Obsessive Compulsive and related Disorders

BI hope you are learning a great deal about Obsessive Compulsive and related Disorders. Your study plan does a great job of working you through details of these disorders. However, sometimes hearing real life stories can bring your reading to life in a way that really hits home. This was definitely true for me as a therapist. I once had a teenage client struggling with OCD. Specifically, she struggled with the intrusive thought that she was giving off bad body odor(she did not smell). In some literature, this is called Olfactory Reference Syndrome. Almost anything would trigger her to be excessively concerned about her perceived body odor. As a result of these intrusive thoughts, she compulsively bathed throughout the day and made excessive use of perfumes and deodorizing sprays. Her condition made her life utterly dysfunctional and got in the way of her education and confidence. It is stories like these that have left an indelible mark in my memory about OCD.
For this assignment, I would like you to choose a real-life story of a person who is living with OCD specifically from this list of podcast episodes https://theocdstories.com/episodes/ and then answer the following questions. This is a great website with hour long podcasts about real people struggling with OCD. 1)Briefly summarize the story you listened to. 2)How does their behavior fit the diagnostic criteria for OCD? 3)What surprised you the most about their particular story? 4)Could you relate to any of the parts of their story? Why or why not? 5)At what point in their story was the turning point when their behavior became enough of a deviation from normal that it was indicative of them needing help?