Finally, one day I demanded she assess me for psychosis, but she just kept insisting, “this is anxiety. you’re not psychotic.”

Here’s the thing: she wasn’t wrong. But she missed something big.

That anxiety was OCD. And I was in a debilitating cycle of obsessions and compulsions that was in fact making me feel like I was losing my frickin’ mind and only confirming my deepest fear: that I’d lose control.

Sometimes, to help my clients heal, I have to sit across from them and co-create the very scenarios they fear the most. I have to look them in the eye and gently say, “Okay. Let’s imagine the worst-case scenario. Let’s go there together.” And then I have to watch as their face contorts with dread and the terror creeps in.

And I know exactly what that terror feels like— because I’ve lived it too.