Playing With Marbles

In pop culture, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD — is portrayed as a bit of a joke — a personality quirk bestowed upon characters with descriptions like: "uptight, neat freak... Type-A, anal... organized, workaholic." But it's more than having a preference for clean cupboards or locked doors. A little more than 2% of the population will suffer from OCD in their lifetime. And one of the greatest tricks it plays is making you believe, deep down, that you're a dangerous monster. It whispers that unless you perform a specific set of behaviours in exactly the right way, your worst fears will come true. And if you tell a single person — a parent, a priest, a doctor, a partner, a friend — they'll lock you up and throw away the key. Everyone has intrusive thoughts! They're absolutely normal, even the weird, cringey, and uncomfortable ones. Most folks can shake them off easily. But for those with OCD, intrusive thoughts are "sticky." Horrifying, terrifying thoughts of violence or sexual deviance like: "I want to kill everyone in my family," or "What if I stabbed this pen in my eye?" or "What if I'm attracted to my mom?" The graphic nature of these thoughts, and the inability to banish them, can conjure so much shame and confusion that many don't disclose their illness at all. There’s no such thing as being “a little bit OCD.” We toss around jokes like, "...letting the intrusive thoughts win" to describe shopping splurges or getting bangs. On TikTok, influencers describe "lucky girl syndrome," and "using manifestation" to conjure thoughts into reality. But outside of science fiction and fantasy, humans can’t magically think things into existence. And believing you have that power is downright dangerous when your thoughts are terrifyingly graphic. We're talking to Anne, who lives with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. She's going to tell us about her darkest days battling OCD, including the year she thought she was dead. She'll describe the complex, specific, and repetitive behaviours that her brain required her to perform to keep her safe, and to keep her from inadvertently hurting other people. We'll also talk to Dr. Jamie Feusner, senior scientist at CAMH, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and Chief Medical Officer of NOCD, to get the 101 on the strange neurological undercurrents of the OCD brain. He’ll also share some insight into a surprising potential treatment avenue he’s currently researching. This story is personal. Our host Katie was diagnosed with OCD when she was 8 years old and is finally opening up about her experiences growing up with a serious mental illness. So why does OCD exist? And can you ever get better? Tune in to find out.

Having borderline personality disorder (BPD) means struggling to regulate your emotions. If depression sucks the colour out of the world, then BPD turns it right up until it’s painfully bright. If you have BPD then you’ll react in intense ways to emotional triggers: You might get the wrong coffee order, and your inner monologue starts telling you that you were given a mocha instead of a latte because you are a bad person. It means your relationships are often intense and unstable – this is such a key part of the disorder that it’s part of the diagnosis. You might spend money impulsively, and your friends might find you overly generous with your gifts. It can also be frequently misdiagnosed but, when it is identified, people with BPD are often labeled as “difficult”. This labeling and stigmatization of the disorder can feed into the looming fear of abandonment that is a cornerstone symptom of BPD. BPD can lead to a very unstable existence. In the UK, where our BPD star Sophie is from, it’s actually called emotionally unstable personality disorder, or EUPD. Sophie is telling us her story, and how her BPD makes her hyper-attuned to the emotions of others. We’ll find out how BPD can be a defence mechanism by a brain that’s been through trauma, and we’ll learn about how it’s treated. We’ll hear from a doctor who knows what’s going on in the brain and can tell us about how people can get better. Treatment is a lot of work, with a lot of talking. Our doctor knows how and why the different treatments out there are effective, and Sophie’s been through the process. This is a condition that remits and recovers. One of the features that defines recovering is being in a stable relationship, of any kind.

Anxiety is extremely common. A third of us will experience an anxiety disorder. It’s the most common mental health problem in young people, and it can make you feel like you’re going to die.. You know someone who has an anxiety disorder. Maybe it’s you. It can be a normal reaction to stress or danger, but when anxiety becomes irrational, when the release of stress hormones is not in proportion with external realities, then it’s a disorder, and anxiety disorders have the power to paralyze a person between fight or flight. It can mean breaking down in tears because you want toast when your partner has finished the bread. It can be intensely physical, like a painful weight on your chest. For Jess, a big part of her anxiety story was an eating disorder. This isn’t unusual, anxiety disorders also tend to occur alongside other mental illnesses. 25% of people with ADHD will also have an anxiety disorder, almost half of people with major depressive disorder have an anxiety disorder as well, and over half of people with OCD have an anxiety disorder. So this episode of Playing with Marbles is going to focus first on Jess’s anxiety, and then on her eating disorder. If this sounds like picking from a catalogue of disorders, found in different categories in a big book of mental illness… that’s because it is. If you’ve ever talked to a doctor about your mental health you’ll probably have had the experience of filling out a questionnaire. That’s the doctor looking to see if you match the criteria for a diagnosis set out in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (or the DSM-5. It can feel a little impersonal… but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’re talking to a scientist who can tell us why this method gets used, but also how they’re looking to move past a categorical approach to something a little more personal.

Depression is an extremely debilitating mental illness that can make it near impossible to truly experience joy and self-love. Witnessing children experiencing it, especially from a young age, can be heartbreaking for friends and family. One in ten people will have a major depressive episode in their lifetime. It’s a leading cause of disability worldwide, and carries a high mortality risk. It also might not look like you think it does. Depression is not being sad all the time. Depression can be soaring through the skies or cruising down the highway and everything just feels... fine. It's about seeing the world in shades of gray, even when your life is bursting with colour and adrenaline. How are you supposed to love your brain, when it robs you of emotions? Understanding it is a start. We’re going beyond conventional narratives with Tammy, our adventurous skydiving, motorcycle-riding, depression-having protagonist. Tammy is here to tell us what it’s like to live with that absence – an absence that isn’t always visible. She’s going to show us how she came out the other side and started seeing life in colour again. We also have researchers doing the scientific dirty work, so if you’ve ever wondered if sticking a stranger's poop in your own butt might cure depression… We speak to someone who can answer that question. Come listen to Tammy’s story, and get a grip on depression, from brain to butt.

Puberty, pregnancy, ovulation, even love… these are all things our body regulates with hormones, and brains love hormones. They are chemical messengers used by the body when one part wants to tell another what to do… and in this episode our protagonist’s brain is stewing in them like a squishy teabag.

Season 2 of Playing with Marbles is coming Monday June 20th, and this time we’re focusing on the female brain, and what we do and don’t know about it. Scientists have been using male bodies as their “default” research subjects for a long time, so we’re going to take a long look at one woman’s brain, and figure out what we do and don’t know about it.

When something goes wrong with a brain we can’t just get under the hood and poke around. So how do we figure out what’s going wrong? Well sometimes the answer to that question involves watching monkeys watch TV, so we’re taking a trip to a monkey cinema, and along the way learning about the different ways to see inside your head and find faulty wiring.

Every day we are learning more about the brain, but the challenges are complex and answers can’t come quickly enough. We are on a global quest to understand the brain and we believe that new ideas, tested through research and leading to innovation and discovery, will reduce the burden on our health care system and help us live happier, healthier lives. Join us and come on a journey to the real last frontier – the brain.