Living With A Spouse Who Has OCD: Supporting Them and Taking Care of Yourself

Episode 8 of OCD Insights with host Samantha Bray, LCSW, and guest Dr. Sunil Nandlal Punjabi, OCD counsellor and author. Lightly edited for readability.

Cold Open: Two Ants On A Dining Table

Samantha Bray: Two ants on a dining table. It was Diwali. The sweets were out, friends were waiting, and Dr. Sunil Punjabi's wife looked down, saw two tiny red ants, and burst into tears. Then she cleaned house for half an hour, blaming herself the whole time. For years he had told himself she simply liked a clean house. That was the moment he understood it was something more.

Welcome to OCD Insights, where we break down the complexities of OCD with compassion, clarity, and hope. Whether you are seeking answers, support, or connection, you are not alone. So let's dive right in with our host, Samantha Bray. This is OCD Insights.

Who This Episode Is For

Samantha Bray: I'm Samantha Bray and this is OCD Insights. This episode is for the person standing next to OCD: the spouse, the parent, the partner, who is tired and quietly resentful at times and has nowhere to put that. And it is for you if you are the one with OCD and you have watched the people you love get worn down.

My guest is Dr. Sunil Punjabi. He spent twenty years in media before his wife was diagnosed with postpartum OCD. Then he went on to earn a master's degree in clinical psychology, write a memoir about their marriage, and five books on specific forms of OCD. He has opened a counselling practice in Mumbai called Unshackle. He does not leave out the hard parts: the four months they lived apart, his own depression, what a therapist said to him that changed everything.

You don't have to do anything with this while you listen. Just grab your favorite hot tea or a cup of coffee and come sit with us. Let's welcome Dr. Sunil Punjabi to OCD Insights.

From Twenty Years In Media To OCD Counselling

Samantha Bray: Well, welcome, Dr. Sunil Punjabi. It's so nice to have you here. I would love it if you told us a little bit about yourself and about your journey to becoming an OCD counsellor and author.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Thank you so much. Thank you first of all for having me here, I'm delighted to be here. I'm Sunil Punjabi, and I had twenty years of experience in the media space before my wife was diagnosed with OCD.

After that, running around for her, going to psychiatrists, psychologists, trying to find the right kind of treatment for her, got me interested in this space. There was one point when we went to this place called NIMHANS in Bangalore. She was treated there, and that is when I understood how the treatment for OCD works. That was really interesting, because after that I was in some sense trying to help the therapist, and the therapist did not stop me. So I thought I was doing something right.

Then I decided I wanted to read up more about it, learn more about it. I did a lot of research, tried to find the right kind of help for my wife, and started answering questions on forums like Quora and Reddit, again with great results, because people would respond very well. They would benefit from whatever I was telling them.

So I thought it would be important for me to supplement the knowledge I had gathered through reading with a degree in clinical psychology. I did my second master's, in clinical psychology. I also did my doctorate. At that point I was doing a doctorate in business, but my thesis was focused on getting people with OCD into the mainstream workforce.

Adaptive And Maladaptive Perfectionism

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: You have people who have OCD but who are high performers, because they are so meticulous, because they have so much understanding of what it means to be correct. Their anxiety will stop them from being anything but perfect.

So the idea was that if we could strip the anxiety part of it and make use of the perfectionism. There are two types of perfectionism, maladaptive and adaptive. The point was that if we could convert maladaptive perfectionism to adaptive perfectionism, then these people, rather than having to hide their disorder from the workforce, could in fact become assets, because they would be sought after for the meticulousness and perfectionism that they bring. That was my study, my dissertation for my doctorate.

My first book was about my story with my wife, a slice-of-life book where I talk about what our experiences were. Subsequently I have also written five books on five different forms of OCD, about how to deal with them using the principles of ERP, mindfulness and acceptance.

And here we are. I have a practice called Unshackle, Unshackle Counselling, where I try to help people with OCD understand the nuances of OCD so that they can deal with them better. Traditionally books will stop at what needs to be done. What is important for me is that I am able to get down to how it is to be done, to break it down into micro parts so it becomes easier for the person to follow.

How Postpartum OCD Began With The Ants

Samantha Bray: Oh my gosh, so much to unpack. I'm very interested in how you started to see the OCD develop in your wife after the birth of your son. How did that develop and grow, and what clued you in? Had you ever heard of OCD before this happened?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Sure. The place where we used to stay had a lot of ants. After I got married and after my son was born, my wife started feeling a little scared of the ants we had in the house. They are very tiny red ants, I don't know whether you have them there, but they bite. My wife was scared that those ants would bite my son.

So her cleaning rituals began. She would make sure those ants were nowhere close to where my son used to sleep. Then that cleaning ritual kept getting more and more severe, to the point that she would spend a few hours every day trying to clean up the house, and manage a baby at the same time.

Then we decided to move to another place where there would not be any ants. But even when we were there, the cleaning rituals continued, even though there were not too many ants. Until then it was not something I was very concerned about. Maybe I was just being blind to it, I don't really know. I just thought it was a quirk, that she wanted the house very clean.

The Diwali Morning That Named It

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: One time, it was Diwali, the festival of lights. In India there is a festival called Diwali, it's a beautiful festival, you should come and experience it someday.

Samantha Bray: I would love to.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: On this Diwali we were going to go out and meet a few friends. Diwali is a festival when we have a lot of sweets at home, and we had kept a lot of sweets on the dining table. Just as we were about to leave, my wife saw two ants on the dining table, and she burst out crying. Two tiny ants made her cry. Then she spent the next twenty-five or thirty minutes cleaning the surfaces and making sure there were no ants, cursing herself for not having cleaned the house well.

That was when the alarm bell started ringing. That was when I realized something was really wrong. It wasn't just a quirk that she wanted the house clean. It was something much beyond that. It was a disorder, a proper disorder.

So I spoke to her about it and said, how about we get help? And she said sure. I was very happy, because I didn't think she would want to get help. You know how it is, people are generally resistant. But she said okay.

Wrong Medications And The Search For Real Help

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: When we went to the doctor, the doctor listened to her story and said that my wife had OCD. I had heard the term OCD in the past, in passing, the way non-OCD people would have heard it, but I did not think it was OCD. I thought it would be something like a phobia of ants or a phobia of insects.

But when she said OCD, well, she's the doctor, she knows better. She prescribed medicines. We did not want to put my wife on medicines, because we thought if it was possible to get therapy and get her better, we would have preferred that. But she put her on medicines, and my wife started them. Those didn't work. So we moved to another doctor. Those didn't work either.

There was one point where I actually opened up the yellow pages, we used to have yellow pages back in that day, and I found the numbers of a few counsellors. We would go to each of them, trying to figure out if they had the expertise to deal with OCD. We didn't find any. But we got whatever help we could.

Four Months In Bangalore And The First Taste Of ERP

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Then somebody pointed us to this place in another city in India, Bangalore, where we have NIMHANS, the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences. It's a great place, and it's supposed to be a very, very good centre for OCD treatment in India.

But that meant I would have to move lock, stock and barrel to Bangalore for a few months, which would mean managing my job and my son's school. We did all of that and moved to Bangalore, and that is where we got some sort of treatment for my wife, which was ERP. That was the first time we were introduced to ERP.

Samantha Bray: How old was your son at this point?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: He was in second grade.

Samantha Bray: So this was going on for several years before she got OCD-specific help. Oh my gosh.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Yes. He was in second grade. We moved his school, and that is where she got help. But ERP is extremely difficult, so she was not very comfortable with it. We would fight often, because she would not engage in whatever homework was prescribed to her by the therapist, and she would sometimes even skip medication.

It was a very tough time, and it was tough for the child also. Because of the fear of ants we used to not keep sugar at home. We would not keep things like jam at home, which a child would want to eat. We would not have biscuits at home. It was quite an inconvenience. We were of course accommodating my wife, and my child knew no better, but it was definitely an inconvenience. We powered through. Then I had to come back, because my work was suffering. So we came back to our original city, Mumbai.

What Else Was Hiding In Plain Sight

Samantha Bray: I was curious. During those years that the ant fear was going on, were there any other themes, any other hiccups that you noticed, that now looking back you could tell were also OCD? Or was it just the ants that she was focused on?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: The ants led to cleaning, so cleaning would also mean she would wash her hands multiple times a day. She wouldn't wash for too long, but it would just seem like she had touched something contaminated and then she was washing her hands.

Like I said, maybe because I was working, or whatever it was, I was blind to it. She was also hiding it from me. To the point that one time I asked her, if I did not allow you to sweep the house for the third or fourth time this evening, would you be okay? And she cried and said, no, I want to do this. Those are the times when I realized that what would otherwise be a quirk or a cleanliness habit was not that at all. It was far worse.

Resentment And Overwhelming Love At Once

Samantha Bray: I wonder what that was like for you, to experience her in such anxiety and distress.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: A couple of things. One is that my son was struggling. My son was suffering, because we had to move him from one school to another. He was resistant to that, obviously, because he had his friends in his first school, and he was too small to move to another school, but he did not have a choice in the matter.

Then I had to take care of my work. I almost wanted to resign, but my boss did not allow me to. He said, you go to Bangalore and work from there. So I was there for four months, putting in whatever little work I could.

And while my wife's anxiety was beginning to become visible, I also used to think, we have a solution right in front of us. If you would just put in a little more effort in therapy, then you would get better. But here you are putting us through all this inconvenience, not putting in effort in therapy, skipping your medication, just making it difficult for all of us. So there was resentment.

Then when she would cry, there would be some amount of affection that I would feel for her, because it was a lot for her to take. She would faint at the mention of some sweets. She would not be able to see a chocolate wrapper, it would throw her into a complete panic if she saw a chocolate wrapper somewhere.

So it was a mix of resentment and overwhelming love, wanting to see her get better, not liking to see her go through whatever she was going through. I kept being the bad husband and the good father, and vice versa. It was a mix of too many emotions.

Samantha Bray: A lot of emotions, I can imagine. But amazing that she had the support that you were willing to move, I guess this was several miles away from your home, for four months. Was it an inpatient treatment facility, or was it outpatient and you stayed near it?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: This was supposed to be an inpatient facility, but there were two problems with that. One, they needed a female relative to stay along with her, which we didn't have. And two, within the facility there were ants. And she was like, I'm definitely not staying here. So it was supposed to be an inpatient facility, but we ended up taking a place on rent close by, and I would take her there every day.

Living Apart, Depression, And Nearly Divorcing

Samantha Bray: Once she was in treatment, were they giving her the type of therapy that she was receptive to, or understood? Was it helpful?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: I think they were doing a fabulous job of giving her whatever it was that she needed to do. What was happening was that despite it being broken down into its most micro sub-parts, my wife found it extremely difficult to manage that kind of therapy. She would manage for a little while, but then she would not be able to sustain it, and then she would want to skip. When it is too overwhelming you obviously don't want to do therapy, and when you are in a good mood again you don't want to spoil it by doing therapy.

Samantha Bray: It's a catch.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: It's a catch. So she would slack off. I would go to the doctors and complain to them about how she was not putting in the effort, but the doctors were really good. They were very supportive, very kind and compassionate, and they would make me understand that it is not something she is in control of right now. But obviously at that point, however much I wanted to support her, there was a lot of resentment, and we would end up arguing a lot. To the point that we almost got divorced.

We lived separately for four months. My only condition was that we can live together if you decide to do your therapy properly, if you decide to get treated properly, and if you are not doing that, then it is not working out for me. She obviously was not able to do that, so we lived separately.

But then I got sick and I was hospitalized for a bit, and she would come and visit me every day. After that we decided to go into marital counselling. I was also diagnosed with depression in the meantime, because it was too much for me to handle: work, my son, because he could rely only on me, and my wife. It seemed like everything I was doing was for somebody else, and I hardly had time to do anything for myself.

So we went into marital counselling. I got better. She put in a lot of effort, so things got better. She has put in a lot of effort since then, and medicines have also helped, so she is in a very advanced stage of recovery now because of the effort she has put in.

I obviously understood a lot more by then. I started becoming a little more compassionate than I was earlier. And my son has also been part of the journey. My son is now twenty-two. He makes sure he does not trigger her unduly, but at the same time does not accommodate her as much as possible. He also understands OCD quite well.

Because I understood this, I started answering questions on forums. I formed a support group on WhatsApp and I would answer questions, do some sort of group sessions. Whatever insights I could glean out of what was happening with my wife, or through my reading, I would give to the group. Then I decided I wanted to do this on a more regular basis. So I got my degrees, quit my job, and started my practice.

Samantha Bray: And here you are. Isn't it something, how a challenge in our life can lead us to another path.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: I completely agree. There was one point in time when, if one is to believe in God, I would say, why would God do this to me? I have never hurt a soul, so why would God do this to me? And today, when I see that I am able to help people and make a difference to their lives, I know that if there is a God, he did this so that I could be here today. Otherwise I would have been in the media space, selling ad space somewhere, not being happy, not having a fulfilled life. Right now my life is extremely fulfilling because of the service I am able to offer. An adversity, a challenge, sometimes throws your calling at you, and this is exactly what happened to me.

Samantha Bray: It really sounds like it catapulted you into this growth of self-learning, about the mind and also about your marriage. It's like it got stronger, it sounds like, after this.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: That's absolutely true. It got stronger, much stronger.

Treat Your Partner Like An Intelligent Child

Samantha Bray: I wonder if you could give some words of wisdom to a spouse out there who is feeling that deep frustration and hopelessness with their partner. Watching them go through the compulsions, being pulled into the reassurance seeking, being asked to do the compulsions in the house themselves.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: The first thing I would say to a spouse like that is, be compassionate to yourself first. You are not able to see, not able to understand, what the other person is going through. So all the struggles you are going through are understandable, if not valid. They are definitely understandable. You are seeing your partner go through something that is fairly simple for you, and your partner is not able to stop it. You feel, why is it so difficult for the other person to stop it? It can annoy you, it can irritate you. All of that is understandable.

It's not valid, though. Because the person who is going through it deserves far more compassion than we spouses give to our partners who have OCD. It is not as if the person has any control, until they get into treatment, over the compulsions they are doing. And they are doing those compulsions despite seeing that their family around them is unhappy.

Samantha Bray: They don't know a better way. That is what the OCD is telling them to do to get better.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Yes. They are definitely not doing it out of malice. They are not doing it out of a need to hurt the other person, or to punish the other person. Right now they are just slaves to their OCD. So they deserve a lot of compassion. That's point number one.

Point number two is that it is important to treat your partner like an intelligent child rather than like a dumb adult. Because if a child comes to you and you ask the child, what is two plus two, and the child says four, you are going to pat the child on the back. You are going to laud the small achievements the child has. You are not going to say, everybody knows two plus two is four, tell me what is twenty-five times seventy-five. You are going to ask the child age-appropriate questions and expect age-appropriate responses.

So in OCD, if a person is losing the ability to do routine things without doing the compulsions, then when they are putting in the effort, the amount of improvement you will see will be maybe microscopic. If somebody is washing their hands for ten minutes, bringing it down to nine minutes is going to be a challenge for them. And if in that moment the spouse says, big deal, you brought it down from ten to nine, how discouraging can that be for the person?

If instead there is some compassion towards the other person, and recognition that this took a lot of effort, and you are patting them on the back, it can make a world of a difference. The person will be far more encouraged to put in more effort, to bring it down from nine to eight. I think that is extremely important.

Samantha Bray: A hundred percent. I see that with my clients. The ones whose spouse does as you suggest and notices the effort and the micro changes being made, versus you should be able to do this anyway. It's a world of difference in how motivated they are, how encouraged they are to keep doing the hard work.

Calibrating Expectations Everywhere Else In The Life

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Completely agree, and I think that is critical. It is also important, as a corollary, to make sure the expectations of the spouse who has OCD are calibrated in other areas also.

For example, if my wife is spending too many hours cleaning and therefore neglecting housework, and then she ends up doing a little more of the housework, she is obviously not stopping her compulsion, but she is doing a little more of the housework on a particular day. That is reason to give her a pat on the back. Because what she is doing is inching towards more and more functionality. And that cannot happen unless there is enough support coming from the spouse.

Samantha Bray: So in other words, they may still be doing the compulsive hand washing, the cleaning, whatever. But if you see them take extra additional effort to get back into their life, to do something that they value that they have been putting off, that's another area of growth that we can notice.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: A hundred percent. Because OCD will take over whatever time you give it, and more. So if you are doing some extra chore at home, you are stealing that time from OCD somewhere. You don't know where, but you are stealing the time away from OCD somewhere, and that is progress. That is something that needs to be applauded.

Squeezing OCD Out: The Glass, The Pebble, The Wardrobe

Samantha Bray: Absolutely. You're giving me chills. I tell my clients, you can squeeze OCD out. If it's too much to really focus on the ERP, for example, then for that time being, let's focus on growing your world and building your life back and making it more full.

It's like you have a glass of water and OCD is going to fill that entire glass. But if you put in a pebble of doing something you value, a hobby, tending to something, you start to displace the OCD.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Absolutely. I think of it as a wardrobe which has old clothes, which are OCD. If you want new habits, if you want to create space for your new clothes, then you have to make sure your old clothes are moved out, so that you can create space. If you are not making space for your new clothes, then your OCD is just going to be there forever, and you are not going to get better.

The Accommodation Math

Samantha Bray: Those are two really good tips. I'm wondering if you could speak to what you did, and what you advise and counsel other spouses, when you feel like you are starting to lose your partner. Like they are not there to be that loving spouse you were used to having, and that can build resentment. How did you help yourself, and how do you coach folks through that?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: One thing I noticed at times like that is that I am as egoistic as they come. When my wife would get angry about something, I would get angry too. But when she would get sad about something, I would feel a lot of love. Overwhelming love. And I would want to make sure I was helping her, taking care of her.

Of course, being an OCD counsellor, an ERP counsellor, I should not be saying this, but I have chosen to accommodate some of her compulsions, because I know she was putting effort in other places where she could get better. You obviously don't want to get them to try to stop everything at once, because that is completely impossible and it is going to defeat the purpose of the treatment altogether.

So we would see that there are certain things she is focusing on, and if it meant I had to do a little cleaning here and a little wiping there, I would do it. It is important that there be a transaction of sorts, where the person with OCD agrees to put in some effort in getting better, and the other spouse helps out in a manner which will in some sense relieve the anxiety, even if it is compulsive.

I believe that even if it is compulsive, as long as the sum total is that there is more effort being put into getting treated. If I were to convert it into numbers: if the person is putting in ten units of effort in getting better and the spouse is putting in three units of accommodation, we are still netting seven units of getting better. I think that's a good combination to have.

A Reassurance Agreement That Gives Back The Choice

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: This could include offering reassurance sometimes. In contamination OCD, obviously there is some amount of cleaning one can do, but in other forms of OCD it's generally likely to be reassurance.

So I suggest you have a discussion with your spouse about how many times in a day you will reassure them. And every time the person with OCD asks for reassurance, the first response has to be: you are asking for reassurance, do you want it now? Because you will get one shot of it, and if you need it later you might not get it. Generally, if it's a small reassurance they are seeking, it's possible they might be able to push it away. So I think a combined, collaborative effort can help the person with OCD make a lot of progress.

Samantha Bray: I love that. That's one of the techniques I've seen work. I almost call them coupons. You agree upon it and kind of take a baseline. How many times a day are they seeking reassurance from you? Say it's ten, I'm just making up a number. So you start with ten coupons and you get to use those.

But what I see happen often is then, when they have to think about it, they can say, well, this one isn't that bad, I think I could get through this situation and not get it. That's practice.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Absolutely. All these micro-progresses are what will cumulatively add up to recovery, isn't it?

"You Were Being A Victim": What The Therapist Said

Samantha Bray: I'm curious, how did the marital therapy help with you both working on taking care of yourself, and your depression? And how did it help with the ability to work through the OCD together, if it did?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: It did, absolutely. I'm not proud of any of these things I'm telling you. One of the most important things our therapist told me was that I was being a victim.

Samantha Bray: A victim. Okay.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: I had never seen it that way, and I was all indignant, saying, no, I am not the victim, you don't know what I'm going through. But upon reflection it did emerge that I was playing the victim all along. I had this hero complex, that I'm the one who's carrying the weight all the time and the entire time and my wife's not doing enough.

So that was one realization, that it wasn't true. These realizations don't sink in all at once. There are tiny bits of realization that happen over time. It was around that time that I also realized it is not something she has control over. I understood that therapy will help her, but my constantly telling her to do therapy all the time was having a detrimental effect. It's like telling a small child to keep studying all day. The child wants playtime also, the child wants to watch television also. You can't, just because the child is in school, keep telling the child to study all day. That's not going to help.

And then the realization that when I was unwell, she came. She decided to come even though it was likely that I would have asked her to go away. She braved that. That spoke of her love for me.

Those small realizations, and then the exercises the marital counsellor gave us, of coming together, doing activities together, those are things that helped get the two of us close to one another. The counsellor also told my wife that one of my biggest requirements has always been that she focus on treatment. So she put some effort into it, and when she would get tired she would tell me about it, and then we would work it out better rather than conflicting about it.

So little by little we made a lot of progress that way. Earlier, whenever she did not want to do therapy, she would get indignant, and then we would conflict, and it would just go down. But later she would tell me how overwhelmed she was getting, and ask if it is okay if we don't do it right now. And I also got a little more compassionate, understood it a little more, and was not so pushy. So all of that worked, and like you said, the relationship got stronger than ever.

Why A Couples Therapist Needs To Understand OCD

Samantha Bray: That's awesome, I'm glad to hear that. Do you feel like it's necessary for a marital counsellor or therapist working with a couple, where OCD is one of the main challenges, that they're aware of how OCD works? And do you have any suggestions on how someone in this kind of situation would find a good counsellor?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: If I were to answer that question broadly: everybody around the person with OCD should know about OCD. Not only from the point of view of how you are treating them, but also from the point of view of not ending up doing things that will strengthen the OCD.

In a gentle way, you can encourage a person not to do the compulsion. But you also have to know what compulsions they are doing, because a compulsion can sometimes be so nuanced that unless you understand it, you might actually end up encouraging it.

Second, to your original question, should the therapist know? Yes, the therapist should know. Because if they do not have a basic understanding of OCD, then, for example, in dialectical behavioural therapy distraction is a technique. But in OCD, if you're distracting yourself from anxiety, you're engaging in a compulsion. Sometimes those differences need to be understood. The therapist should be able to talk to the person with OCD in a manner which is helpful to the person but not strengthening their OCD. So yes, a hundred percent it is important for the counsellor to understand OCD a little bit. I don't know how easy it is to find a counsellor like that, but that is what one should aim for.

Samantha Bray: Yeah, it's not customary that couples therapists do a deep dive into OCD. But I always encourage the significant person with my client to do at least one or more sessions together, where I basically do the OCD psychoeducation piece again with the couple. Do you do something similar?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Yes, it is extremely important. Sometimes, if there is a helpful significant other, I would enlist them as a co-therapist of sorts, where they are helping out at home, involved in understanding the hierarchy of exposures that we are going to do, so that they can help the person through it and also recognize what they should do and what they shouldn't.

All of that is extremely important, because in my experience, when spouses don't know much about OCD, even if they don't want to, they might end up offering reassurance, which is one of the sneakiest and most commonly done compulsions. That is one thing I want to keep educating spouses on: whatever you do, understand what reassurance is, and make sure you're not offering it too often.

Samantha Bray: Yes. Reassurance is probably one of the biggest ways that spouses inadvertently feed OCD, and they don't know that they're doing it.

Samantha Bray: I think that having the education and more awareness of what's going on, did that help you feel, for lack of a better word, like you had a little more control in the situation once you had an understanding of what she was going through?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: A better grip, a better handle on it. Yes, it absolutely did. This entire thing about wanting to move to helping my wife and helping others came from the realization that all along, whatever I was thinking about my wife was wrong. All along, whatever I knew about OCD was wrong.

It's only when these things started falling into place, and like I said it doesn't happen overnight, it takes a lot of time. You keep realizing small things over a period of time, and then you're like, okay, this is also something I've been doing wrong, and this is something that needs to be corrected. But if you ask a third person they'd say, no, you're right. Which means that more education about OCD, to people who are not struggling with OCD, is also important.

The POCD Post That Made Him Write The Books

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: There was this one time when I was on a Facebook group and I saw a person who had POCD and wanted to go to the police and hand themselves over, for the kind of thoughts they were having. I was just thinking, if there are people who end up doing that, the police are not going to look at them very kindly if they are not educated about OCD. They are just going to think of them as pedophiles and probably put them in jail.

Therefore it is important to keep educating everybody you come across about OCD, because it can take the kinds of shapes and forms that you and I know that it does. Sometimes it's so difficult for anybody to understand how a person can have thoughts like those. But with more information, and with more people getting educated, we can definitely help that community.

Samantha Bray: Absolutely. And those are the themes we don't talk about nearly enough, because of the fear and the shame surrounding it.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Yes. That is the reason why, when I started writing a self-help book on how to deal with OCD, I wanted to do it on incest OCD and POCD also, because I saw that there wasn't enough literature on that. The literature that is available on POCD or incest OCD, or some of these taboo forms of OCD, is all research papers, which a person struggling with these forms is not going to read or benefit from.

Samantha Bray: A scholarly research paper is very hard to read. So you've created a couple of books, one on incest OCD, one on POCD.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Yes. I have harm OCD, religious OCD and relationship OCD also. The taboo forms are POCD and incest OCD, where I'm talking to the person and helping them through their struggles by giving them exactly what they are supposed to do to deal with their OCD. Obviously it's not a replacement for therapy, but I lay out everything they need to know.

First of all, they should not feel alone. They should not feel that they are perverts and that they cannot talk about it. Sometimes what happens is people also hesitate to talk to their doctors or counsellors about it, because they feel the doctors and counsellors might judge them and report them. So it is important for them to know that that's not true. We know these forms exist, and that you are not alone. And I've tried to make it as user-friendly as possible, so that they feel a little more encouraged to get help.

Samantha Bray: That's wonderful. I think putting things in print is very helpful. I even just go over the themes with my new clients, written on a worksheet, and then they see it and they're like, I'm not the only one, of course, if I've already created a worksheet with it. So your book, I imagine, when they run across the title of a book about this, that it's a bit of a relief.

Duty To Report, And How To Frame It First

Samantha Bray: Here in the States, we have what's called a duty to report. If anyone tells us about an elderly person, a child, or a disabled person being neglected or abused, we have a duty to report that. And at the first session with a client we're supposed to tell the client that, which can immediately scare them if these are the topics they are coming to us for.

So I would encourage any therapist listening to this, what I've done for the past decade or more, before I say that, I explain that I'm not talking about intrusive thoughts. I understand the difference between OCD and real intention and real actions.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Absolutely, that's very important. Because it could just throw them off guard, and then they would probably not even open up if they wanted to.

Samantha Bray: Absolutely. It can take a long time before they feel comfortable. I'm real glad to hear those books exist, and I'll definitely link those in the show notes, because that is a wonderful thing.

Ikigai: When Adversity Hands You Your Calling

Samantha Bray: Would you mind speaking to, it's the Ikigai, right? Explain what that is. For people that haven't heard that word, how would you describe it?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: It's a person's raison d'être. The reason why I would want to get out of bed. What is it that I would like to do every day, that is helping people, but at the same time obviously getting me money, because if I'm going to leave my job then I have a livelihood to earn? So it is helping people, it is getting me money, it is something that I enjoy doing, and it's something that I'm good at. The confluence of all of these would be my Ikigai. And in this case, this happens to be my Ikigai. I love doing what I do. I am great at what I do. And I hope to help as many people as I can with this.

Samantha Bray: That's the sweet spot. Something that you're good at, you have a proclivity for it, you picked it up. That's something I don't think you really can be taught. I feel like sometimes there are born teachers, there are born counsellors. And especially with OCD, I feel like some of us can see the patterns.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: That's very true, and it's rare, if I might say so. You can have counsellors and you can have counsellors, but not everybody is able to see that.

Samantha Bray: So you have that proclivity, that skill, and then it provides provision, and it also serves people in some way. It helps others. That's the sweet spot.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: And I like doing it. To think that if my wife did not have OCD, then I'd probably still be in the media space, hating every moment of it.

Samantha Bray: It's so interesting when my clients tell me how OCD brought about some sort of silver lining in their life. And they don't say this immediately, it takes a while. They're usually coming out of it and getting better when they can reflect and see. Sometimes it's the first time they've ever thought about their thinking, or ever thought about conscious awareness.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Absolutely. OCD seems to rob a person of that metacognition, of that self-awareness. People seem to just get into this fugue and they just do OCD's bidding. But when they do recover, they are thinking about what they've learned through the process, what they have gained in the process, how they've grown to be better people. Obviously not everybody feels that way. Sometimes they also feel that they have lost a lot. But yes, there are people who seem to be able to see some silver lining in it too.

Samantha Bray: And often it is some element of finding a way to give back, and it allows them to get back into community. It doesn't necessarily have to be working with OCD, but sometimes they do become advocates. On many levels I think it helps alleviate the shame around having OCD, and they can see that what they have gone through, the struggles they have gone through, were not for nothing. They are able to help someone else.

Finding Help, And Caring For Yourself Too

Samantha Bray: I'm wondering if you would be open to meeting again at another time and going into something you talked about earlier that I really connect with, and that is your work for your thesis. That idea that some of these personality traits that may lend towards stronger OCD, like perfectionism, can be used as superpowers almost, if we can harness the good parts.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Absolutely. I'd love to meet again.

Samantha Bray: That would be amazing, and I will take you up on that. But on the topics of being a supportive spouse, going through postpartum OCD, finding the right help, do you have anything you would like to add that maybe I haven't asked you about, or any words of wisdom you'd like to share?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Particularly in India, and this is true of India, there aren't too many OCD experts. It is very important that, first of all, the person is diagnosed correctly. And then, once the person is diagnosed correctly, it might take twenty or thirty people that you have to go through, but go through them and get the right kind of help.

Because just going for regular counselling, talk therapy, or going to a counsellor who does not understand OCD well enough to be able to help, is not going to help. Forget about not going to help, I fear that it can be detrimental. I fear that it can actually damage. So no matter how much time and energy and effort and money it requires for you to find the right kind of help, you must. I think that is the biggest thing that one person can do.

There is a whole chapter on what spouses should do if their significant other has OCD, and there are things in there I mention. Understand that the other person is not doing it out of malice. Understand that they are not in control right now. They need your encouragement, not your criticism. There are certain things about what they should say and what they should not.

For example, if it's a taboo form of OCD, and a spouse is disgusted by the thoughts the person is having, that can impact the person with OCD. It's not something they have any control over, and if the spouse is not understanding and is showing disgust, or showing fear, then that's not going to be very helpful.

So there are a lot of these small things the spouse needs to do, including taking care of themselves. I am a very strong advocate of that also, because like I said, for the longest time I did not take care of myself and ended up going into depression. So among other things, one important thing is that the spouse should take care of themselves too.

Samantha Bray: Can you suggest in what ways you suggest taking care of yourself?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Making time for yourself, for one. Not holding it against yourself when you're sitting down, putting your feet up and watching a movie. Or going out with friends for a drink, or any of those things you would do in routine life if your partner did not have OCD.

You will have to make some compromises and you will have to cut down on whatever it was that you were doing, but not bring it down to zero. You need to recalibrate and take some time off for yourself, replenish your energies, so that you are able to contribute meaningfully to your spouse's treatment. If you are depleting yourself, then you are not likely to be able to help.

Samantha Bray: That's great advice. I second that. I could talk to you for hours, I think. Maybe we'll do part two soon. I work with a lot of the similar type that you described. They're very educated, very goal-oriented folks who get tripped up when OCD takes over those really great qualities that they have.

I will link to your website, and your books are listed on there, so if anyone wants to follow up with you or your work, that would be great. I really appreciate you sharing your story. It's so intimate, but I think it's going to be helpful for people to hear. There's hope.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: There's definitely hope.

Samantha Bray: And your son now is twenty-two, he's all grown up. How is everybody doing right now?

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: All good, for the most part. My wife does have her anxious periods. She does have her bouts of compulsive acts. But for the most part she's like eighty, eighty-five percent recovered. And I think we are in a much better place than we ever were.

Samantha Bray: Wonderful. Well, Dr. Punjabi, I am so thankful, and I'm very glad to have met you. I hope we can speak again soon.

Dr. Sunil Punjabi: Likewise, thank you so much for having me.

Outro

Samantha Bray: Thank you so much for listening. I hope you're finding OCD Insights helpful, and if so, please follow, like, subscribe wherever you're listening. This is really how I'm going to be able to reach more people who need support.

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