This episode begins with some banter about breakfast foods and bounces around between a few topics before settling into some deeper discussion about happiness and meaning in a life dominated by OCD.

This week’s “How are you really?” exchange touches on relationships and anger for Frank, and access to calories again for Lisa – but balanced by other factors.

We briefly touch on our reticence to share our inner experiences, discuss our emotional sensitivities to people in various contexts, and wrap up with some venting about behaviors that we badly want other people to stop.

(Just a quick note here that this is not a replacement for therapy, and that we are not therapists.)

In this episode, we talk about how quickly we block out our experiences once we've survived them, and we note the unusual metrics by which we weigh the difficulty of tasks. We discuss struggles of invisible disability, the popular phrase "I'm obsessed", and the OCD tax.

(Just a quick note here that this is not a replacement for therapy, and that we are not therapists.)

This week's "How are you really?" check in leads us first into discussion about when, in conversation, to acknowledge the presence of OCD, when to keep it silent, and what that decision-making process does to our cognitive loads.

We explore the hazards of internet research, different ways that OCD shows up physiologically, and the contrast between common perception of OCD, and what it is really like for us.

Also in the first half of this episode, contamination anxiety interplays with other, difficult-to-classify anxieties in relationships, structure is helpful, dating is hard, heaviness is familiar, and a beloved voice encourages forward movement over stagnation, even in the face of uncertainty.

Finally, we exchange a few thoughts on cancel culture and human interaction in the presence of oppression* before a segue to this episode's variable prompts, where we talk about our organization systems, language we've coined to describe our OCD, and our OCD-tangential personality traits.

*The book referenced briefly during this part of the conversation is Our Problem Our Path by Eleonora Bartoli and Ali Michael

(Just a quick note here that this is not a replacement for therapy, and that we are not therapists.)