Catherine Benfield

Welcome to Proper Mental episode 53 and my guest is Catherine Benfield!

Catherine Benfield is an OCD advocate, blogger and speaker.

Cath was diagnosed with OCD at the age of 32 although she had lived with distressing, intrusive thoughts since her childhood.

She started her blog, Taming Olivia, as a way of processing and managing her mental health and it is now is used as a concept around the world.

It’s a fantastic resource for so many different aspects of OCD and as well as writing very openly and honestly about her own experiences, Cath writes about recovery and offers a huge amount of useful advice and ideas for anyone who might need them.

In this episode Cath and I chat about all thing’s obsessive-compulsive disorder.  We discuss what OCD actually is and what it’s definitely not, we chat about intrusive thoughts, anxiety, depressed and many other symptoms linked to OCD and we chat about self-compassion and kindness as useful recovery tools.

It was such a pleasure to chat to Cath and really shine a light on OCD.  It is an illness that is massively misunderstood which creates a huge amount of stigma and it was powerful to listen to Cath talk about her own journey with OCD and her process of recovery.

You can catch up with Cath’s work at Taming Olivia | Mental Health - A blog about living with OCD | England or connect with her on Instagram @catherine_benfield.

You can catch up with my work at www.propermentalpodcast.com or connect with me via Instagram @propermentalpodcast.

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Thanks for listening!

Enjoy!