Happy OCD Awareness Week! As you may know, I’m the president of OCD Twin Cities, the local affiliate of the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF), and I’m excited to host Chrissie Hodges this Thursday! If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll join us from 7 to 9 at the Wilder Center, Auditorium A, 451 Lexington Parkway North, St. Paul, MN 55104.
Chrissie is an incredible advocate for OCD awareness. She often speaks at conferences, to law enforcement, and to lawmakers, appears in live videos for Mental Health on The Mighty, and hosts a YouTube channel, Chrissie Hodges/Pure OCD Advocate.
You received the 2017 International OCD Foundation Hero Award. How did that make you feel?
It was a great honor to receive the hero award, especially following in the footsteps of a couple of my favorite advocates! I think it made me feel more encouraged, not only in my own advocacy, but in encouraging others to pursue their own and find ways of telling and expressing their lived experience. It was a weird feeling, kind of like the impostor syndrome. I don’t feel like my story of survival and recovery or even my ability to talk about it so openly is heroic…I feel like the people I connect with every day in my work who are actively working toward the courage to get better and face this beast of an illness are my true heroes, and they are the reason I find the courage every day to keep speaking out. Anyone who lives with OCD and survives each day with it is a hero in their own right!
Your memoir, Pure OCD: The Invisible Side of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, came out this past year. Why did you write it? What do you hope people will get from it?
I originally wrote is as a tool for myself to read during relapses to remind myself that I really do have OCD. I struggle terribly with the “what if I don’t really have OCD and my obsessions are real” fear, so I thought if I could read about my history with it, it could be a good reminder and motivator in remembering that therapy works and things will get better. When I decided to publish it as a memoir, I hoped that people could use what I had been through to normalize their experience and feel less alone.
People love your live videos! How do you choose the topics? Has there been one video or subject that’s been particularly difficult to talk about?
Thank you! I usually choose topics based on what I have and what my clients are suffering with. The journey to recovery is so complex with OCD, it really isn’t just about therapy then recovery. It’s so emotionally difficult, so I try to do videos based on what I see as common obstacles for my clients. At first the difficult videos were the topics that are so taboo and the lesser known physical symptoms like groin movement and urges. But after being so open over and over and getting so much positive feedback, it has been so much easier to just be absolutely transparent without reservation.
You’ve shed a lot of light on sexual intrusive thoughts and helped people feel less ashamed of them. Tell us why you’re known as “Groinal Girl” among the OCD community.
Haha! It was at the IOCDF conference in Chicago sitting on a panel with you when I decided to open up publicly about how one of my most tormenting symptoms is when I get “the groinal syndrome,” which is a compulsion of checking and rechecking the groin area for movement or “arousal” when exposed to a sexual intrusive thought. I was so nervous, but the reaction was overwhelming and helped individuals who experience it feel less alone. I did a video on it shortly after and it is highly successful and has been watched more than almost any of my other videos! I think I self-proclaimed the #groinalgirl title!
“Groinal Girl” isn’t the only title you have. You’re a certified peer specialist. Tell us what that means.
I fell into peer support shortly after I began my advocacy career. I was helping people with their journey through OCD and realized that I needed formal training to learn to support people and not contribute to their symptoms! I went through intense training here in Colorado and worked full-time with individuals in the community as well as on the teams at the Colorado State Institution at Fort Logan with individuals with major mental illness and substance use disorders. I loved it. Simultaneously, I was working alongside Matt Myles, OCD specialist here in Denver, as an ERP coach and peer support under his supervision.
I saw the need for peer support in OCD treatment and recovery and in 2016 I launched my business doing peer support and consultations for OCD therapist referrals and resources worldwide. Through peer support, I meet with individuals to help support and normalize their experience by using my own lived experience. It has been wildly successful and I work with individuals with sessions one-time, ongoing, or as needed in any stage of treatment before or after. I also work with OCD therapists to coach individuals through exposures by enforcing their hierarchy plan. Both are incredibly beneficial in instilling hope and support to the client as they work toward recovery.
What can attendees of the OCD Twin Cities OCD Awareness Week event expect?
I’m hoping to share my lived experience and story of not only my medical recovery, but my emotional recovery, which was equally as tough to work through. I’m hoping people will walk away feeling a sense of belonging to a community where we don’t have to feel shame, guilt, or embarrassment on what we’ve been through.
Alison Dotson 