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Death and Panic (OCD)(Episode 4) · Living Uncertain an OCD Podcast

• Marc & Stacee: Hey, I'm Stacey and along with my husband Mark, thank you for living uncertain with us. Welcome to the podcast where we talk about all things related to OCD and ERP. On today's episode, we're gonna get into the nitty gritty of the ERP treatment that I started back in summer essentially of 2025 and started that right along with my husband Mark. We did it together. Opening: Hello, and welcome to the podcast, Living Uncertain. This podcast is dedicated to obsessive compulsive disorder, OCD, and the primary treatment, exposure response prevention, ERP. OCD comes in many forms, such as contamination, perfectionism, checking, harm, superstitious, religious or moral, sexual orientation, and or relationship. ERP is the gold standard to treating OCD. Marc & Stacee: Thank you for joining us on today's episode and for living uncertain with us. We are not therapists and this podcast is intended to provide information and support. It should not replace traditional means of seeking help from a licensed mental health professional. If you like this episode or would like to hear more, please like, subscribe, or share with someone you think may benefit. Opening: and it focuses on deliberately confronting fears, the exposure, while refraining from compulsive rituals, the response prevention. With repeated exposures and without engaging in compulsions, we learn to tolerate anxiety and break the cycle of intrusive thoughts. We are a married couple that have faced both the challenges of OCD and the incredible healing that ERP can provide to your marriage, family, and your home. As a person who lives with OCD, Marc & Stacee: And I tackled one intrusive thought, one significant fear at a time. And so we're going to get into each one of those as the episodes progress now and the way that we handled it as a couple and the way that we were able to take the strategies we learned in therapy and still work on those and practice them outside of therapy and how that help from Mark was so instrumental in getting me to where I am today. And so we wanna take that step by step with you. And I know in previous episodes I've talked about the ways in which my OCD presents and the different fears that I've had in the past that I've conquered and the different intrusive thoughts and how and when they kind of came about in the different stages of my life. And so for all of those, including the ones that struck hardest when I was trying to run a business, et cetera, which I'm humbled to talk about on a later episode, Opening: I am much more than this diagnosis. We all can be. Marc & Stacee: The one that I actually ended up tackling first in therapy with the ERP model was my pretty significant fear of death. Primarily my own death, but then after my children reached a certain age, I started transferring my fears onto their death and the thought of them dying. And so it really prevented me from allowing them to do certain things in life as they got older too. But. The one about my own death really became very significant and it came about in my late teens to early twenties. That's about the time I can pinpoint when this fear took over. And essentially I would have significant panic attacks in the middle of the night, screaming, crawling down my hallway. I couldn't breathe. My heart was racing and I was having those panic attacks. several times a week, several times a month. ⁓ I was dealing with them myself before I met and married Mark. And then after I married Mark, I was starting to have them to where he was having to take me physically and put me outside to get that cool air so that I could kind of stop my system from panicking so much. But I really did have this continuous fear of my own death. And so after talking to my therapist, therapist about it and realizing that that was part of the intrusive thoughts that I was having that was related more to OCD. That's the one I tackled first with ERP. And so I am happy to report that today, since I have done the ERP over the fear of my own death, I have had exactly how many panic attacks? Maybe one. Maybe one. I was going to say zero, but Mark's probably right. I might have had one and I don't know if it was even many, many, many. Yeah, like like a little tiny mini panic attack. And it was nothing compared to what I was having. And they were it was constant. I couldn't stop them. And they were always happening in the middle of the night. I was always afraid of the dark and not wanting it to. And I slept. We slept with the TV on because I couldn't have it dark in the bedroom because the darkness would bring on the intrusive thoughts and then the intrusive thoughts would eventually trigger the panic attack. And they were pretty significant and really impacting my life negatively. And then, of course, impacting my family's life because as I'm screaming and crawling down the hallway, my children are waking up and Mark is concerned as well. So. But I will say when we first got married, you didn't have these panic attacks that that I recognized. You might have had them in. maybe necessarily might have hid them from me. I really don't remember you really having any early on in our marriage. It wasn't until we had our kids and they actually ended up getting older to where they were doing things outside of the house ⁓ more in their teenage years. Yeah. But your fear of death also you would put it would prevent you from letting them. It did. Go out and be young adults. I think that in my early time, in our early years of dating and marriage, I was still having those panic attacks, but I was managing them myself. And they weren't as significant with the screaming as loud and whatnot. But I was still having them. Then once we had kids, even when they were younger, I started to notice the uptick in how fearful I was. the panic attacks got more intrusive and more significant. And then yes, by the time my kids were teenagers, I remember one specific incident where I was on the floor, unable to move because both of my kids, both of our kids were out with their friends. And I wasn't coping with that very well because those intrusive thoughts. became, well, they're out and I don't know exactly where they are in this very moment in what they're doing. And so that must mean that they are not going to be coming home. And so my fear of death then started to extend to them. And then that's when I knew that it was becoming so significant in our lives that I needed to get some help for it. And that's why a big part of why that became the first fear that we tackled. Yeah, it was impacting. yourself is impacting the family, it's impacting your kids from being allowed to be kids by sleeping over at friends house or going to birthday parties, things like that because of your fear of allowing them out of your sight pretty much. Yes. And that came on. I didn't expect that necessarily. I knew I had a fear of my own death and I knew it was it was always related. to myself dying and what that meant and how permanent that was and how little I could control that, which was exactly part of the reason I was so scared of it was because it's not in my control to stop it or have a different choice in the matter. And I didn't expect it to extend the way it did to our kids, but I'm now on this side of it through this lens. I'm not surprised that it did. And when, you know, before starting the ERP, you know, we had to sleep with the TV on, no volume, but just on. So there was background light in the room. And, know, that was getting frustrated for me sleeping in the same room with you and, you know, trying to get a good night's sleep. And yet the TV's on and the lights flashing. You just never get a really good night's sleep when you're trying to live in daylight. Yeah. And not to mention that it didn't necessarily help much. I was still having these panic attacks pretty regularly and they were coming out of nowhere in the middle of the night when he's already asleep and I'm shocking him out of out of sleep to this, you know, panic scream that I'm having. So part of what ERP does is it exposes you to the fears, right? So you are constantly getting exposed to the fear so that you stop engaging in the compulsions or stop engaging in the intrusive thoughts. And then the more you expose yourself and the less you compulse, then you start to get kind of your nervous system regulates itself so that you're not feeling as heightened by the fear. itself anymore. And so the way in which I tackled it first was through social media and through YouTube. And I had to start with watching because part of my particular fear of death is thinking about what happens to our body after we die and like the decomposition phases and all of that. And so I remember sitting in my therapist's office and I'm watching an animated version of a video showing body decomposition. Of a guy passing away in his apartment and they start to notice a smell. And it's all animated, fully animated. And I remember again, I couldn't even stay sitting on the couch. I stood up, I was pacing. I was starting to get short of breath and then my heart was beating really quickly. I wanted to... collapse on the floor again because the fear was just, I could not handle myself. And that was the first moment where I exposed myself to the thing that I feared the most. And when you're in OCD therapy and you're in ERP, your therapist will often ask you, where is your anxiety now? And then of course, after you've been exposed, where's your anxiety? And then we have to wait. for the anxiety to come back down and then gauge your number again. And I remember clearly that first time I was at a 10 immediately, I wanted her to turn it off. I was not happy. I was on the verge of starting to kind of scream again because it was so. It was. That's a great word to use. You were like on the verge of potentially even throwing up. I know before even doing this, she gave you techniques on different breathing techniques like a box breathing. But you weren't even able to do that. And as I'm sitting there on the couch watching you go through this, as a loved one, you want to be able to reach out and help. Unfortunately, I just had, I could only just sit there and watch because I knew this was part of the process. And that was really hard as a loved one watching you go through that when all you want to do is help that person. But you know, if you go and help them, that's not helping the process. I had to self-regulate. Yeah. And by letting Mark reassure me, which of course, as we've talked about before, we all love that reassurance with those of us who have OCD, in letting him reassure me, I was just perpetuating the cycle of OCD. So he had to stop that and sit there and watch me. And I had to learn how to regulate myself, how to come down from that anxious moment myself and realize that I wasn't going to die from it. And I realized that I wasn't going to. ⁓ I was going to be able to get through it and I was going to be okay. And I hadn't allowed myself to do that for myself yet. So one video turned into another video, turned into another video, and each one became a little more realistic and each one brought less and less anxiety and then became the homework where, okay, now you have to sleep the night without the TV on. And so, We did it because at that point in our therapy process and in that point of, I was ready. I was ready to make the change. I was ready to get the help. So I wanted it. And so I was ready to say, okay, I'm gonna follow through with this. And so we did. We turned the TV off and I made it one night and then I made it a second night and a third night and we don't sleep with the TV on anymore. No, but she wanted to sneak her phone or her. you know, Kindle or something else that to take in, you know, take the place of that. And one of the biggest parts of doing the therapy together was I was able to go into each session and talk about some of the replacement behaviors that she might have been doing in lieu of having the TV on. Yeah, I had my phone on. So we had to come up with a new rule in our house, which was to reduce the amount of time that you had to be on your phone. Okay. So here I am just saying how ready I am to get the help. And then he's right. There were several times throughout the time we were in therapy that he would have to throw me under the bus essentially. And we would have a good laugh with our therapist about it too. And this was became essential in the reason why ERP worked so well with him coming in. She would have never known that I was using my phone as a workaround. I didn't even realize it was what I was using as a workaround at first. And then once it was brought to my attention, I went, ⁓ yeah, okay, I am doing that. And so then we would come up with another homework or we would come up with another strategy that would help reduce that. But again, I wouldn't really have said anything to her. It was Mark who said a lot of those things to her and that continued the process of helping me to... gain skills and to get better and to finally heal. Whereas had I been doing it alone, I don't think that the progress would have been near as much as it was with him being there with me. And our therapist also knows this and speaks to that quite a bit as well. And also on the homework side, I was able to keep you, hold you accountable to that homework. watching, you know, body farm videos or going on YouTube and trying to find different death related videos, which I would take and send you little clips and to expose you in that side too. And it even came down to when it started impacting our kids that we talked about earlier, we had to include them into the ERP as well. And You know, our son ended up having to go on a school trip out of out of state over to Disneyland. And in the past, when he did it the year prior, a we ended up going parallel with him to Disneyland. So he was really never there by himself. We just went on our own on a trip, you know, with our daughter and would run into him at the park. I think that was also giving into your OCD back then, now that we kind of think about it. Yes, I agree. But it was fun for our daughter to be able to go to Disneyland too. And we ended up seeing him in the park every now and then. the second time around that he ended up going, you were not able to have him text you. No, I had to go contact free with our son the entire time he was in California. And I had to do what we talk about at the beginning of every episode of this podcast, live uncertain that he was either going to be okay or he wasn't going to be. But I was learning and teaching myself that it was okay to be uncertain. And I didn't have to have certainty in all of those moments of everyday life. And not having certainty was not going to kill me. That's what I eventually had to learn. And that's what a lot of ERP is designed to do. So, And you weren't even allowed to sneak on your phone to check 360 to make sure that he was sitting in one of the parks. No. You weren't even allowed to check social media to see any posts. And he was told that I was only the one that he was able to communicate with during this time. And even then, when you would ask me if he was OK, I would always have to say, I'm not sure. Exactly. So needless to say. I had to expose myself in lots of different ways to reduce my fear and the intrusive thoughts about death and dying, my own as well as for our kids. It took a very long time, much longer than I would have liked it to for the algorithm on my YouTube to go back to normal to my very happy cleaning and organizing video. a little bit of an OCD thing too. Yep. So there's that. that one later. There's another one. She has so many different targets of OCD that it was like an onion going through the different phases of ERP that we would kind of come out with like, yeah, this is something I noticed she does, or this is something she does, or this is something she does that... Definitely. And every time we would tackle... that next step for that week or for two week period. Yes. Type of component and. But I had death on my algorithm for YouTube for quite some time. But by the end of my time tackling that particular fear, I was able to watch a real time video of body decomposition. Of funeral home preparations of. Literal funerals that were. on YouTube and I was able to watch them. I was able to go to a cemetery, walk around, sit in a cemetery. of the ERP is your therapist brought you to a place for exposure and sometimes therapists will bring their clients to places for exposure depending on what their OCD is. So that's not uncommon that that type of practice would happen. And that she did on her own without me because One of the things that Stacey would do would be looking my direction for reassurance, even with my face and my body expression that it was okay. That when she had to do on her own with her therapist and I knew that would be coming, you know, and so that was very appropriate. And by the end of it all, I wasn't my suds, if you will, and that's the measurement that therapists will use to track how high your anxiety's gotten and how long it takes you to get it back down, and then where you leave it, the number where you leave it. I have to say, was well below where I even thought I would ever be able to get it. ⁓ I have not had any panic attacks for quite some time. We sleep with the television off now every night. I do not use my devices past a certain time in the evening and I don't use them as a crutch for when my anxiety spikes. I, our children are living a little bit better now too. you had to give a presentation to our kids. I did. About death and decomposition. know, part of your treatment plan, you had a near the end of your ERP session with the therapist. mean, we still go to, you know, therapy. you know, currently too, because it is a moving target and just we just don't go as often. ⁓ But you had to, you know, at the end of your ERP journey, which was several months worth of time and going several times a week. I mean, that presentation was pretty impactful for the kids to realize. what you had been dealing with. Yes. Because they could hear the panic attacks. They knew that they were happening and we had to loop them in on it and they had to be a part of that. That pieces and now when you know. Miles gets in the car and drives you don't worry about him. I don't worry about him more than what typical normal parent worry would be and that's another measure that we use when we have OCD. When does the worry become more than what is normal or what is typical? And that's when we need to get help and to know that there is help available and that there's hope available and it's out there. The other ending piece to my fear of death was for Mark and I to actually sit down. mean, we're, you know, God willing, we'll be on this planet for a lot longer. We have more to do, but you know, in our late 40s here now, we had never really discussed after life care, after life plans, what we thought we would want to do. And I wasn't able to have that conversation or do that. And so that was another big moment for us when as part of my homework, we had to sit down and talk about given everything we'd learned about death, about options, if you will, what we would do. And we did. Yeah, we had to go through and create a will, trust type of thing. And one of the parts that kind of brought that up too is during this time, we ended up adopting a desert tortoise that can live for a very long time. He's going in the will, y'all. Yeah. Who are you going to will the desert tortoise to? He's being willed to our daughter, by the way. And she's very excited about that. He's obviously hers, you know. their kids, don't get to own the pets. We have to own the pets. You know, but that's conversations that we had to have. And we've never had those conversations prior to nor could we even attempt to have those conversations because you wouldn't allow them to happen. No. And we've decided on water cremation. That is a thing. It's pretty amazing if you don't know what it is. Y'all should look it up. You can be cremated with water. Yeah. And somebody here that loves water and sailing and we're doing it. It just kind of fit in a good place with us. And we make a joke because with water cremation, you're, you know, after they're done grinding up your bones and making it into a powder. Yes. And I'd like I'd like it to be known right now that I'm not even at all spiking anxiety at the moment. talking about grinding up bones. Her own bones. My bones. And we joked that we're going to take part of our ashes and make them into little game timers for our kids to have at game night. Then mom and dad can still be part of game night, y'all. Moving forward, game night, here we go. Yahtzee. Anyway, that was the very first fear and the very first part of the intrusive thoughts that I tackled along with Mark and with our therapist so that I could gain some balance in my life. It was something that was significantly impacting my life and I wanted help for it. And so that's one of the reasons why we chose to tackle that one first, because it had been with me for a while and it had been a big one. But the ERP and those techniques and the support from home, it worked. And I wasn't necessarily sure it would. I always thought I'd have this fear. I never thought I'd be able to get over it. And it worked. And so as soon as the ERP worked for my fear of death, then it was time to move on to the next piece. The next bigger one. As we went through the ERP with the death, we, her therapist would include other little ones that she felt was manageable as she was dealing with the death one that we would deal with at home as far as her homework that I could support it. And I think that was an impactful moment for our therapist to realize, ⁓ wow, I can give her a little bit more homework through Mark. And we can maybe speed up the process of ERP a little bit if you want to talk about speeding it up. And I think that, mean, You've already heard that we've talked about, you know, her fear of death or driving, you know, when I alluded to a little bit about the cleaning component and there's more the people pleasing and all of those little components that we talk about, those are all things that she had to tackle that are now primarily in the past, which do not, thank goodness, they do not represent who you are now. Definitely not. That is the 1.0, Stacey. And we're now at an 8.0 version of yourself after going through ERP for eight months worth of work. And yeah, we are still in therapy. We're still going through it and we find little things here and there. But now she's been able to add another layer of different therapy to deal with other issues that maybe we'll get to down the road. But I'm very proud of where you were to where you are now. I know it wasn't easy. know, and anybody that's sitting out there and listening and wishing their spouse would go through it. It is possible. Anybody can do it if you're willing to put in the hard work. And that's something that I want to just get through through these episodes too, is the hard work that you put into it. I had to support that hard work and be that that supportive person. And by going to the sessions with you. made that possible. 100%. And it felt like we were going through the treatment together and you then I don't think felt like you were on an island all by yourself because I think you are strong but I think you would have sabotaged yourself along the way or not been as honest with your therapist even though you guys have a good working relationship. don't think it would have been as effective. And I don't think that you have the as high of a chance reverting back to your old OCD ways because I'm here with you. Yes, I agree with that too. through it together. And I'm kind of that person that can hold you accountable to that side too. Absolutely. Well, and I have seen how much ERP is effective and how much it works. I so appreciate that. Mark has said that was the 1.0 version of myself and now I live in an 8.0 version of myself. I never thought I would be like that. I never thought I would get to this point. I am ecstatic about life. I have a whole new lease on life now, one that I've never had before. My brain feels like it has literally been rewired and I'm so grateful. I'm grateful to Mark. I'm grateful to the rest of my family. I'm grateful to... our therapist, I'm grateful to the rest of my support system that has always been there for me. ⁓ And I'm so excited to keep building this community along with all of our listeners through this podcast, because that is really what we want to drive home through this whole thing is that, again, there's hope, there's help, and we can all come together and learn and support one another. so. Thank you. Yes. Thank you again. for living uncertain with us every day y'all. It is a challenge, but we can do this. And next week we'll add another layer of that onion. And maybe I'll talk a little bit more about that supportive person and how sometimes you can feel like a punching bag since I'm sitting here looking at a punching bag. Yes. With ERP and there you go. Or with the OCD and how that can take a toll sometimes. absolutely. We appreciate you listening and we'll you next week. Thank you.