11 Celebs Who Have Opened Up About Their OCD And The Misconceptions People Make About The Condition

Will Poulter visited Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast to share his opinion about the “cruel truth” surrounding OCD and his intrusive thoughts.

“From as early as I can remember [something was not great mentally]. OCD is something I was diagnosed with in my early teens, and when I reflect on it, I think I had intrusive thoughts, which is one of the subsets of OCD if you like, and undiagnosed OCD when I was aware of my imaginary best friend, for example. It just had a different and typically imaginative spin on it for a child. I can remember having this voice in my head telling me if I didn’t walk on certain paving stones on the way up to my mum and dad’s house, something terrible was going to happen to them.”

“I was really lucky. I got access to therapy in my early teens. I was probably 14 when I first started experiencing obsessive-compulsive thoughts and the ruminations, and intrusive thoughts. Until it was diagnosed and until I received that therapy, I just thought I was totally alone with this condition, or not even condition at that time, this way of thinking, with this defunct brain. I was so scared. And that, I think, is the scariest thing about any mental health issues, and you can never underestimate how alone someone can feel in their state.”

“Even when you’re telling someone, ‘I have anxiety too, I have intrusive thoughts, I have OCD,’ I know because I’ve been there myself that 90 percent of the time that the other person is thinking, ‘You do, but not like me though.'”

“The distinction between fact and feeling is massive, and one of the cruelest aspects of OCD is that it totally distorts that.”