they go, no, but why don't you take us to Santa Barbara, too?

This other hotel. That would feel a little crazy. But at the same time, if it's a friend trip, maybe that's part of it. I don't fucking know. Like all of this is not good. I don't know. No, it's not good. It comes back to know how. What I also I got to add right now is I think this too, if you chose to see this, you could choose to see this conversation is too rich people talking about like, oh, God, what do they do?

This happens on every ladder of the socioeconomic. Because I remember my brother started making more money than all of us. And he even said to me, this is why people of the same socioeconomic bracket hang out. And I was like, ah, that's bullshit. I didn't think there was any validity to it.

But that was happening for him on a much smaller scale. And I think this happens to everybody. No one who is best friends in high school, they don't all go out and accomplish the same amount and make the same amount of money. Some people have lake houses. Some people have boats. Others don't. I think this is pretty universal, actually. You're in one of these dynamics. It's pretty rare that everyone's dead equal. We've had a few questions on Synced about some of this stuff. So it does feel like...

It's on people's minds. Yeah.

I mean, we've talked about this. What gets very tricky in these dynamics, like if someone is paying for a trip, like we just went on, you know, I just, we went to Palm Springs, 124 degrees, so fun. And that is different because when you say like reciprocating, for one, I'm not expecting that at all because like, again, I just want my friends there. But two, they are. Everyone's cooking. It's a group effort. It's much, much different of a thing.

Yep. But like what ends up feeling weird is if I was doing something bad,

Or like mean. Or if I was. A bitch. Yeah. If I was being a huge bitch. But no, everyone felt like they couldn't say anything because I paid for the trip. That's where things get very tricky. Well, then you deserve to be resented. And I certainly have seen rich people. It's like you're a character in their event. Like you're.

Everything's got to be their way and there's no compromise on dinner and because they're paying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that power should be checked. I definitely don't think if you're like going to pay that then you're the queen or the king.

Listen, this is a great segue into the fact that I do need to add, because we've had two fact checks where I talked about Norway. I need to add some counter facts. So this isn't a problem they're dealing with here nearly as much. Everyone knows that, right? These big gaps in income and income. Wealth disparity. Yeah, wealth disparity. We have a unique country in how big these gaps are. Very. And

And they don't really have that to that degree here, clearly. And it's kind of visceral, you know? Yeah. So I needed to add, because I had been saying that I didn't see a lot of people laughing. Molly and I hiked up the side of this mountain and we got to the very top and there was this lovely, I'm going to say she was 60 and her son was probably 30. And they were at the top of the mountain and we

We noticed she was picking something and we were like, are those blueberries? And she's like, oh yeah, they're blueberries. And she had the little picker, like this little basket you would just scrape on the bush and it would gather all the blueberries. So then I'm just chowing on blueberries. And we talked to this mother and son for like 25 minutes. And it was one of the most lovely conversations I've had with strangers in a decade. Oh, that's nice.

Oh, they were so fucking lovely. And I said to her, I'm like, this may sound like a rude question, but like, what do all these people do? Like, how is anyone employed in the middle of nowhere with these houses? And she said, oh, they're mostly second houses.

Somehow it came up that she's like, you know, we have so much oil. The country's just made the export so much oil out of the North Sea. So they're like pretty wealthy relative to how much they manufacturing they do or something. Right. They have a tremendous amount of natural resources through oil. And she goes, but we have to stop.

You know, we have to stop drilling for that oil. And the son goes, yes, we have to. And we won't. And then also having gotten to Oslo where the ratio of, it's kind of like what my theory was. Maybe it's just annoying to have so many fucking tourists. So the ratio has definitely shifted to there's definitely more inhabitants than there are tourists. And I have noticed that that's made sense.

That's made a difference. That's made a difference. Tons of lovely people. That's very cool. Okay. Well, real quick. I finished my book. Okay. I'm scared. Wow. Knock you on your ass? Yes. So last time we talked, I was talking about how sexy it is. Yeah. And it is, but it takes so many wild turns to...

Really? Does it become a murder thriller? No. It's a coming of middle age story. Oh, wow. It's so good, but there is so much to process. And it's a woman going through perimenopause, like her body is changing, her needs and wants are changing, figuring out who she is in this world is changing. I mean, it is...

And I really recommend it. I would love if men would read it. Oh, I'll read it. I think it would be a very interesting exposure on like what happens to a woman over the course of her life. Well, let's just say biologically what seems so cruel is that through

Through evolution, it was determined that 60-year-old women bearing children was not safe for them. So the body evolved to shut down its reproduction at whatever age that is for people, between 40 and 50 or whatever it is. Yeah.

I don't think men can comprehend what it would be like to be made a non-sexually potent creature at some point. No, it's wild. Yeah, we can have kids until we're 100. You read about every now and then one of these guys has a kid at 100.

They don't ever have to come to terms with that. Yeah. I mean, obviously, like, reproduction is a huge element. Well, just because it changes your hormones so dramatically to make sure you can't have a kid. Yeah, but the hormones affect everything. Your mood, your mindset, your identity, your everything. Women are going through so much. It's unreal. And men.

And two, as far as aging, I mean, there's this whole idea in the book that, you know, basically you're climbing and you're climbing and then basically you're levitating for a minute. And then from then on, you're falling. Yeah. Yeah. That's the battle I'm in right now. It's tough. I mean, this idea that like, oh, from this point forward, I'm just like inching towards the end is crazy.

But it's all perspective. Like, that wasn't my ultimate takeaway. By the end, I think it has a more optimistic ending. I would really recommend it, and I want men to read it. I will. I'll do it. I saw some photos of myself on this trip where I was like, oh, boy, are we losing our hair, like, really quick? Is that what's going on today? I'm telling you. Really? I don't know if it's the lighting or whatever. I'm like, whoa, we're much thinner than I thought we were.

And I was online today getting a topical finasteride. Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. I panicked. I'm like, Jesus Christ, here we go. I'm going to look just like my dad. I'm going to have a big dome. Yeah. And I was looking at myself in the mirror, like imagining myself. Because at the rate, you know when you panic? In my mind, the rate at which it's falling out, probably by August, I'm going to look like my dad. Yeah.

But I'm going to fight it. I'm going to get every topical known to man. And I ordered several of them today. Yeah. Yeah, it's— I know.

Yeah, it's not going to get better for me. It's not going to get better. Well, no, no, no, no, no. That's not true. No, hold on. My life may get better, but physically I'm not going to be getting better. It's how we define better. Yeah, balder. I guess balder is better. You get more vitamin D through the sun exposure. Oh, yeah. Anyhow.

Okay, real quick. So some facts, not very many. This is for Allegra. Now, I got to just always keep ourselves honest. This was definitely a good thing that came out of the comments. We got to give the check in the pros for this one. Okay. I love this episode. I learned so much. I have so much compassion for people who suffer with this.

Absolutely. Oh, man. Oh, man. All-consuming, it sounds. Yeah. Okay. The difference between a Cortado and a Cappuccino. Oh. Okay. That came up. Yep. Okay.

It's the amount of milk. So a cartado consists of equal parts espresso and steamed milk, ensuring a balanced flavor. A latte has one to three ratio of coffee to milk, making it a milkier option. Finally, a cappuccino features equal parts of espresso, steamed milk, and frothy milk foam, delivering a thicker and foamier texture compared to the other two.

Well, perfect timing, ding, ding, ding. I don't ever drink cappuccinos, and I've had probably 65 since I got to this country. Oh, I love cappuccino. That's my go-to. It's so fucking good because coffee is so bad everywhere. That's not unique to Norway. Like so few people are into coffee the way Americans are. Oh, really?

All right. Black coffee. Americano. Like if you get an Americano, it's an Americano. So you got to go cappuccino when you're overseas. And man, have I been putting them back. Why don't you try a Cortado next time? See if you like it. Yeah, I'll see if that rings a bell the next place I'm ordering one. They'll know it. What we found out, what we found out at least at the last place is we kept ordering double cappuccinos because Eric and I want two shot. We want an extra shot in there.

And they said, that's a flat white. We would never call it a double cappuccino. So now we've been ordering flat whites. And boy, boy, George, are those good. Yeah. Flat whites are good. Okay. There's a chart about all of them, which is fun. You can buy the chart on Etsy. Okay. A Breve, which you know about. Oh, Breve latte. Average espresso added with steamed half and half to create creamy texture. Yum.

Yeah, when I first met Will Arnett, he introduced me to the Breve on Let's Go to Prison, and we were blasting those Breves until we realized they're like 9,000 calories a pop. Yeah, a lot. You can't drink a venti full of half and half. That's not responsible. Unless you want to indulge. Have it your birthday or something. Yeah, a flat white. This says a flat white. Oh, get in there. Two ounces. Oh, my God.

I just saw your brain. You did? Monica just leaned into the computer so far to read her thing. What did you, did you see it, my nose or something? You saw, I saw all the convolutions of that neocortex. Okay. It says espresso is two ounces and steamed milk is four on a flat white. Now a cappuccino, espresso, two ounces, steamed milk, two ounces, foam milk, two ounces. Okay.

So according to this chart, it's the same amount. It's just different. It's all steamed milk in a flat white. Okay. Maybe they added more espresso. All of this is Italian, right? So it's like who knows what each country has interpreted this as. I think you should do a Cortado. Cortado, two ounces espresso, one ounce foam milk. I just need the thing that says four ounces of espresso. There's none. That's not. Okay. That's too much espresso. Okay.

Oh, my God. You could do a cafe au lait. That's five ounces coffee and then five ounces steamed milk. Au lait, au lait, au lait, au lait.

I'll tell you a great joke that Delta made on this trip. Yeah. There was something to go see in Bergen, a tourist attraction, and it was a cannonball that had been shot at this church, and they left it in the wall. Okay. So you could go look. It's still lodged in the wall. So we're driving in the car to the next place, and we're in the car for hours, and I don't know where Delta just goes, Hey, Mom, you know how they chose to leave that cannonball in the wall, and over time it became an artifact? Yeah.

I think the next time you tell me to pick up my clothes, I'm just going to leave them in hopes that they'll become an artifact. That's cute. That's funny. What a wonderful train of thought that was. Yeah, I love that.

She's so smart. She is. And Lincoln's so adventurous. She's been jumping off everything and scaring me. I looked up. We were playing spades and drinking coffee on this patio of the hotel. And I look up and I see Lincoln, who certainly doesn't think I can see her. They're on the fifth floor. And she has gone out on the railing of the balcony and has gone around the outside of the post holding it.

Something I definitely did a million times when I was a kid. Oh, wow. And I was just watching this from 100 yards away, and she's on the fifth floor, and I'm like, yeah. Oof. Oof. Scary. That's my child. Yeah, that's your fault. Yeah, it is. It's only my fault. Okay.

Now, chai means tea in Hindi. I know, I know, I know. Okay. Did you? Because. I did, I did, I did. I just. Because we say chai tea, which is redundant. Yeah, yeah. And when we posted the Bill Gates thing, people were like, chai is tea. I'm like, I know, but people still say chai tea where I'm posting this. Okay.

I guess. And chai tastes so specific. It's different than green tea and herbamante tea. I just like, of course, we changed it. We had to. We had no choice. We did not have to. We had too many offerings. At all. Back when there was only one flavor of tea, you could just say chai. Well, we could have made the other teas. We could have made them green chai, you know? Yeah, that's fair.

Okay. Okay. Well, we were coming up with other people named Allegra and you said Allegra buses, but it's actually Allegro buses.

A couple days after I had said that, I was looking at Instagram and I follow a guy who has an Allegro bus and he had posted a picture of it. And I was like, that was wrong. It's Allegro. Yeah. I'm glad you looked that up. Lest anyone has searched the internet trying to buy an Allegro bus. Allegro. That's it. There really weren't much facts. China.

Chai is tea. Chai is tea. Cortado. Is not cappuccino. Mm-hmm. Cappuccino has foam milk and steamed milk. Don't drink venti brevi lattes every day. No, do it if you want. I'm not telling people what to do. You're not going to be on a campaign against brevi lattes? Mm-mm. I bet a cream top is a brevi of sorts. Well, but with ice cream batter. Okay.

That's an ice cream. That's a birthday drink, birthday cake drink. Well, I hope you go listen.

Don't listen to these haters. I hope you go find yourself an ice cold air conditioned room and a nice pool to swim around in. Thank you. Oh yeah. One of that episode had, uh, is when we were talking about Hermes. So that's what threw people over the edge. Right. Um, also ironically, then that was a Tuesday that this was happening and,

Yeah. Based on the Monday episode. Wednesday was an episode of Synced, and we, of course, had talked about it also on Synced. Oh, okay. So Tuesday night, when all this was happening, I was like, fuck. Like, there's an episode tomorrow with more Hermes chitchatter. Yeah. I was like, I'm going to pull the episode. Oh. I really almost did, because I was like, I can't. I can't handle what's about to come. Yeah. And then.

No, we have advertisers on that episode that it will fuck over. Like, I'm just going to have to deal with this. And then I did.

But you said the pool. One of the comments was because I was talking about the towels and she was like, she doesn't even know how to swim. I got real personal. Yeah. Oh, it got so personal. It got so personal. One is she was probably tipsy. Oh, wow. Yeah. Like mean shit. Mean shit. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Anyway, try to be nice.

I'm just going to leave it there. Try to be nice in this world if you can. Give it a shot. Give it a shot. Just try it out. Give it a shot. See how it feels. All right. Well, I love you. I can't wait for our next check-in. These are so fun. Bye. Bye.