This week we speak with Penny Moodie about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Penny is a writer, OCD advocate, and mum of three little people. She is the author of ‘The Joy Thief: How OCD steals your happiness – and how to get it back’ and the co-creator the website soocd.com.au, which is packed with information on OCD and how to get support.

In this episode Penny very generously shares her personal experience with OCD, and she takes us through the ‘why’ of OCD and the strategies and treatment approaches she has found helpful.

We cover:

• What is OCD, and crucially, what isn’t OCD?
• Some of the key mechanisms of OCD, including thought-action fusion, uncertainty anxiety, the ‘just right’ feeling, and the feedback loop between obsessions and compulsions.
• Periods of OCD onset.
• Talking to kids about their thoughts.
• Penny’s personal experience of OCD throughout her life, including in childhood, her adolescence, and throughout her adulthood, and her path to accurate diagnosis.
• OCD in the perinatal period.
• Treatment approaches for OCD and strategies that Penny has found useful, including ERP, methods to reframe and manage distressing thoughts, medication, self-compassion practice, and connecting with other people experiencing OCD.

You can find Penny on Instagram @pennymoodie and through her website, So OCD. Get a copy of Penny’s book, The Joy Thief, here.

The book Penny mentioned was The Man Who Couldn’t stop, by David Adam.

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