Real words · shared with permission

What people say

From people doing this work with David, and from readers of the book.

Every quoted line here is verbatim — exactly as said or written. The opening story is David's account of one session, with the client's own words quoted throughout. Where a first name carries a mark (*), it's been changed: OCD carries enough stigma without a website adding to it.

One session

"I'm close to zero, actually."

He came to a session carrying an intrusive thought that had shown up a couple of days earlier, out of nowhere — a flashback, a did-I-do-something-wrong. He knew it wasn't true; that was never the point. Underneath it sat an old belief — I'm a bad person — and a low-level anxiety that ran all day. His mind had spent years arguing with it: "my brain was trying to find that moment and analyse it. And then I was just like, okay, stop thinking about this right now. But then it came up again."

We didn't argue with any of it. He found where it was living in his body, put a number on the belief — a six — and instead of pushing it away, he turned toward the part of him that had been carrying it since he was small, and stayed with it. We rated it again: a three, maybe a four. So we went again.

"Only a one." … "I'm close to zero, actually. I just had my inner child resting on my lap. I think it just went away."

Then I asked him to try to bring it back — to make himself feel it again on purpose. He couldn't:

"I'm trying to bring that up again, and it's not sticking. I'm trying to emphasise it to stick, just to see. It's not sticking. It's weird. I know that it's not true, but this still gave me anxiety. Now it's not. It's weird."

— Arjun* (US), in his own words, from a single session. It took two passes, and it isn't always this clean — but this is the move, and it's yours to make.

People doing this work with David

"More material has kept moving, but I have not been performing any compulsion. It's now more just watching mental noise."

— Tom* (UK), whose intrusive thoughts used to land "at any time, on anything" — now near the end of the work

"Meeting my nine-year-old self has been the most important thing in a long time."

— Tom* (UK), on the heart of the work

"Got through this weekend with flying colors. I haven't washed my hands, I haven't done anything."

— Mark* (US), after a weekend that would once have floored him — twenty-two years of contamination OCD

"You're feeling a lot better, aren't you?"

— a family member of Mark's, unprompted — they have no idea he's doing any of this work

"I no longer feel the urge and get lost in doing that compulsion… my perfectionist urges have decreased significantly, and the belief that I am worthless / not enough."

— Anton (Australia), whose OCD was entirely internal — mental compulsions no one outside could see

Readers of the book

"I have had the best month in terms of much reduced compulsive thinking that I have had in perhaps 30 years."

— Kit F. (UK), OCD for 30+ years

"It explains the core of OCD and shows the path to complete recovery so incredibly well."

— Anita (Brazil)

A straight word about proof

I'll be straight about the proof: the one complete recovery I can point to without any qualification is my own — I lived it end to end. The people doing this work with me now are earlier in their own, and already moving in ways all that managing never gave them.

No one on this page was paid or rewarded for their words, and none of it is a promise about your outcome — everyone's pace is their own.

New here?

This work starts with the book — OCD: Conditions for Allowing. That's the whole first step; everything else can wait until it makes sense to you.