NOTE FROM TED: Please do not look to this talk as a substitute for mental health advice and seek professional help if you are struggling. This talk only represents the speaker’s personal experiences with and understanding of OCD and related treatment. TEDx events are independently organized by volunteers. The guidelines we give TEDx organizers are described in more detail here: http://storage.ted.com/tedx/manuals/tedx_content_guidelines.pdfAs a relatively common psychological disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is often flippantly regarded as the need to keep things tidy or clean. While this certainly exists as a form of OCD, the potential nightmare it can create and the extremes it can balloon to for its sufferers often fails to be considered. In middle school, Zane Smith developed a sudden and intense burst of obsessive anxiety around various fears of contamination and watched helplessly as his control over almost all aspects of daily life began to fall away. His talk discusses his journey from losing hours and days of his life to nightmarish, compulsive rituals, to the fight against his mind and the tactics he used in his hardened journey to victory over it. Zane spent his childhood and adolescence living in changing environments and countries, moving from China to the Philippines, to Canada, to Türkiye, to India and finally to the United Kingdom, where he graduated from the International Baccalaureate programme. He has now returned to Canada for his first year of university studies at the University of British Columbia, where he hopes to pursue astrophysics. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
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