Should I Delete That? - Hurt to Healing with Pandora Morris

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

This week on the pod, Alex and Em are joined by Pandora Morris. Pandora struggled with her mental health from a very young age, which manifested in OCD and eating disorders working in tandem to make her life almost impossible. Now on her recovery journey, Pandora shares her story from breaking out of school to crossing the border in Mexico to the US to seek medical assistance during lockdown. You can listen to Pandora's podcast Hurt to Healing here: https://www.hurttohealing.co.uk/podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.Follow us on Instagram @shouldideletethatEmail us at [e-mail] by Daisy GrantMusic by Alex Andrew Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I mean, people underestimate the level of deception that goes on. And I mean, I'm used to say to my teachers, oh, well, I've got a doctor's appointment. You know, I'm off at 10 to 1. And I'd sneak off and I would run around Regents Park three times. And then I could get my friends to open the fire escape for me to sneak back into school. Hideley, hoadley, welcome back to Should I Delete That. I'm M Clarkson and I am alone today. It sounds tragic. It sounds really tragic when you say it like that. I didn't count on it. I'm trying to do the empowering thing. I can take myself out for lunch. I can buy myself flowers, you know what I mean? But it just isn't the, it just sounds sad. I am alone today. And we've got an amazing interview and I'm actually just going to let us get on with it. I'll with through my own week, just in case anybody cares. If you don't, no drama. You know what? I think I've been a top-class citizen this week. I don't even think I have a single awkward.

for the group. Got a couple of goods. I ran a half marathon last weekend, P.B. Time. God, that feels like a long time ago. But on Sunday, I went and ran a half marathon. The second one that I've done since having a baby, and it was 13 months and eight months are very different stories postpartum. If you are thinking about getting back into running after having a baby, can I just recommend you just take a beat? Slow down with hindsight. Eight months was way too soon. And the proof was in the pudding because the second one I ran was 45. minutes faster and I think that's just indicative of like everything and that brings me on to my other good probably bad and awkward all bundled up into one and that's the fact that I've given up

breastfeeding I've stopped breastfeeding this week and I'm an absolute mess which is truthfully why I'm here alone not because I've pushed away all my friends and they all hate me because I'm a hormonal disaster and no one will talk to me anymore although that could be it now I'll sit anxiously spiraling that that could be the case unlikely I hope I don't know um genuinely I'm just I'm a mess I'm all over the place. Emotionally, I'm up and down. I'm so chaotic, so anxious, so tired. And I just, I've left everything so last minute, and it's all just chaos.

And I feel like no one talks about this. Everyone talks about, like, getting you into breastfeeding, like how to maintain breastfeeding, yay, breastfeeding. But when it comes to stopping, everyone's just like, ha ha, figure that one out. You got, you got jugs full of milk and it's going to hurt like buggery. Good luck. Don't get the status, by the way, because that's awful. And then that's just kind of the feedback from Google.

So it's been intense. and I didn't anticipate the hormone drop. I've actually read a lot subsequently and spoken to a lot of people about how, like people thought they were getting late, like late set postnatal depression, about the links between like so much of the like delayed hormone drops from pregnancy, kind of carry on until when you stop breastfeeding. I don't know.

Obviously not a doctor, but I am. I'll tell you what I am. I'm not a doctor, but I'm a mess. So really I think to like level out soon. Watch this space. Which is why you could probably just do with less of me today. Just less of me. So without further ado, I'm going to let us get into the interview.

We spoke with Pandora at Morris today. And we're going to put a big trigger warning on the conversation on the whole episode, really, because we spoke at length about mental health, about OCD, about eating disorders. And it was incredible of Pandora to share her story. She's been through so much. And what she's doing, by having this conversation, I think we'll be helping so many people. we're leaving all of her details in the show notes Pandora doesn't actually use social media at all

which was such an interesting thing to talk to her about as it just felt so alien particularly to Alex and I obviously who had just glued to our devices but she does have her own podcast if you'd like to check her out there is details to that in the show notes without further ado here is Pandora Hi Pandora

thank you so much for joining us today here in the studio how are you doing? I'm very well I'm very honored to be here in front of you two beautiful blonde girls. Oh, that's such high page. I don't know what to do with myself. You can be more like blush.

Shashing. No, we're really excited to have you in. We've got a lot to talk about. And I guess a big part of that is your journey, your long journey with mental health, which has culminated in you having a podcast called Hurt to Healing, which is brilliant.

And you've had some amazing guests on as well. But I wondered if we could go back to the beginning and if you could tell us your story in your own words yeah i can start from the very beginning um so i was one of those very anxious children i remember when i was about four so constantly checking the locks on the doors and at night i would be paranoid that there would be someone in my bed or someone in my wardrobe um and i had a mum who was sort of the absolute opposite she would leave the doors unlocked open at night and i think i've got one of those moms you have one of those not exactly it's very like no nothing will ever happen to me like don't worry about it

these moms these similar moms know each other yeah we just found out they must be probably cut from the same club exactly um and i just you know i took it upon myself basically to be the parent in the relationship i think and slowly over the years i i noticed that i just always had that slight feeling of being an imposter in friendships at school i was always second-guessing myself always thinking god does anyone like me i'm not good enough um or always needing to achieve. And then I guess the first signs of the OCD really sort of escalating came when I went to boarding school when I was eight. And I started praying.

And the praying sort of started, you know, just three prayers a night. And then within a few months, it was sort of six prayers a night. And then I had to do every prayer, so 18 times, like a very specific number of times. And I'd have to cover every single person in my family, every friend. otherwise if anything bad happened it would all be my responsibility and at the time no one really knew about OCD I had absolutely no idea about mental health anxiety OCD and basically thought that it was just normal and that was sort of what I did and it was my coping strategy and then when I was about 11 I had just a complete breakdown at school I think everything just got very overwhelming

and I had this unexplained, well supposedly unexplained breakdown and so couldn't stop crying was having multiple panic attacks a day. The praying was stopping me from sleeping because I was having to do it for hours and hours. It was taking me about three and a half to four hours every night. And anyway, I was sort of long story short, I was basically pulled out of school age 12 because I sort of tried to carry on,

tried to become a day girl and it just didn't work. And then, yeah, I sort of had a break for a month and then started at day school in London. And that's when I think I had this of serious separation anxiety from my mom. And every day on the way to school I would be in floods of tears. I just didn't want to leave her side. So I think there was a lot of codependency going on. And again, because I'd been sent to boarding school at such a young age,

I didn't think I'd had time to form that relationship with her and didn't feel that I was really loved by my mom. And as a result, I think the OCD had crept in as a way of me creating certainty in what I felt was a very unsafe world. It was a way of me finding something that made me feel just like I had a semblance of control. And yeah, anyway, so it then, so OCD is one of those things that takes many, many different guises and forms and it can latch onto anything. And so over the years it's changed. So the praying was replaced them by the number six. And I had this absolute fear of the number six. I associated it with the devil.

And so actually looking back, it's really weird. It was sort of quite religious my OCD to start with, which reading a lot of literature about OCD, it often does sort of manifest itself in. And then, yeah, so I couldn't do anything to do with the number six. So by the age of 12, I was not being able to write down the number six. I couldn't get into a car if there was six in the registration plate. I couldn't go into a house, which had a six on the door

or even if the number was of 51, 24, 42. I couldn't. I mean, I would. consciously basically I mess up answers in my mass homework because I couldn't write down six. And so it was starting to that actually have quite an impact on life. My mum went to our GP when she started noticing that obviously things weren't quite right. And she said, I think my daughter might have this thing called OCD. And the GP just turned around and said, what's OCD?

And the only help that was really available back then was to go either to the NHS and to go and to go and look around psych ward for my mom. And as a parent who's already been through what we had been through with boarding school and pulling me out and having all that sort of trauma, basically, and having a child that couldn't sleep alone at night for, I mean, for two and a half years, I was sleeping on my mom's bedroom floor. I wouldn't go stay with a friend. I literally wouldn't leave her side. I think she thought, I can't send my daughter to a psych ward. And you, she went to look around our local NHS one and she just thought, you know, I just can't do it. And then, yeah, so I went started seeing a psychiatrist when I was when I was pulled out of boarding school. I mean,

you know, I've been on a 20 year journey with it and I've had some, I've seen some of the quote unquote best doctors around the world and I've been very, very privileged and lucky to have been able to. But it's unbelievable the level of misunderstanding that surrounds a condition, particularly like OCD. And it's sort of, I had a comorbidity of anorexia as well. So that didn't really help with the clarity of what my diagnosis was. But yeah, so then the number six, then morphed into this desire to be a perfect person, you know, all these, these sort of traits that I associated with being successful and lovable and likable and then it's, and yet over time it then internalizes. So there are a lot of internal rituals that you have to do, a lot of

sequences, you have to imagine in your head. And it then became very much about right and wrong. And so everyone I saw, I would categorize into either being right or wrong. And if they were wrong. I mean, there was a sphere that I would literally morph into them. So anyone who was homeless, anyone who was sort of was like a drug addict or people who we associate in society typically as being people that we don't aspire to be like or live like. I literally went into this sort of panic mode and I wouldn't be able to walk down the street with my, I sort of put my hands over my eyes and so I had sort of blinkers on and life became very complicated very quickly because it took up so much time.

And so every time, for example, before school that I was getting dressed, I'd have to imagine the right people every time I put on a piece of clothing and they had to be in the right sequence and the right order. And if a wrong person came into my head, which obviously when your mind's trying to avoid something, it's what you imagine. It's like the pink elephant in the room, right? Someone says, don't imagine an elephant.

And the first thing you think of is an elephant. So everything took forever. So getting dressed for school was taking three to four hours. and then yeah i mean and then slowly it's of you know the the anorexia as well had an impact on it because it all became about exercise as well and restricting my food and so i had this very punitive regime and became very very obsessed with running and it's always like a chicken and egg situation it's like was it driven by the anorexia or the ocd but by the age of 14 i was running multiple times a day and i mean we clocked up i mean with the doctor that i was running between about

21 and 25 miles every day. Oh my God. And yeah, so things went south pretty quickly. Well, yeah, good question. I used to get up very, very early before school. I used to go running around the park. And then I used to go, I used to pretend to my mum that I was getting the tube to school and I'd run to school in my school uniform and with my sort of rucksack thudding at the

bottom of my back with all my textbooks in it so that I got sort of horrible sores. And then at lunchtime, I was at a very small school. that I managed to convince. I mean, people with mental health issues is what people, I mean, people underestimate the level of deception that goes on. And I mean, I'm used to say to my teachers, oh, well, I've got a doctor's appointment.

You know, I'm off at 10 to 1 when the school bell goes for lunch break. And I would sneak off and I would run around Regents Park three times. And then I would get my friends to open the fire escape for me to sneak back into school. I mean, and then I'd run home from school.

And then I would go, I would pretend that I was doing my homework in my room and I would sneak out of, sneak out of the back door and then if my parents went out in evenings I would then be able to sneak out again for a sort of a run and you know it's amazing how

one just again it's driven by this absolute fear of like if I don't do it some disaster's going to happen and I had just I was an addict I was really in the throes of an addiction and did you think that something bad was going to happen to you or to the people that you was it still because at the beginning it was like you had to

protect everybody around you and pray for them was it still that you thought something bad would before them or was it about you becoming you didn't want to morph into it was it was it more inward or outward at this point? Yeah it became there more about me and so I also had so much self-hatred because I was I'm such an empath

and I was sort of always thinking God you know I hope they'd like me or God I'm such a sponge for their feelings and I could tell that my actions were A having such an effect on my family because my mum was at her wits end she just didn't know what to do with this child that was just literally out of control

And yet I was somehow performing at school. So it was just a very weird juxtaposition of, yeah, she's doing okay and she seems to be, you know, passing her exams and showing up to lessons. And yet I was, you know, really in the grips of this, I mean, these demons. And I felt so selfish. And I, and that's the other thing about anorexia is that I think people often think it's just about, it's about getting thin. And it's people often say, oh, God, you know, it's just such a selfish disease. and particularly my mum's family, you know, oh, God, you just need to pull yourself together

and eat a plate of food. I mean, what's the problem? Like, here it is, you're so lucky to be able to eat. There are people in the world who can't even afford to have a meal. And so immediately that makes you feel even worse. But it becomes this a vicious cycle of thinking, you know, I've got to eat either less than yesterday

or the same as yesterday. I've got to exercise more than yesterday or again the same as yesterday. And if you don't do it, your body goes into this. Yeah, it goes into that. It goes into that. It's a survival mode where you, just feel crippled by the anxiety so it was it was just a matter of like literally climbing

Everest every day and getting through it and as best I could whilst also doing all the rituals and doing the things that I thought I needed to do in order to just cope really it sounds so exhausting it sounds so exhausting and it must have narrowed your life so much because you're having to fit in all of these rituals, all of these sequences. Can I ask, I don't want to jump around, but I want to ask, when your mom took you to try and get some help, and then they offered the psych ward, and your mom decided that wasn't, that didn't feel right.

Was there anything in between that and no help? Was there offer of therapy or? No, so for the NHS, this is what I also speak about quite a lot on my podcast. it's really terrifying that when you're diagnosed with an eating disorder, unless you are literally at a weight or a BMI where you're skeletal and you need to go on a drip, there is very, very little on offer. And of course, that also makes you think I'm not bad enough because I need to get skinny in order to deserve the help or the...

So I think that's something that really needs to be rectified just in our society. But, I mean, the only other option was to really go private and to see a therapist that was funded by my parents, which I was very, very lucky that they could afford. And, yeah, so I sort of would see a therapist for maybe a year, maybe a year and a half, and would always have a psychiatrist in the background because I was put on medication. So I was put on SSRIs, which are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which, you know, typically and what people know more about now.

But again, then I was very, very young. I was 12 when I was first put on them. and when when psychiatrists don't see results after say six months to a year they they'll be like oh maybe we should add something so at one point i was sort of taking three different medications and there was an antipsychotic in there then there was more of like a sedative there was an anti-anxiety thing and i mean honestly i felt like i was just this sort of lab rat essentially and i never really noticed a mark a difference in my mental health by being put on these drugs the only thing was the horrible side of that they often have and also just feeling like very just very emotional like no ability to laugh or cry and just feeling very like you're sort of flatlining essentially so yeah I mean I went and saw a therapist and are typically like when they don't again with therapists when they don't get the results they want they say well the good ones actually should say okay I'm not sure that this is working like I think you know maybe we should think about you know

doing a different form of therapy or but again it was 20 years ago and in those days i had i mean i was so ignorant as to what different types of therapy meant i didn't even know what type of therapy my therapist was practicing i just thought i'm going to a therapist so did my mom um they say that they you know specialize in oCD and eating disorders and they come recommended from you know a couple of family friends maybe and from a psychiatrist they must be reputable and good um and yeah yeah i got to the stage where i don't think I mean it sounds really awful to say but I don't think I ever really got the help I needed all the proper help until yeah 2021 which was yeah which was I mean when looking back just the amount

of time wasted and money wasted which sounds yeah it sounds awful but that was the reality really and that is probably the reality for a lot of people as well it's not a one trick fix and that's why I think it is so important that you do and I guess it's the name of your podcast but I think we very often that we want to hear these stories from people who are like or in our minds we want to hear it from people who are like totally healed and that's all gone from them

and it's not it's something that they can talk about completely retrospectively but actually it's really important that we recognise that as humans like we're all trying and evolving and I think it's really powerful that that you can be honest about the fact that it did take so long despite the fact that you had access to a lot of help and it just wasn't the right help for you.

I think like that's a really valuable thing to talk about because I don't think we talk about that a lot. Yeah. And I mean, I think that was really, as you so rightly say, that was really the incentive for starting my podcast was because I found them so incredibly helpful and hearing other people's stories and their journeys but also quite alienating because I was there

particularly during lockdown and I was like, oh my God, I've got to an age now where I quote unquote should be better. You know, I have parents who are telling me, well, we've taken you to some of the best doctors we can. Like, what's wrong? Like, why, you know, why are you any different from anyone else? Of course, you hear those words. And again, it just fuels that feeling of, oh, well, I'm a failure. I might as well be put on the rubbish heap. And you just think, why am I different to anyone else? Is my brain, like, so fucked up that, you know, I can't get this. I'm not going to be able to rewire it. And then I think realizing that actually it was a case

of real baby steps and these changes just take so long to make and actually it's rewiring years and years of learnt behaviour. I think the typical person with OCD takes 10 years to seek help by which time so much of the habits and the mindset is just so ingrained and I was thinking this morning actually and I was sort of thinking about doing this podcast as interview and you know with OCD that what you're doing is irrational. So you're not psychotic, which almost makes it so even more incredibly painful because you're like, well, I can see that this doesn't apply to Emily or Alex. And yet my brain has convinced me that actually I have to do all these rituals and these compulsions around, you know, imagining people and not doing new things or like avoiding social media. Like all these things that I have and I still have to work on on a daily basis.

But you can't like flick a switch and you can't just snap. out of it, which would be ideal. No medication, no pill is going to enable you to just wake up one morning and be like, oh, I don't have OCD anymore. Great. It is a matter of having to go through those tiny, tiny baby steps, which is, and it's stacking. It's just, it takes years and years of hard work, which is why so many people just are like, well, maybe I'm just going to have to live like this. And you see people's lives become narrow and narrow and narrow with OCD, as you rightly identify, which is what's happened to me over the years, because you, you, you just, you just can't cope you can't cope with change you can't cope with anything that deviates from your

absolute rigidity of like of thought pattern and it's it is exhausting it's like a nice of liking it to having a second brain because you can sort of do things at like maybe a 40% capacity but I sometimes wonder I like look back on my years at sort of school and university and in my 20s and I think God what would I have done had I not had OCD and like what could I have done and like what and the trouble is you can't you can't look back can you and you've we've all got what we've got and actually in a way now I try and say okay well I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now if I hadn't had the struggles that I have or have had but you know I wanted to be that person that said to people it's okay to be open about your struggles because how much worse can things

be by actually I mean you just shut yourself off and you assume people know and I think when I started the podcast, so many of my friends said, God, I had no idea. And I thought, well, God, wasn't it so obvious? Like, I spoke about it. I explained to you about, you know, the right and the wrong. I explained to you about new things. And, you know, people are just, people are very self-absorbed as human beings. We are just all, you know, we're all trying to survive the best we can, right? And we all have some issues and we all have daily troubles and anxieties. And a lot of people have mental health issues. And I think I, yeah, I just, the podcast was something that I really wanted to do to say to people here I am and like looking at me and talking to me in a very

isolated context you would think I won't what's wrong like she's she's functioning she's fine she might be a bit crazy about her exercise and she might be a bit you know particular about her food and she might but I got to a point where you know quote unquote I looked okay and like everyone was saying well you've clearly recovered from anorexia and you're just again that it's like it's like the worst thing that you can say to me what the need I mean the naivety surrounding what you shouldn't, shouldn't say to people who have had eating disorders and as I'm sure you guys are very cognizant of. But honestly, I just, it baffles me. And then with the OCD, that's not really something that's understood. So I get comments chucked to me all the time being like, oh, what,

so are you just really neat and tidy or, oh, do you have to sort of, you know, do things in a particular order? Or show up. Yeah, exactly. Can you not step on the cracks on the pavement? And you're just like, oh my God. Do I even get started? And so I think it, for me, it was also out of the frustration of being so misunderstood for so many years. And I just wanted to be the person that tried to create that open dialogue and do something that would hopefully, yeah, help other people. Something that struck me, sorry I keep jumping around, but I've never thought about OCD like that, but there's a particular cruelty in the fact that you're not psychotic, you have a grip

on reality, and you can identify that what you're. you're doing isn't rational and applied to someone else it wouldn't be rational and yet the discomfort I don't know this might be putting words in in your mouth but the discomfort discomfort of you not doing what your brain is telling you to do is too high for you not to do it that must be really difficult I've never really thought about it like that I guess there's almost I mean I'm not saying like psychosis is better obviously obviously that is not good either but there is there is that that cruelty in like in knowing that there's a the awareness yeah yeah no and I mean and it's this bodily sensation like literally when I get triggered and I have to do an exposure I wanted to

ask about these tricks the trigger how you deal with the triggers now um yeah good question it depends how big the trigger is so for example I moved house last week so if you'd ask me to me if you had said to me you're going to move house two years ago i'd be absolutely i can't no way like that's a huge new change a huge new thing and i i could prepare for that so that was like the ones i can prepare for sometimes more painful because i get that anticipatory anxiety and that's kind of almost the worst bit um but once i've done it you know i'm sitting here whereas before i would have had probably eight months of having to like literally go into a hole of doing all my compulsions, all my routines, whereas now I know that the only way that I'm going to get better

from OCD is by resisting as many compulsions as I can. So at the moment, it's like keeping myself on the straight and narrow, keeping my exercise contained, keeping my food on track, continuing to show up, continuing to do the podcast, doing what I know I want to do to create like a richer and more fulfilled life rather than going into that sort of OCD hole. Before, I would have dealt with triggers by just doing all my compulsions and doing my rituals, imagining the right people, talking about the right people, going for days and days of just like, you know, having to converse with right people, having to exercise in a very rigid specific way. So for sort of typically between like five and seven hours a day, being very rigid about my food, not being able to go

to a restaurant, not being able to let anyone else cook for me, like literally being super controlled and like not really seeing anyone sort of on a social basis because I was just so either so exhausted or just so sort of like literally militant about my routine. Um, whereas now I really, so I'll get that pack. So say, I'll give you an example because it's probably easier to explain. So say you've handed me a phone and it was on Instagram. I have never been on Instagram. I find like two years ago, I couldn't even say the word Instagram.

Um, social media is just a huge source of trigger for me because it's a new thing that, well, it came. It's not new for many. Most people it's not new at all. But what? The first kind of social media, I guess, was Facebook. But that was what? Facebook was probably 17, 18 years ago that it was, I don't know, anyway, roughly.

So I developed a thing because it was a new thing that I never did. So the longer you leave anything, it's like anyone who has an issue with, I liken it. So if you have a pile of emails, they say you don't read one and then you get three and then you get a hundred, you know, and slowly they stack up so that you just become so overwhelmed that you're like, okay, I just, I can't look at that pile of emails. I want to start a new email account. and I just want to like put so that and that's like OCD so you have these avoidances so for me with social media it's something I've avoided so I avoided doing it in the first instance and then it's

it's now become this huge thing that I'm just like oh my god how do I even start to make inroads into it so when I had treatment during COVID um one of the one of the focuses was on trying to like delve into this social media thing and unfortunately it sort of we didn't do it as thoroughly as we focused on some other of the things that I was doing but essentially I got handed a phone on Facebook and like I had to sort of go on to Facebook and then I got handed a phone with TikTok but we never did the Instagram

so Instagram's just become this sort of massive source of yeah trigger for me so if you handed me a phone now on Instagram I would literally my whole body I would feel that's a panic and it would be that like oh my God I'm literally about to be eaten by an animal alive and the worst thing is just about to happen and the world's about to implode

now I know that that's going to be the immediate reaction and like okay then like breathe and so it's like that typical anxiety curve it will sort of peak and then it will slowly slowly over time subside I've got a very good therapist now who I can WhatsApp which really helps me so externalising it and talking about it

so if you had me a phone it would be oh my goodness oh my goodness and if I was in a safe enough space for people who I trusted I could say okay this is I've been really triggered I've got to breathe. I know what I've got to do. The temptation is to then give in to the compulsions. So for me, it would be internally imagining the right people,

talking about the right people, then going off on like a walk or going to do some exercise and then spending days sort of doing the thing that I've to have spoken to about. So everything has to be very rigid. Whereas to beat it and to not strengthen the OCD, I have to do the opposite to what it wants. And this is the tricky thing with OCD, right? It's one of those very self-perpetrient.

illnesses because it will if you give into the compulsion and what it wants you to do momentarily you get this huge relief and you're like oh so if you handed me the phone with the Instagram although that in itself would be a huge source of anxiety and for weeks and weeks and weeks it would be in the back of my mind if I resisted the compulsions for a couple of days it would start to weaken the OCD if I gave into the compulsions it would give me that momentary relief and like I'm in control I'm safe like the world's okay like nothing you know nothing bad's going to happen. But in doing so, it strengthens the OCD. So it's like this constant cycle that you're in. And when you're young, of course, in your teens, you just think, well, I'm going to do

anything I can to just feel okay. And so anything to avoid the anxiety and that horrid feeling you'll do. And unfortunately, that's what just makes the muscle grow and grow and grow until your brain literally feels like it's encased in this ivy that is just, I mean, unpenetrable, if that's a word. But it just, yeah, you can't penetrate it. And it's, it's, it's, it's really, really hard to make inroads, which is why therapists I find it so hard to treat and which is why so often when OCD exists as a comorbidity, so alongside anorexia, alongside addiction, that seems to be the primary focus and that's what I found talking to a lot of people. There are very, very few therapists who really specialize in exposure therapy.

It's become more of a thing in the last few years, but really intensive exposure therapy for OCD, which needs to be done on a daily basis when it's really, really bad. And you have to also learn to do the exposures on your own, which takes a huge leap of faith, right, to sort of suddenly start facing your fears repeatedly because the trouble is if you do one thing one day, you've got to keep doing it every single day to, like, immunise yourself against it, as it were. So it would be fine to go on social media one day, but if you don't do it for a prolonged period, it just becomes, it resets very quickly and it becomes a phobia again. Is that something that you want to, or is a long-term goal for yourself, would be to, to

to do the exposure therapy with Instagram for example yeah exactly so funny enough I was talking today about it and it's like so with my therapist so the goal at the moment is so if anyone sends me a screenshot of anything from Instagram I immediately I go into this panic I exit the message and I can't respond to the message until they send me another message of writing so I'm not directly responding under that picture because it goes into all these irrational and I won't try and like rationalize it because it's not rational but my OCD will rationalize it um so the first thing we're now working on is if someone sends me a screenshot is I have to look at it for I have to just sit with it for 10 seconds and then I can exit so you slowly start you sort of build up to

doing so what I've done in the past is it's just with a bang it's like okay right I'll just go on to so I haven't done the social media but I'll just I mean doing big new thing like move house and then just sit with it whereas actually what's the best way of doing it is it's okay you look at pictures of the thing you draw it you write about it it you see and you would slowly get your mind into that space of okay I'm and you almost yeah in doing it gradually then when it comes to the sort of big event oh well it's not such a thing anymore so I've actually kind of mentally prepared for it but the scaffolding exactly so when you said before the like the comorbidities did you find that psychiatrists and therapists were more

interested in treating your anorexia than your OCD yeah definitely okay Whereas actually, and do you believe that the anorexia was a result? I mean, they're so linked, aren't they? But was a result of the OCD? I think they both exist in like sort of slightly, I think there's overlap, but I think you have to see them in slightly separate spheres. And I think with eating disorders,

they morph and they evolve over time. So the anorexia then became more orthorexic, which then for a period became more like binging and restricting. And then I realized that actually it was kind of bulimia. because I was using the exercise as really my purging tool and then it becomes just very rigid ways of eating and it's disordered eating whereas the OCDs definitely existed in a realm of its own because the things were like the praying

and the numbers and the right and the wrong like that was very much a thing but then of course it did also feed into the food because the food was part of the compulsion as it were so when I did an exposure like the need was to like go into the controlling of the food so yeah i think i think they both exist separately and that was actually when i was in treatment during covid that was one thing that was actually quite refreshing because every doctor's have always used to spend so much time like well i'm not sure whether you're primary or your secondary is you know anorexia and when i went in my early 20s into treatment for for the anorexia

they refused to even acknowledge that i had oCD it was a complete denial no you don't need any separate treatment from the other girls you're just the same everyone with anorexia or disorder has a bit of OCD and I said yeah I understand that but my OCD is sort of slightly in a different category and I know that from such a young age the compulsions have taken up I mean they do these sort of different tests to quantify that how bad you are on the scale of OCD and when I spoke to this doctor in America um she just said to me I don't know how you're still alive like literally you're you're just coming at your test scores are just you know 10 10 10 10 10 and you're spending I mean, literally you dream in OCD.

So, I mean, every hour of every day, not even every waking hour, every sleeping hour. I mean, honestly, it's something that I think, again, people just don't, they don't realize quite how paralysing it is. And as you said, because you're so aware of what you're doing, it's almost like you're just like, why? The frustration.

You feel the responsibility. Yeah, of course. You said it was in 2021 that things took a turn and you feel like you finally got the help that you need. despite having lots of help previously what happened in 2021 who was it that you saw or um so i was very lucky um i was actually on the wait list for a place called adrew which is in kent in beckham um and that's the anxiety disorder residential unit and a guy called professor veal heads up at the unit for oCD and i found him in 2020 and it's so ironic because you would have thought that by seeing some of the

best quote unquote best psychiatrists in london they would direct you to the sort of the top guy and on OCD and me and my mum was slightly also flammex because you also feel slightly responsible why the hell hadn't we found this guy before anyway I had an appointment with him at the Priory and he said to me you're not going to get anywhere treating this as an outpatient you really need to go inpatient to treat the OCD anyway so went to look around at Drew in the autumn of so this was in the autumn of 2019 and I put myself on the wait list I really really didn't want to go because my experience of inpatient treatment in my early 20s had been just so horrendous and had really

retramatized me and I think it probably set me back quite a few steps anyway I trusted this guy and he was the first doctor that I seen that really just understood the language of OCD and just totally got it within an hour he was just I could just you can just tell and anyway so I had my name on the wait list and then six months passed and by that time it was kind of Christmas still hadn't heard so contacted them what's happening oh you're on the wait list don't worry you you'll get a space soon and then lockdown happened um in march and i still hadn't got a place and um anyway contacted them and they said we're really sorry we've had to close the unit indefinitely and we suggest you get a copy of the compassionate mind workbook and um continue with your therapist on zoom

and i thought i literally i had got to at that point so i had been a lawyer um so slightly turbulent career as a lawyer during my 20s of like periods of being signed off but I had qualified and I had I quit a year before lockdown and thinking okay I'm not going to really focus on my mental health because to me getting that qualification was such a I don't know it was almost like a bit of a fuck you to my OCD it was like I'm going to qualify as a lawyer at a top legal firm and I'm going to show you that I can do it and I thought in doing so as everyone does it's going to open all these doors and suddenly I'm going to be the person that you know has the confidence and whatever I'm going to take on the world

Anyway, of course, that never happens. And it didn't actually, if anything, I was at the lowest point that I'd ever been. Anyway, so when I got this email, my heart just sunk to the floor. And I just, I had, the light had completely gone out. And I was, I mean, I know for so many people, lockdown was horrendous. And I think for people with mental health issues, it was particularly hard because, you know, every day looked the same. The depression, the onset of anxiety, just everything that went with it. And when I got the email, I just thought this is a, I just, I can't, I can't go on.

That was my lifeline. And I'd been holding out, holding out, surviving for that point of which I would go into Adria and hopefully get the help and the tools I so desperately craved. And there's this inner streak of determination, which I think a lot of people with OCD have that, you know, I will, there must be something. There must be something. And I had sort of really survived and thinking that I will eventually, I will eventually find something that just flicks that switch in my head. and anyway so i i just went from sort of just really surviving to get to the point where i would be let into adrew to then the point of just being i've just i've given up and i just i don't know what to do now and i think my mom pretty quickly realized that like this was quite serious i was

yeah contemplating ending my life and just thinking i i just don't the world seems a very bleak dark place and i instantly had lunch with a friend um sort of when things started to open up in the summer and I was just sitting there not able to eat and I just you know she said how are you and I just burst into tears and her family were there and she had been over to the states and when we were in our teens struggled with an eating disorder anyway she said to me look to speak to my psychiatrist who I saw when I was in my teens in America because he's just he's kind of like an encyclopedia and if he can't help he'll know someone who can and at this point no doctors in the UK were really seeing people and especially new people

And there was definitely no hope of getting into an inpatient residential program, which I knew that I needed at that point. Anyway, so I spoke to this doctor in America. He was very kind. He spoke to me straight away. And he said, we've got to get you out here as quickly as possible because it doesn't sound good. And it sounds pretty critical. He said, I know a woman who can help with the OCD and I can help with the food. But we've got to get you to America. And that was in the summer of 2020. And when there was just no hope that I was going to get to America. And we tried getting medical visas and I didn't qualify because, I mean, there were so many loopholes. and then eventually in the autumn my mom was very very tenacious and determined as well and she discovered that there was a loophole where you could go into Mexico and cross the border

through Mexico if you spent two weeks in Mexico so anyway we got a space at this it was an outpatient treatment center for OCD and anyway very near where this other doctor was based and we found a little flat to rent and we booked our flights she had a space to see me in January of 2021 and yeah So we spent, yeah, a month in Mexico in the end because all the borders started closing and the Christmas is 2020 again. And so we hopped on the last flight to Mexico and not knowing whether we were going away

for us, two months, three months, six months. And had this horrible month in Mexico where we both like nervous wrecks. So my mom coming up with every contingency plan of like how we're going to cross the border if the, like, every flight gets grounded. Oh, we've got to get a car. We've got like get a plan to then be able to walk across the border.

We've got to find contact. I mean, honestly, like, I was like, who's the anxious one? Like, who's the one with the issues here? And we arrived. And the doctors immediately looked at my mom. They're like, is she the one with the issues or are you the patient that we're here to see? Anyway, so, and that was where I started my really, my healing journey, I'd say.

And that was a case of very invasive and consistent exposure therapy. And I was with a therapist every day, seven days a week for the first three months. Seven, yeah, seven hours a day just doing exposure. after exposure, after exposure, after exposure. And it was very planned. So, as I said before, you know, I started, started with imagining the exposures that we were going to do. Then I would start writing about them.

And then I would start actually having to look at pictures of all the wrong people. Then I put, they put my face superimposed on pictures of the wrong people. And then we would go out and we'd go out into these sort of, you know, and we were in L.A. And there's sort of these homeless villages. And so then I was going into the homeless tenteds of villages, as I would call them. And I would be having to have prolonged into. actions. I'd be having to, you know, anyway, do various tasks around that and then doing new

things alongside. So everything was sort of jumbled and wrong. And that was, we did that for six months. And in the end, you know, that that sort of was, I was very, very lucky. And I feel so blessed to have been able to have had that time. But eventually my mom just said, that's all I can afford to do. And they want, they said, you know, to get real results. You have to be here for two and a half years and I just we couldn't do that so I came back to London and of course I went back a few steps but I didn't go down to that baseline that I had left at and um I've slowly rebuilt since there and it's hard that as I say every day you have to go left when your brain wants to go right quite often and I have to tackle and conquer the avoidances which fill me with dread and

it it's there like a weight on your shoulders because if you tackle them It's just like constant banter at the back of your head. Oh, you shouldn't be doing that. You should be doing that. Oh, that's messy. Oh, no, you've done that. So you're so hyper aware of everything that's going on around you. And, you know, I'm at an age and, like, you know, you guys are both moms.

And I think, God, the opportunities that I've missed and the things in life that I've had to forgo, relationships that I haven't had, you know, opportunities I've had to say no to. but you you have to just I guess yeah you you carry on with what you've got right and I I'm so so lucky to have found the podcast in a forum where I can have these conversations and conversations like this with incredible people and some amazing doctors and hopefully help people along the way and slowly build my community and I really hope that listeners of the podcast and of this podcast stick with me because it's like it's a patient's thing with people with OCD right you know the more comfortable you get and the more that you get into your stride. I'm not about to become like a viral sensation or be able to be an influencer which I wish that for the sake of like the podcast and like the chances of it succeeding I could do but I've got to be, I've got to adjust my expectations

and I think you should do what you can do in life, don't you? And I think you just hope that things continue to get better. I imagine that before the podcast you didn't have support or a community within the OCD world, I imagine. Yeah. And people who experience the same thing as you, the podcast must have opened that up for you, which has got to be so helpful

and so useful to have connection in that area. I think it does. I think, I mean, that's the sad thing about not being able to do social media, right? Is that I can't connect with many of my audience, which I hope I'll be able to eventually work towards and I'd love to be able to do more live Q&As. And I think expanding that side of things will really, really help.

I was really lucky. And as you said, as I've been more open about it, some people have approached me. And I've got an incredible mentor who actually I worked as a lawyer with, who I speak to every week, like when it's tough twice a week. And he completely understands how my mind works. And it's so refreshing to have someone like that. And as you say, if I hadn't been open about my struggles

and if he hadn't been open about his, we would never have met. And so finding those kindred spirits, it is incredible and it's really transformative because you just, you don't even have to explain. And that's the thing that you start to realize, and this is what I was thinking earlier, is that OCD is so illogical and that it can latch onto anything. So he has a thing about confidential papers and them attaching to him. And I have a thing about new things and change and right and wrong.

And yet it's all the same, the rationale is all exactly the same. So we can both have a conversation and completely get the way that we're thinking. And yet I can laugh about his papers and he can laugh about my right and wrong people because it's just so, to me, I'm like, what? Like, confidential papers. Like, what's that about? And I'm really pleased for you as well

that you just got the support eventually that you needed. Like, and that you can kind of take what you learned as well and share it with so many other people and know that there is help out there, I guess, as well. Because I suppose for a long time it must have felt really hopeless. But to know that there is treatment, and that you've benefited from it and that you're so much better than you were

and that this isn't the end of your journey that you can keep getting better it feels like it feels hopeful you're so kind well I mean yeah someone said to me the other day well the next iteration of the podcast needs to be healing to living and it kind of made me so I was like Jesus

but it is true I love that I mean it's like you know I'm on that the hurt to healing and that's okay and of course people say to you oh yeah well you know your biological clock's ticking and you're going to miss you another opportunity and yet you just can't think like that because if I go down that rabbit hole then I'm just going to spend a whole life living in like regret and fear and and this is

the whole thing with OCD it's all about fear and you realize that what it boils down to is it's just this fear of being and fear of yourself and you fear of what you can be and of all of those unknowns and those question marks and actually the more that you open yourself up to the universe which is what I try and do now I'm sort of of the mindset of what what will be will be so when people say are you freezing your eggs are you doing this you doing that i'm like well i'm actually not because i slightly believe that what comes into my path will come into my path when it's meant to happen and i'm and by being sort of trying to be more in that abundance mindset and by trying to just be a bit more spontaneous about life which obviously goes against every grain in my body but it's um it's amazing what

starts to happen and and things fall into your lap that you never ever thought were possible and of course things go wrong and oh my god i have weeks and you know i have very very dark days and i find it really hard at this time of year when it's gloomy and gray and you just wake up and you say oh my god you know i've got a mountain to climb today before you know for me i i know that like the first half of the day is always really really challenging and then after sort of you know after say midday things start to get a bit easier because at the beginning of the day i was super anxious and if i don't get triggered then the afternoons can be my time where i feel slightly more relaxed but and it's just recognizing those things and I think being okay with you have doing what you do and just hopefully

progressing at the same time step by step but knowing that it's okay that you go backwards at times and knowing that when you have a trigger it will be fine to take a few steps back or to hibernate for a bit but those those periods become less and less so if I'd liken it to the moving house it would have taken me a year or two to like get to the place where I could deal with that whereas now it takes me maybe a couple of weeks and then I'm like okay right back in so no that's incredible you're doing such a good job and I don't want to be cheesy but you should be so proud of yourself after everything you've been through to be here now and doing what you're doing you should be so so proud of yourself well thank you guys for taking a gamble and for

interviewing me oh god of course thank you for coming thank you so much for coming in and sharing with us Pandora we'll leave the link to hurt to healing in the show notes yes if anyone would like to go and listen please do thank you so much thank you guys thank you should i delete that is part of the ACAS creator network