Transcript for OCD: It's not just about washing your hands

This is a full transcript of "OCD : It's not just about washing your hands" as first broadcast on 17 August 2018 and presented by Lucy Danser, Lucy Burke and Kerry Fitzgerald - another in our series of podcast takeovers.

Subscribe to the Ouch disability talk podcast

[Jingle: This is the BBC]

TRAILER: Hello, Susan Calman here. I've just snuck in before your podcast to tell you about my new podcast 'Mrs Brightside' a cheerful take on depression in which I'm talking to comedians like Felicity Ward, Jordan Brookes, Jessie Cave, Bethany Black, Jack ((0:00:19.0?)), Sophie Willan and Al Murray. It's frank and honest funny people talking about their own experience of living with tricksy mental health. So if that's up your street look out for Susan Calman's 'Mrs Brightside' and subscribe wherever you download your podcasts. And now I return you to your advertised programming.

EMMA TRACEYHello and welcome to the Ouch podcast, and for the next few weeks we're going to be coming from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, an enormous arts event which happens in the city every August. There are so many disabled acts at the festival this year that it would be an absolute crying shame not to bring some of them in for a chat.

Now, within the hundreds of emails I get from people asking me to review stuff at the fringe was an email from Lucy Danser. Lucy is a playwright who's written a play about OCD, based on her own experiences of the condition. She went on to say that her boyfriend's sister, who helpfully also has OCD, has written a play about her experiences as well. Absolutely uncanny. And that's not even all. Lucy Danser's play is performed by actor, Kerry Fitzgerald who, yeah, you guessed it, has also got OCD. I mean that is an OCD takeover right there.

So I brought the three of them into the studio at the BBC venue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for a chat about having OCD, and what a chat it was. Take a listen.

[This is another BBC Ouch takeover where we hand over the microphone to guest presenters to see what they do with it. Like, share and subscribe.]

LUCY DHello, this is an OCD takeover from BBC Ouch, where three women with obsessive compulsive disorder chat honestly and openly about our experiences, without doctors, experts or even a presenter to steer us in a particular direction. If you don't know it already, at its most basic level OCD is intrusive thoughts followed by compulsive activities that the sufferer feels the need to do in order to manage the intrusive thoughts.

I am Lucy Danser, I have OCD, and my OCD tends to show up very, very basically in intrusive thoughts where I will think about something very bad happening and I will find the need to manage that, whereas I might touch things, I might say a certain thing over and over again in my head, that sort of thing. So everyone else here is going to introduce themselves now.

LUCY BHello, I'm Lucy as well. I also have OCD. My OCD tends to come out, I often get stuck doing things which is a term you might hear people use a lot if you've spoken to people before about OCD, but basically I repeat things a lot. So to deal with my intrusive thoughts I will do things again and again and again. And that could be when I'm getting dressed or when I'm having a drink. I also count in my head a lot and kind of ruminate on thoughts quite a lot as well.

KERRYI'm Kerry Fitzgerald. And that was Lucy Burke by the way.

LUCY BOh yeah, sorry.

KERRYThat's her last name.

LUCY BThank you.

LUCY DThere's two Lucy's.

LUCY BI wasn't sure if we were doing surnames.

KERRY I'm Kerry Fitzgerald and my OCD is about praying and touching wood. And I also get stuck. To keep us on track we've been given a dog bowl full of questions on little pieces of paper. We have no knowledge of what the questions are but we're told they might occasionally be a bit cheeky.

LUCY BOh?

KERRYWe'll take turns picking them out and chat about the answers together.

LUCY BVery excited. Opening. Okay?

LUCY DWhat does it feel like to have intrusive thoughts and how are they triggered?

LUCY BIt's so much fun.[laughter]

KERRYThey're the best.

LUCY DPlease explain further Lucy.

LUCY BNo, it's not ideal really. I often get this really overwhelming thought that like something bad is going to happen but it's never very specific, so like I don't know what the bad thing is but it's just this overwhelming feeling of like being scared and feeling completely out of control, trying to prevent something from happening but you don't know what it's going to be.

So yeah, it's not nice, like I said, it's completely overwhelming. The way that I describe it, or the way that I've started to look at it through doing therapy and stuff is that I always say that the OCD is kind of like a flatmate that's living with me but sometimes that flatmate completely takes over my entire head and my everything. Every thought is OCD intrusive thought, intrusive thought, no like, sort of regular thoughts that you would experience. And then on days when I'm feeling better the OCD, I've given him a name, he's called Archibald. [laughter]

LUCY DOf course, of course.

LUCY BHe's not there as much and he's able to pipe down a bit more, which is nice. But no, when it's bad it's all consuming, you can't focus on anything else and you feel like you want to think about it more to somehow protect yourself, but the more you think about it, like the worse it gets. So yeah, it's not great.

LUCY DI had the same sort of vague, unspecific vibe that something was bad when I was younger, when I was very young before I knew I had OCD, and it was very weird because I would just feel bad all the time. And I'd be doing something lovely like going on a family trip or, I don't know, it would be my birthday and I'd just have this nagging, nagging feeling that everything was going to end or everything was going to be ruined, or something awful was going to happen. And I never knew why I felt so negative about everything when I had a pretty good life, pretty good childhood.

But now that I know what it is I will try and control the thoughts, kind of like Lucy B was saying, by rethinking them over and over again, but I'll rethink it and I'll try and edit it a little bit in my brain, so if I'm thinking oh, something bad might happen to my friend I might try and make myself have that thought from the beginning again and try and finish it with, but it won't! [laughter] And I'll keep trying to do that over and over again in my head, and then you end up just thinking about the same thing that doesn't really have anything to do with your day. That's probably the best way I can explain it, I don't know about you?

KERRYFor me the thoughts always seemed really logical. So if I was going on a holiday my brain would obviously be like, okay well, the car is probably going to crash or the plane is going to crash or you're going to lose one of your family members, or you're going to lose some of your stuff. And then I would worry about all those things and do all the things to keep them from happening.

And yeah, sometimes I'd have a general feeling of like, I feel like if we go outside today what if someone dies? You know you have like this weird like maybe we just shouldn't because I've had that thought now. But it still kind of is rooted in this weird place where I see it as logical. So for a long time I thought other people would have the same thoughts and would have the same worries and that it seemed just like being safe.

But yeah, I guess it's how much those thoughts affect you. So for me for a long time I didn't go on holiday, I didn't go anywhere, and for a while I would say I was maybe slightly agoraphobic, I found it much nicer to just be indoors, and I could be indoors for a week or so without really realising because it's a controllable environment and you feel a bit safer there.

LUCY BYes.

LUCY DYes, definitely, yeah.

KERRYSo it's where you see the barriers sort of shifting, and then you go, okay, that's where other people would probably not live like that.

LUCY DYeah.

KERRYThat's when the intrusive thoughts are too much.

LUCY BYeah, I think when a sufferer has one of these thoughts I think the difference between someone who has OCD and someone who hasn't is that they, or I, definitely tend to believe the thoughts. Do you know what I mean?

LUCY DYes.

KERRYYes.

LUCY BSo I'll get a worry but to me it's not a worry that may or may not happen, it's a fact.

KERRY It's a fact, yeah.

LUCY DYeah. No, I agree.

LUCY BAnd I find it really hard to distinguish between what's true and what I have just thought of, and yeah, I think that's when that kind of logic starts to go a little bit and I have to try and bring myself back and be like, no it is a thought, it's not a fact.

KERRYBut it's hard because I think, I guess deep down people with OCD think on some level they're a bit physic, or that they can predict things, right? Like this mystical thinking all the time.

LUCY DYeah, yeah.

LUCY BYeah.

KERRYAnd my family are Irish and they were all superstitious and like my mum would get me to come and pick cutlery off the floor because it was bad luck for her to do it. Like we had loads of weird rules in my house that were like that, but then it's like if you pay attention to all the times when… your brain kind of naturally then remembers all the times where you have predicted something and ignores all of the times when that hasn't happened. So then you do start to anchor yourself in the moments. But that one time I had the thought that that thing would happen and then it did, for me there's been like three or four moments in my life where that's kind of helped the OCD really take root.

LUCY DI think that's the problem is because you're taught with OCD to ignore the thoughts and to resist the compulsions, but the problem with that is of course if something then does go wrong you think well, if I'd done it, it might not have gone wrong.

KERRYExactly.

FEMALEOkay, next question.

LUCY DNext question. Kerry.

KERRYLet's see. Are there any positives to having OCD? I would say 100% yes.

LUCY BWell we've written some cracking plays about it, so… [laughter]

KERRYAnd we are just generally fun people to be around.

LUCY BOh God, yeah.

LUCY DWe are pretty great.

KERRYFor real though I would say that I'm probably… Maybe this is the illness talking but definitely I would say that being hypervigilant is absolutely exhausting, but I have lived through some incredibly stressful times in my life and I've had some horrific things happen in my family, like my mum dying. And I think when you have OCD your brain just naturally sits in that place of anxiety and worry anyway, so when you get a phone call and it's like someone's dying or someone's had a heart attack, something terrible's happening, your brain is already geared up to live there, so you don't have a massive… You can cope really easily in those situations and get through them slightly better and help other people to get through them. And I think that in that way I was grateful for having that high level anxiety, because it kind of propelled me through these terrible, terrible situations.

LUCY DI don't cope that well in a crisis.

LUCY BI cope very badly.

KATEReally?

LUCY BYeah. Yeah, my intrusive thoughts just get like more and more and then I'm like touching everything all the time.

LUCY DI wouldn't… People always say, you know, you should be grateful for who you are because if you didn't have this you wouldn't be that. So I don't know who I would be without OCD. Unfortunately I haven't got any of the… I'm not a great cleaner. You know some people say they're very organised or they're very clean or they're a perfectionist? I don't think I've got any of those things. [laughs]

But I'm sure there are some things. I do think that I am quite a good family member because I think I am always hyper aware of if people are people are happy or if they are sad or if they've had a bad time or if they're going somewhere that's safe or unsafe, which can be irritating for my family. But I know my grandma loves that I call and check that she's in every evening and I'll always check that my sister's okay. And I'm not saying that I've stopped anything bad happening to any of them, but it definitely makes people grateful that you seem to care, even if it's from a sort of obsessive standpoint.

LUCY BI've got another benefit that's like slightly happier and not like so much to do with the illness, but I think I have quite an obsessive personality which is not what OCD is, but I think it definitely goes hand in hand with me having OCD. So I get very into things. If I'm doing a project I am doing the project.

LUCY DYeah, I'm the same.

KERRYU-hum, yeah.

LUCY BSo stuff like, even when I was a teenager like before I knew anything about OCD when it came to like revising for my exams I made a timetable, I revised like 12 hours a day, I prepared 30 essay questions a day, knew like if this question comes up here's my answer. Anyway, it was very silly, like I didn't go out a lot or sleep much, but I did get good exam results, so…

LUCY DWell, there we go.

KERRYI second that, I think that's a good thing because it's about your brain wants to understand things and categorise things, and that kind of obsessive, like it helps with work as well. It's not healthy to just obsess about a job and to work 15 hours a day, but the early part of your career, we're millennials, [laughter] it's helpful for us.

LUCY BOh… It's a really massive piece of paper but it's like the shortest question I've seen so far. What do you do to manage your OCD? There's like some pretty specific things I do, so one is medication, two is CBT which stands for cognitive behavioural therapy, and then I also, there's a few like lifestyle changes that I've made recently. Well not even that recently, but since kind of being diagnosed I don't drink anymore, I don't drink caffeine, which you don't have to do that to manage OCD, that's just…

LUCY DFor you.

LUCY BIt makes me feel a bit more in control. I exercise a lot. I think exercise is really empowering, it makes me feel so much more in control of my own body and you get endorphins afterwards. It's lovely.

LUCY DI wish I was better at exercise.

KERRYI don't do any. [laughter] I do nothing.

LUCY BIt makes you feel so good.

LUCY DWe should take this tip from Lucy.

KERRYNo, but life is exercise. I have a two year old, so I spend my day running and squatting and climbing and jumping.

LUCY BAnd you have a puppy. I don't have any responsibilities, so I'll go to the gym.

LUCY DI refused to take pills for a very long time because they have a kind of stigma, and also I didn't… Well, I don't know, whereas I do understand that people should take pills for physical ailments I was still very much of the mindset for a long time that I should be able to deal with my own mind. And after a few years I decided I would try them, and I haven't really looked back.

I've pared back to a very low dosage, but when I have tried to come off them I've found that it just… What they do for me is they just assist, they don't stop me having intrusive thoughts, they don't stop me being compulsive, but they do give me a little bit of breathing room, just to…

I don't know, I don't know what they do, but they just make me feel like I have a few seconds more to myself before my brain kind of ramps up too fast. Things that I tried to do for a long time with meditation or CBT or all the kind of stuff you try first and it wasn't enough, I found that I would have so many panic attacks that it was pretty much disabling. And the Citalopram, in combination with eating well and try and look after yourself and thinking sensibly about things does help for me.

KERRYI've been definitely more mindful about daily routines, and I think just more aware of the fact that I like sticking to a routine and trying to make that a healthy one, like you're talking about. And meditation, so this is where you guys both say you were. [laughs]

LUCY BYeah.

KERRYBut yeah, being mindful and doing meditation and being present and trying to… And I do think having a little kid around really helps because they're present all the time and they don't want you to just sit there and be zoned out and in your own mind. And they won't give you the space to do that. So if I'm playing with Elliot then I have to be in the room. That in a way really, really helps because that's a massive part of my day just spent looking at some trains or whatever which is kind of like a meditation in itself.

And I talk a lot. [laughter] I talk a lot through things. I talk with my partner a lot about any thoughts I'm having or worries I'm having. And if I'm having a panic attack then try to manage that in the moment. And also I do a lot of reading, which again, I love research and I love learning, so I've been reading a lot about different types of panic attack and how to spot them and what to do. So I try all kinds of different things. But I don't think I have like my system yet.

LUCY DI found reading was one of the things that was the most effective actually, even when I felt when I had a kind of dip and I wasn't really able to work and I wasn't feeling great at all, I spent most of my time in my local library and I read Joanne Limburg's book, 'The Woman Who Thought Too Much' and a couple of other books, and it was the first time I'd heard how I felt articulated, as opposed to it being a list of symptoms which I didn't necessarily understand at all.

LUCY BAlso like just reading for pleasure. That's like a big part of… and I know it's a big part of your life as well, and your life I'm sure. Yeah, it's a big part of my life, I'll always carry a book with me, and I think more so now since I have known that I've got the OCD and I've been managing it. I just think there's something so nice about being able to completely escape into a completely different world. It gives me something to focus on that's not like my own thoughts and my own life, it's like someone else's life.

LUCY DYeah.

KERRYNext question.

LUCY DOh. Have you always had the same kind of obsessions and how do new ones form?

KERRYOh, that's a really good question.

LUCY DI think I form obsessions based on where I am and who I'm with and things like that. I can be affected by… I don't know, if someone I know is ill I will then develop a sort of obsession over their health and checking in on them, or something like that. Or if I hear something in the news about something happening I will then be sort of, you know, I heard about phone chargers exploding and I now am very, very strict about what we can switch on and off in our house at what time and making sure things are unplugged before we leave the house. And I'll make my boyfriend walk through the whole house and unplug everything if he's going to lock up for the day.

LUCY BAgain, that's enabling, just FYI.

LUCY DOh well, we just do it most of the time anyway, so it's fine.

LUCY BBut I get the thing with the phone chargers as well.

LUCY DBut that's a logical thing as well though isn't it, but I do get that, that if I hear or read something that has happened to someone else I'll think oh, well that could happen so I'll just add that to my list of things that I'm trying to guard against.

KERRYI do think that brings up a good point about how now we're so exposed to so much information and so much news that you see so much more than people would have even thirty years ago.

LUCY DYeah, when I was younger I was less concerned or aware of what I looked like on the outside, so I would do very big compulsions that I didn't necessarily comprehend were weird. So I would… I put this verbatim in the play, but I would spit if I heard words like cancer or death or anything that seemed like something I wouldn't want to think or have inside me. And I would touch things all the time but like everything, I would just underground everything. I was constantly covered in dirt because I lived in London.

KERRYHow ironic, because people think people with OCD are very clean.

LUCY DI'm very much the opposite. I would only wear clothes that felt right when I was putting them on, so they might look a bit weird. The one that drove my mum mad was that I would spin in the street and I would kick my leg up. I couldn't in my head think that was linked to a specific intrusive thought but it was just an urge, I had to do it. And I would constantly be like close calls of kicking people in the street, or I would kick people in the street, because I had to kick exactly and my toe had to touch my bum and then I would spin as I did it. And I would constantly just look like a… I was just a mess.

KERRYYour toe had to touch your bum?

LUCY DI don't know why.

LUCY BSo flexible.

KERRYBut how did that even work?

LUCY DI was flexible as a child. [laughs] Before I discovered alcohol and stopped being flexible and skinny. But yeah, nowadays I learnt as I got older that people would look at you weird or they would comment or they would ask what was wrong with you, until I would say maybe last year I wouldn't talk about OCD, I didn't want to tell anyone. So I learnt to do things like, I would just say things under my breath. I would spell words in my head, I would touch my fingers to each other, anything that is less visible.

KERRYAnd you'd style it out. You'd try and make it look like you have an intention behind touching the tree. Like this is a tree and you know you have to touch it…

LUCY DYeah, and then I'll start rubbing it.

KERRYYou're like, oh is there something on the tree?

LUCY DOh, what a nice tree. [laughter]

KERRYIn case anybody sees, yeah.

LUCY DI've done loads of pretend picking things up from the floor.

LUCY BFor years I've counted, I've had rituals of counting, like repeating thoughts a certain number of times, or like tapping out a pattern a certain number of times. And the pattern has changed, like right now it's one two three four, one two. But like…

LUCY DWell done.

LUCY BThank you. I nailed it. but like it used to be that I did stuff in threes and then one day I was overwhelmed with threes and it switched to fours and then…

KERRYDo you know why?

LUCY BNo, I don't know why. It comes up in my play as well. I think the thing about numbers is like they're so definite, do you know what I mean? So they're so solid, so if you do something a certain number of times it's that amount of times, like it's not negotiable. Do you know what I mean? But no, I don't know, so I would ruminate a lot of numbers and it's something that… I'm a lot better right now, but that is the main compulsion that I'm still trying to get rid of.

LUCY DCounting.

LUCY BYeah.

KERRYAnd so do you really think that you can get rid of that? Both of you, do you think that you can get rid of all of those compulsions?

LUCY DNo.

LUCY BNo.

KERRYIt's hard isn't it? Because you're heading towards somewhere where you think you could, but I don't know. There's part of me that doesn't want to either because I still, obviously on some level you believe you have to do these things, even if rationally you know that doesn't make sense.

LUCY BYeah. With me it's just, do you know when you are so used to doing a compulsion, like it's so in your body, I find it very hard. Like I find myself doing it instinctively, it's not like I'll have the intrusive thought and then I'll think oh, I need to do this compulsion, like there's no moment in between that where I think no, don't do the compulsion. It's very instinctive. But I think it can definitely be managed, like for me it's so much better now, like with therapy and the medication and stuff. I think as long as it gets to a point where it's not like overwhelming your entire life, like that's what I'm aiming for.

LUCY DYes. Next question.

KERRYOkay. [laughs] Do you wash your hands hundreds of times a day then?

LUCY BNo.

KERRYNo.

LUCY DI do not, although since I have got my puppy, Mabel, I actually have, after many years of saying oh, OCD's nothing to do with animals. Well it is, but not everyone. I've started doing it, just because I am quite hands on with her and so now I've added to my list that I don't mind exposing myself to whatever Mabel's kind of picked up or touched but I don't want to expose anyone else to it. So I have started washing my hands very regularly.

KERRYBut that seems rational.

LUCY DYes. No, but I'll wash them and then I'll be like oh, well maybe I didn't wash them enough. Yeah, so it's definitely built up, but I'm not doing the unwell washing where your hands are kind of chapped and raw and it's too much. I've just noticed that I will actively head to the sink when I haven't really touched her or done anything for no clear reason. So I'm just keeping an eye on that, but no, I've never done it before.

KERRYBut that's it isn't it? You just keep an eye on it, you go oh, okay, that's an interesting little red flag, I'm going to keep an eye on that one.

LUCY DThat's new.

KERRYNext question.

LUCY BOh God. What's the most unusual thing that your OCD has made you do?

LUCY DOh, Jesus.

LUCY BThere's loads of weird stuff, like sometimes I just don't even know what socks to wear and I have to change my socks like a million times, because the socks, what if I wear them and they're dangerous? You don't know, just don't know.

LUCY DYou just don't know.

KERRYDon't take the risk please. [laughter] That's the moral of this story.

LUCY DHow about you, Kerry?

KERRYI mean I don't know if this is weird but I'll throw one at you. So recently my dad was in hospital for a couple of weeks and now, again this seems perfectly logical to me, but there was a moment while I was doing it that I thought maybe not everybody does this when they come home from the hospital. Cleanliness and stuff, I don't care, I'm totally fine, but when it comes to the hospital I get very uncomfortable, I don't like being there, I don't like taking my son there, I don't like touching anything.

The first day I visited my dad in the hospital there was a bin, like they were changing all of the people's beds and stuff and they'd left this bin of dirty laundry right next to my dad's bed and there were things in that bin which I would rather have not seen or smelt. And they were next to my dad who was having breakfast, totally unaware because he had a severe concussion, and I was like, "Sorry, could someone take the bin full of poo away from my dad's bed? That would be great. Sorry, thank you."

LUCY DSorry. [laughs]

KERRYAnd like that did make me a bit uncomfortable, I'm not going to lie. I think most people would have been uncomfortable. I got home and I had to remove every item of clothing at my front door [laughter] and get it… I live at the top of a Victorian house, so it's not like I was on the street, but I got to the front door, took everything off, had to take it off so it was inside out so that the germs that were on the outside of my clothes didn't come into my house. Do you know what I mean? Like I'm bagging them up.

LUCY BYeah.

KERRYAnd then went straight through, put them in the laundry basket in the… No, put them straight in the washing machine, so walked through my house naked, all of my clothes in my arms, straight into the washing machine. Then I had to go straight into the bathroom and wash my hands and my hair and my body and I wouldn't touch anything or speak to anyone. I left my shoes outside the front door so the germs that were on them wouldn't come into my home and I had to go out the next day and clean them off and stuff. Now, that sounds perfectly logical, right? Is that not what everybody does when they come home from the hospital?

LUCY DIt's fairly full on, fairly full on.

KERRYYes, it was a bit full on, and when Elliot came in for the day with me he had to do the same thing. So we're stood at the door, I'm taking all of his clothes off, I bring him straight into the bathroom with me. Yeah, so again that just seems… It's a bit weird I guess, like I didn't even speak to Jack, I was just roaming around naked desperately trying to clean myself.

LUCY DIt seems pretty strange.

FEMALEDo you worry… I'm totally not supposed to ask questions, do you worry that any of that will rub off on Elliot?

KERRYDo I worry that any of that will rub off on Elliot? Yes, because my mum was so superstitious and I think she had OCD. Like we would leave the house and she'd be like - she smoked - and she'd be like, "Oh, maybe I didn't put my cigarette out, we have to go home and check." And we'd be checking and rechecking and we'd do that maybe twice, three times, and it was like, "You definitely didn't, Mum. Let's go."

And OCD is a learned behaviour and obviously children learn by watching their parents, so I try and hide it as much as I can from him. Obviously when it came to that I couldn't really hide that and I hope he doesn't do that himself. But the other things that I do, any other compulsions or worries I have, I definitely try to talk about them away from him and don't show him anything I'm doing.

LUCY DYeah, I know my parents tend to worry about whether they did or said anything when I was younger that led me to become this way.

FEMALEThe final question.

LUCY BOh, last question. Oh, this is a good question. Describe what it feels like when you try to stop one of your obsessive behaviours. I mean, yeah, it touches on what I said before, it's all consuming. It feels like you have a bully in your head that's saying, "Do this, do this, you must do this, you must do this. You can't go on with the day until you've done this," and it just plays on a repeat and it becomes such a strong like physical and mental urge. Kind of like if you've got an itch and you really need to scratch it and then you scratch it but it just gets itchier so then you itch it again and again and again and then it gets kind of out of control. That's how I would describe it as. Like an itch in your brain.

KERRYOh.

LUCY BThat's what I'd describe it as.

LUCY DThat's a good description.

LUCY BYeah it is, it's like an itch in your brain, you want to keep scratching it.

LUCY DI think for me, yeah, it's a very similar sort of thing, is that if I've got a specific thought and it's asking me to do a compulsion and I can't do it or I'm saying I won't do it, it does become, like Lucy said, all consuming. So it's not like, oh I won't do it and I'll get on with my day, it's I won't do it and then I'll say well you should do it. and in my head I'll say, oh well I'm not going to do it this time, and then I'll just realise that an hour has passed and I'll just be thinking about that.

And I probably haven't done anything, I've probably just sat and not done the compulsion. But if I had done the compulsion then I probably would have just been able to get on with my day. So sometimes it's more time consuming to not do the compulsions, and that's where it becomes a cycle I think.

LUCY BYeah.

KERRYI don't know if I've tried not to do them enough to know, in all honesty. When I did the CBT they talk a lot about, you know, you test it out. So you do the little things, like if you always have to touch wood then you'll say something tiny and you won't touch wood. It's like a barometer and you keep testing your theory and seeing, oh actually okay, and then it gets bigger and bigger and everything's fine, apparently.

LUCY BYeah, that's a type of treatment for it though isn't it? What's it called?

LUCY DExposure.

LUCY BExposure therapy, yeah.

KERRYAnd so I did that a bit, and actually I had a couple of days where I realised I hadn't touched wood. But yeah, I don't know, it didn't feel like an itch I needed to scratch, it was just a constant experiment, if that makes sense.

LUCY DYeah.

LUCY BThe compulsion is supposed to like die down if you leave it for a while.

KERRYYeah, because otherwise you're feeding the monster aren't you? The more you do it, the more it needs it.

LUCY BSo that's why you're supposed to ignore it.

LUCY DBut the reason a lot of people don't is because of the fear of the panic as well as the… It might be the fear of the thing happening but it might just be the fear of the panic, because a panic attack is so realistic.

LUCY BOh God yeah, and in that moment it's so hard to tell yourself like, oh this…

LUCY DThis will pass.

LUCY BYeah.

KERRYYeah, and for me as well it was about leaving Elliot for some of the first times with other people that weren't his dad. So it was like testing that out, okay if I leave him for an hour with someone, but I would still do a compulsion within that and tell them loads and loads of stuff. But yeah, it's testing the theory, but it's not easy at all, it's very uncomfortable. It's like wearing trousers made out of hay, is how I would describe that.

LUCY BThat's very visual.

KERRYSo I guess it is itchy. Yeah, no sorry, go back to the itch, I agree.

LUCY BYeah, thank you.

LUCY DOCD is itchy, to sum up. [laughter]

LUCY BWe're going to plug our shows. Shall we plug our shows?

LUCY DLet's plug our shows. So I am Lucy Danser, I have written a play called 'Lost in Thought', loosely based on my own experiences with obsessive compulsive disorder. It's a two hander about a mother and a daughter and how OCD has shaped their relationship over a period of years. Kerry, who is here today, she plays Felicity, the daughter, very nicely.

KERRYYes, I'm Kerry Fitzgerald, and I'm in Lucy Danser's play, 'Lost in Thought'. And the reason I love doing the play is because it's not the hand washing type of OCD, it's very realistic, very balanced, like a very raw kind of human relationship that is affected by the illness. And I related to a lot of Felicity's worries about safety and security and she touches wood a lot, so yeah.

LUCY DWe're on every day at 6:40 pm at Delhi Belly in Underbelly, Cowgate.

KERRYOh, but it also does have funny moments in, it's got darkly funny moments. There's definitely light relief.

LUCY DDark humour.

LUCY BIt's very good, I've seen it.

LUCY DOh, thanks.

LUCY BNo, you're welcome. Yeah, so this is Lucy Burke speaking and I have written a play called 'Weird'. It's a one woman show loosely based on my experiences of growing up with undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder and how that can impact on different relationships, be they romantic relationships, friendships or family relationships. That also is a dark comedy. It is on every day at quarter to two at the Pleasance Courtyard in Bunker Two.

LUCY DAnd I've also seen it and it's very good.

LUCY BThank you.

KERRYThere's so much love in the room.

LUCY BI didn't pay her to say that.

KERRYAs she hands her a £50 note.

LUCY BSo you have been listening to the BBC Ouch podcast. They love hearing from you so tweet them @bbcouch, search for them on Facebook or email [e-mail]. Thank you so much for listening to us chat.

KERRYThank you.

LUCY DThank you, goodbye.

LUCY BBye.

KERRYBye.

Subscribe to the Ouch disability talk podcast