Laura Yocum, MFT, Executive Director of the OCD Center of Los Angeles, shares Part 1 of her personal journey with OCD—from a little girl overwhelmed by fear and responsibility to the beginning of a path that would ultimately shape her life and career. In this deeply personal story, Laura reflects on the early experiences of OCD that she carried quietly for years and the moments that began to change everything.

This August marks 15 years since I first walked through the doors of the OCD Center of Los Angeles.

In August of 2011, I began here as an intern.

I could never have imagined then where those doors would eventually lead me.

Over the years, I became a licensed therapist, then Clinical Director, and ultimately Executive Director of the place that had become so much more than where I worked.

The OCD Center became an enormous part of my life and, in many ways, the culmination of a journey that began long before I ever thought about becoming a therapist.

For most of these 15 years, however, I have been much more comfortable behind the scenes.

I have had the extraordinary privilege of sitting with people during some of the most frightening and vulnerable moments of their lives.

I have listened to children, teenagers, adults, parents, spouses, and families tell me things they were terrified to say out loud.

I have watched people walk through our doors feeling hopeless and ashamed, convinced that no one could possibly understand what was happening inside their minds.

And I have spent much of my career telling them that there is hope.

What many people in our community don’t know is exactly why I believe that so deeply.

Long before I became a therapist specializing in OCD, I was a little girl with OCD.

I know what it feels like to be afraid of your own mind.

I know what it feels like to desperately need certainty and to believe that if you could just perform the right ritual, ask the right question, check one more time, organize something perfectly, or somehow get that elusive feeling of “just right,” maybe everything would finally be okay.

I know what it is like when OCD makes your world smaller.

And I know what it is like to wonder whether life will ever feel different.

For a very long time, this part of my story has remained mostly private.

That may seem strange.

I have devoted my professional life to encouraging people to talk openly about OCD, yet I have remained remarkably quiet about my own experience with it.

There are many reasons for that.

Some of it came from wanting the focus to remain on the people we serve.

Some came from the boundaries I believed were important as a therapist.

And, if I am being completely transparent, some of it came from fear.

It is much easier for me to sit on the other side of the room and help someone else be vulnerable than it is to make myself vulnerable.

Even writing these words feels uncomfortable.

But perhaps that discomfort is telling me that it is time.

A Story I Once Tried to Tell

Years ago, I decided I was ready to share my story publicly.

I applied to be a keynote speaker at an International OCD Foundation conference and spent an enormous amount of time writing my personal testimony.

My mentor, who was then the owner of the OCD Center, believed in my story and made a video with me as part of that process.

I wrote about things I had rarely spoken about publicly.

I wrote about the little girl who sat outside her parents’ bedroom at night, terrified by thoughts of everything that could possibly go wrong.

I wrote about the child who organized and reorganized, checked and rechecked, and tried desperately to make things feel “just right.”

I wrote about the teenager whose world became increasingly consumed by rituals, doubt, shame, and exhaustion.

I wrote about becoming so overwhelmed that I could no longer imagine a future for myself.

And I wrote about finally finding effective treatment.

Most importantly, I wrote about finding hope.

I wasn’t selected to give the keynote.

So I put the story away.

The video wasn’t widely seen.

The words I had spent so much time writing weren’t really shared.

Life continued, my career continued, the OCD Center continued to grow, and that story remained tucked away.

But it never really left me.

Fifteen Years Later

There is a line in that old testimony that stopped me when I recently read it again.

After receiving treatment that changed my life, I wrote:

“I wasn’t sure how, I wasn’t sure where or when, but somehow I would speak, tell of the pain and the triumph, lift others the way I had been lifted.”

Reading those words all these years later was emotional.

Because somehow, without realizing it, that young woman did exactly what she said she wanted to do.

She became a therapist.

She found the OCD Center.

She spent 15 years helping people with the disorder that had once controlled so much of her own life.

She became Clinical Director.

And eventually, she became Executive Director of the very organization she had once been so grateful simply to join.

But there was one part of that promise I never completely fulfilled.

I never really told you my story.

I think I’m ready to change that.

Stepping Out From Behind the Scenes

I have thought a great deal about what it means to share something this personal, particularly as a therapist and as the person entrusted with leading the OCD Center.

I don’t want my story to become the story of the OCD Center.

Every person’s experience with OCD is different.

Recovery looks different for different people.

My experience isn’t a roadmap, and it certainly isn’t proof that there is one “right” way to live with or recover from OCD.

It is simply one story.

Mine.

But I also remember what it was like to desperately search for evidence that someone else understood.

As a teenager, finding a magazine article about another girl with OCD gave me words for something I had never been able to explain.

Years later, seeing someone speak publicly about his experience with OCD helped lead my family toward the treatment that would ultimately change my life.

Other people’s willingness to tell their stories helped save mine.

Maybe sharing mine can do something for someone else.

That doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to share every private detail of my life.

I’m still figuring out what it means for me to step out from behind the scenes.

There are parts of my story that belong to me and to the people I love, and I want to honor those boundaries.

But I also don’t want fear to be the reason I remain silent.

OCD took enough from me because I was afraid.

I don’t want fear making this decision for me, too.

So, during this 15th anniversary of my first days at the OCD Center of Los Angeles, I am going to do something that feels both frightening and incredibly meaningful.

I’m going to tell you my story.

Not because I have all the answers.

Not because my journey has been perfect.

And not because becoming a therapist somehow erased everything that came before it.

I’m sharing it because I know what it is like to believe that OCD has already decided what your life will become.

It hasn’t.

Fifteen years ago, I walked into the OCD Center as an intern.

Long before that, I was a frightened little girl who couldn’t imagine ever feeling safe inside her own mind.

Today, I have the privilege of leading the organization devoted to helping people just like her.

I wish I could go back and tell that little girl what was waiting for her.

I can’t.

But perhaps I can tell someone who feels like she did.

And maybe that’s why, after all these years, it’s finally time for me to step out from behind the scenes.

This is my story. And I’m ready to share it.

This is Part One of Laura’s story. Stay tuned for future installments as she continues to share her journey.

•Laura Yocum, MFT, PPS, is Executive Director, clinical supervisor, and psychotherapist at the OCD Center of Los Angeles, a private, outpatient clinic specializing in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and related anxiety based conditions.  In addition to individual therapy, the center offers nine weekly therapy groups, as well as online therapy, telephone therapy, and intensive outpatient treatment.  To contact the OCD Center of Los Angeles, click here.