Grief And OCD with Bryn Murphy

What if the heart of OCD isn’t just compulsion and control, but grief steady, daily, and often unnamed? We sit down with our returning guest, Bryn Murphy, a clinician who lives with OCD, to map the hidden losses that shape this diagnosis: time swallowed by rituals, spontaneity crushed by rigidity, identity tugged by relentless doubt, and relationships frayed by reassurance cycles. From there, we build a gentler, fuller way forward, one that pairs evidence-based therapy with grief literacy, community care, and practices that restore presence in the moments that matter most.

We talk candidly about how Western grief norms rush people back to “functioning” and how that pressure collides with the realities of OCD. You’ll hear why ERP and inference-based CBT remain essential and where they can miss the emotional core unless we add rituals of mourning, narrative reframes, and family involvement. We unpack egodystonic thoughts, shame, and the nervous system’s hijack, then offer simple prompts that help reclaim a minute, a conversation, or a sunset from OCD’s demands. Our guest also shares personal stories of loss, including parental death, and how openness, not secrecy, created space for healing and resilience.

This conversation challenges stigma and ableism by humanizing OCD and acknowledging its surprising gifts alongside very real pain: meticulous care that serves craft, deep empathy born from struggle, and hard-won capacity for presence. If you’ve ever wondered who you might have been without OCD or how to live more fully with it, you’ll find language, tools, and hope here. Listen, reflect, and share with someone who needs a gentler map. If this resonated, subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what loss are you finally ready to name?

Bryn Murphy @ www.blueravenfamilycounseling.com

A Hero's Welcome Podcast  © Maria Laquerre-Diego & Liliana Baylon

Transcript

Welcome Back & Guest Intro

Liliana 0:02

Welcome back, listeners, to another episode of a Heroes Welcome podcast. I'm your co-host, Marila Car Diego, and I'm joined by my lovely co-host.

Maria 0:11

That's me, Liliana Balan. With a confession, I have OCD, and we have someone here to diagnose me. No, just get it. We have a returning. You do that yourself.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Do it myself.

Liliana 0:25

No one else is gonna do it the right way. So we we know this. That's right. Back on point. We have a returning guest. Thank you.

Maria 0:36

I feel so thin right now. We have a returning guest. How are you doing? Have you been since uh we last saw you?

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Yeah, I'm doing well. I'm so honored to return and talk about OCD, a fellow OCDer as well. I've had extreme OCD my entire life. Sometimes it's dropped down to severe. Woo. Um, and just I love being able to talk about it. So I've done some trainings about OCD. Since last time I saw you, I actually opened up consultation slots specifically for OCD, as well as a couple other topics, but OCD is the main topic. And so that's been my niche and passion, and I love it.

Maria 1:15

Oh, and thank you for doing it. Yeah. So let's jump in because most people believe that they're just working with OCD, but you've been discussing lately on the grief about OCD. Can you tell us more?

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Yes, I would love to talk about OCD and grief. And there's grief in two different ways. There's grief with actual death and dying, and somebody who's going through the process of either the anticipation of somebody dying or the actual death and what that means for OCDers post-death,

Naming OCD And Setting The Frame

SPEAKER_00 1:51

as well as grief in all of OCD and the different types of grief in relationship with OCD. And it just is not talked about really ever. It's not mentioned in any of my circles of colleagues or other people who specialize in OCD. And I think we do such dishonoring for ourselves and also for our clients to be able to look at OCD from a different perspective.

Liliana 2:19

Yeah. I love you, you just really talk about OCD as like you're in relation with OCD. And so this sounds like it's kind of in the same line of like you're in relationship with grief. So can you tell us a little bit more about grief overall in OCD? Not maybe specifically towards death, but just what do you mean when you ask somebody about grief and their OCD diagnosis?

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah, completely. And I I do with in in my work with clients, I ask the question of what's the relationship

Defining Grief Within OCD

SPEAKER_00 2:55

like with grief? What's the relationship like with OCD? Because it's my philosophy that we all have these parts of our ourselves. And to be in relationship with them means that we are accepting of them, we are honoring of them, and sometimes we're battling with them and we're having conflict. And then how do we repair and how do we heal and move through those large moments of tumultuous waves? And so I that's that's been my personally most useful framework of OCD and grief as well. And when it comes to OCD and grief as a relationship, OCD is chronic loss every single day, every single, sometimes minute by minute chronic loss. And it is not a diagnosis or a symptom that goes away. It certainly can be managed easier and smoother, sometimes with the help of medications, sometimes with therapy, and I think with the ability to accept and honor grief with that. Because in my experience, I'm robbed of so many opportunities every single day, the moment OCD shows up and wants

Daily Losses: Time, Identity, Spontaneity

SPEAKER_00 4:10

to pester or bother me. So when we think about OCD, we've got time lost to compulsions. It is such a time-consuming thing. We also have missed life experiences, literally robbed moments of connection and quality time with ourselves, with friends, with work, with faith, with nature, with family. Relationships can be really strained or damaged because of what the compulsions are doing or what the intrusive thoughts are trying to convince you are true. And then we have identity changes of OCD changes you at its core. And it's really freaking exhausting. It is so exhausting. And then loss of spawnity. OCD thrives, thrives on rigidity and doesn't want people to be flexible. And so you add all of those, and what we're working with is grief. Grief of having this part of your brain, body, and soul, and then how to navigate grief on a day-to-day basis.

Maria 5:19

Yeah. And I love that you're naming that grief, right? Because is that comparison of I'm not doing what others are doing or others projecting into we cannot hang with here, we cannot do this because of your rigidity. Yeah. So I love that even you're mentioning the identity because uh the same way that all of you who are listening are really good about identifying your location. You know, my OCD is part of my location, and it's part of my identity, and and then part is not that like, oh my god, I have OCD. That's not what we're saying, but it's a part of that we are learning to be gentle with. Yep. Part of the give is to understand anyone who shows up. And and and even the need of that rigidity as that coping or survival mechanism in that moment because of that impulsivity of doing something. It's not what we used to watch. So if you're a new therapist or an old therapist who have not attended any recent trainings, is not what we used to watch. I love that my co-host is like smiling because like, Liliana, be nice. I'm nice. It's not what we used to watch. So I love that you're coming and inviting us to see OCD through a different lens.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Yeah. And I I can't tell you if I mean, I've had OCD since I was a kid, and it was missed because I got really, really good internalizing everything. And most of my rituals when I was a kid were for the most part invisible and completely internal rituals and mental rituals. And so people, you know, knew that I was like a sensitive and anxious kid, but all of the things that I didn't do, I thought I couldn't do because if I couldn't do it just right, if I couldn't be perfect at it, I opted not to do it. Talk about missed opportunities and not being able to connect with my friends and my peers on the same wavelength of you. Also, have the grief of who I could have been.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Who I could have been if I didn't have OCD pestering or talking to my brain and trying to tell me to do these things that aren't based in reality. They are not based in reality, but they are so alive in our systems. And when I think about who I could have been, what I could have done if OCD hadn't gotten in my way, that is grief. And that's significant grief.

Liliana 7:50

Yeah, I think that that's what comes to mind for me. And, you know, I've had the the pleasure of being able to watch you train and talk about this before. But I think what stands out for me is this like grief around the the life I thought I was going to have.

SPEAKER_02 8:05

Yep.

Liliana 8:06

Right. And the the grief of watching

Missed Opportunities And The Self That Might Have Been

Liliana 8:10

others be able to do the life I thought I was going to be able to participate in, also. And that being missed and not talked about, I think, is a disservice to clients working on you know their relationship with OCD. Because if we just like with grief and loss in like the more traditional thinking, if we don't address that and process that and come to terms with that grief, it is all consuming.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Completely. And even when we think about grief more in like Western culture or like in a in an American framework of we are taught to, you got six months and then basically get over it. And when people ask you, oh, how are you doing? I'm fine. I'm okay. I'm it is what it is. I'm back to work. Totally. And like you better not take off extra time. You have to be quote unquote done with your grief in order to function and get back into the grind of things. And so even that of I ask all of my clients to expand their tolerance and definition of grief of whoever is stepping into your office is in relation with grief. It is the fantasy of something that I wanted in life didn't come true. I'm having relationship issues. I'm having family issues and dynamics. I'm going through a friendship or a partner breakup. I'm moving. I'm growing older. I'm sick. There's chronic pain of that is grief. And it is not just the very limited and narrow definition of only when someone dies. And even that takes a while for clients to be able to take root and settle in with. And then I'm like, also, let's talk about OCD and your grief, because that doesn't feel like it exists right now. And my sole hope and goal is to have them coexist together in a beautiful partnership where it doesn't have to be so heavy and scary if we can just say, this is grief, this is OCD, this is OCD grief.

Maria 10:23

Yeah. I love that. And even talking to clients and talking to clinicians, right? Like, and this is part of dynamic disability. It's debilitating when it's there. And how can we talk about it so that we can advocate for our clients, or we can advocate for those clients when clinicians who are not trained on this topic miss this dynamic disability part of it?

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Yeah. Yeah. And there's a reason it's rated in the top 10 invisible disabilities. And it's because it is so commonly misdiagnosed or just really misunderstood. I think a lot of clinicians or people like it's taboo and it's scary to work with OCD. And that's just false.

unknown 11:11

Yeah.

Liliana 11:11

Well, it's an again, it's one of those diagnoses that if it comes up and you're not specialized in it, you don't see them, right? And it is like who you refer them to. And because you're not, you're not qualified to train on it. Not to say like there, you know, there are gold standard treatment protocols. Absolutely. And but it does create the sense of like fear for clinicians of like, oh my God, you have OCD. I can't work with you. Yeah.

Western Grief Norms Challenged

Liliana 11:40

Just like feeding that grief and and othering that comes with such a diagnosis.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Completely. And I'm I'm trained in the gold standard treatments, I'm trained in and certified in exposure response prevention, ERP, and inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy, ICBT. And they have so much merit. And they really have, in what I've witnessed and what I've had the chance to observe with clients, they have their place. However, in those trainings, grief was never mentioned. And at the at their core, they are a behaviorally driven modality. Behavior absolutely has its place in all of the work that we do. We also have emotions, we have spirits, we have souls, we have less than our cognitive state. And so I think we just as a as a field, we have such a weird, I don't know why, but we have a very hard time stepping outside of evidence-based treatment and returning to our roots where our ancestors, our our entire generations have grieved and have figured out ways to muddle through this together. And so why wouldn't we incorporate that? Why wouldn't we say you've got a soul? One part of that is OCD. You've also got a lot of other parts. And let's see how we can get them to talk to each other and actually have rituals that help you grieve instead of get stuck in this awful debilitating loop.

Maria 13:16

Yes. Yeah. Especially right, because when you're in that awful debilitating, like the shame of not only grief, but accepting that diagnosis, it's really hard, especially when professionals or associations keep insisting like this is wrong. But again, someone telling you this is accepted or not accepted. Or they can sell you something so that you can feel that you can manage it.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Right.

Maria 13:46

Um but but I think it's that gentleness that you bring into can we meet that part of you?

Liliana 13:53

Yeah.

Maria 13:54

Right. What is it that is needed in this moment? And and even when you ask in such a gentle way, tell them about the grief, the grief in in relationship to OCD, like it is such a curiosity of can I get to know you and these parts of you and how they function when, which is so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 14:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

And I think clients are like, What? Why am I here? What am I doing here? Like, I'm here because I don't want to have OCD anymore. And then I have to burst that bubble and be like, well, it's a part of your brain. It is a permanent piece of you. We can't make it go away. I'm not here to fix it. But what I can do is attempt to help remove the grief of shame and embarrassment around OCD. OCD can really make you feel unhinged. Yeah. The the thoughts and the images and the sounds and the urges that go on in your brain unvoluntarily, no one wants them, are egodystonic. They're not a part of our value system. It is a huge clash. And so there's an automatic hijack. Our nervous system and our brain goes into complete threat and we respond accordingly. And now can we remove that and say, okay, whoa, I just got completely disconnected. OCD tried to get me on its train. Rather than ride that train, I'm going to take a moment, I'm going to take a breath and say, what was I just about to miss? What is the grief in this particular moment? Do I want to miss it? Or do I want to tell OCD, not right now? Maybe in a little bit, you can come back, but I'm in this moment. I want to be present. I don't want to be robbed of any more opportunities in my life.

Liliana 15:38

I love that. It's just such a gentle, caring way that you talk about it. And I think that makes such a huge difference. You know, one thing that Liliana and I have talked about in a couple of other conversations is this like hierarchy of diagnosis, right? Like some diagnoses are more extreme or severe or untouchable than others. And OCD is definitely one in our programming and training that is treated that way. And I mean, and that's also true in the public eye, right? That there is this oh, you have OCD. That's that's like one of the top tier. You know, that not everyone can treat that.

Misdiagnosis, Stigma, And Evidence-Based Limits

Liliana 16:20

You have to see a specialist, you know, and it's it is othered even among the mental health field. Yep. Yeah.

Maria 16:28

And I think part of the gentleness, because as we were discussing, and I started asking myself, like, oh, tell me about my grief. Like, I was asking myself, have you been curious about the grief of having OCD? And I think because I have such a loving partner, because even my husband, when my OCD is here, I know my brother, I my brother mentioned it recently as a sarcastic way of like, oh, it's here. But even when you are gentle with yourself, and then you start talking about it, accepting it, not in a way of oh yeah, it can be like ownership, but it's like this gentleness. You start realizing how people around you, your friends, your family, like they accept that part of you and they help you because they can also recognize when it's here, yeah, right, which is like what can I do for me? And I have this rigidity about everything. But even when you're telling me, like, oh, it's here, got it, and like he moves away, right? In order for me to do that ritual, in order for me to be able to manage that intensity in that moment. So is this gentleness and yes, I can be like, and I don't know if you want to talk about from this part, but like I I can notice the grief, but when you are surrounded with people who love you and understand that peace, like you don't feel that abandoned. Yeah, like there is this peace with you that they they they grieve with you completely, right? Because like if I use my husband, my husband a lot of times cannot go do certain things because grief is here, my rigidity is here, and I have to do this. And I have friends such as Maria, right? That even like consciously or consciously, like she she helps me in those moments when I have to do something in a certain way. Yeah, help me organize it. Like, so I'm I'm wondering also when you talk to your clients or when you're talking, even like talking about how is systems responding? How's your family? How's your friends? You talk about your friend, like how they're showing up, and what is also the grief, and they have have they shared their grief with you? Not that it's your responsibility, but like have you noticed this?

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Yeah. So I when I'm working with OCD, I try my very best to actually include any important family members or friends in clients' lives. And I work with kids as young as two, all the way up to adults. And so if I'm working with minors, we gotta have family in the room. This is not an individual systematic issue. OCD is carried by the individual, but whoa, we would be fooling ourselves if we didn't think that it didn't impact every other avenue and nervous system in the room and in their environments and world. And we've got to get everybody on the same page because just like therapists and just like other clinicians, family members, friends, colleagues don't understand OCD. And there's a lot of conflict. There's a lot of just like, just stop doing it. I already answered you. Can you? We gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go. Like, I'm so stop. And it's like, believe me, if I could stop this, I I happily would.

Liliana 19:54

Yeah, it's not intentional disruption or yeah, trying to be difficult by any means.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Yeah, we're we don't set out to piss people off or to get in conflict all the time. I mean, sure, maybe sometimes. Um of it, but other times we we really don't. And so there's a lot of grief even in those dialogues of tell me your definition of OCD, tell me mom's definition, dad's definition, grandma's, grandfathers, cousins, your best friend. Of I I grew up, both of my parents had mild, sometimes moderate OCD. My mom had more moderate OCD. And for better or worse, we

Beyond Behavior: Rituals For Grieving

SPEAKER_00 20:40

we ritualized together out of our reassurance. And I'm quite grateful for all of those opportunities because we worked through shame together as a as a whole system. And there were many times where she'd be like, okay, this is OCD. Like, do we do we need to follow this? And I'd be like, I cannot get off of this. Like, I need your help to get off of this. I'm fully aware. I am naming, I am trapped in OCD right now. But if I don't do this ritual, I'm gonna waste eight more hours. So just be with me while I ritualize and then I can move on. And then we can have the rest of the time together. Of it is so important to bring your people, your community in with your grief process. Because at the end of the day, humans are animals. We are not meant, we were never meant to grieve alone, no matter what type of grief it is. We are never meant, we are wired to grieve in connection and community. This is just another piece of that.

Liliana 21:41

I love that so much because I think that is so important because we're in systems that individualize it, right? You talked about, you know, even in in traditional Western, you know, grief and lots, like, you know, if your employer offers you bereavement, it's like three days and then you're expecting. to like sit back on it, right? And I mean I've I've worked with some individuals on grief issues and we you know we had the privilege of we like helped file for FMLA so she could take 12 weeks correct to get her life back and to feel comfortable enough to return to a quote unquote normal day work without falling apart without being overtaken by her grief. And I think having these conversations is those steps in helping to like turn the tide on how we look at this. I also think it's really lovely the way that you talk about the grief with OCD because it pairs so nicely with the gifts of OCD that you talk about. Yes. And again you come from this from just such a caring human way that you know because it is such it's so stigmatized. It's so stigmatized even in the mental health field and you know with providers it's stigmatized. So I think just hearing you talk about OCD in this way it helps remember that there's a human on the other side of this it is not just the diagnosis and as much as we have to work in a medical model we do not need to treat our patients our clients like a diagnosis. And I just that is something that stands out for me from you in the way that you talk about OCD both the gifts and the grief of it is it's very caring and compassionate and I don't think I don't think that's always the case out there when we're talking about it in the general population.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Yeah well thank you. I I think I'm gonna like upset a lot of OCD specialists but what's totally fine that's what we're here for. Yeah it's fine let's let's be the revel of this field. I there's such a misconception or myth that there's no gifts or blessings to OCD and I just cannot get by that thought because I'm I have such a loving relationship with my OCD. Granted it's taken a lot of years a lot of therapy and a lot of frustrating crying panic

Shame, Egodystonia, And Choosing Presence

SPEAKER_00 24:20

moments and also I'm really appreciative of how OCD tries to help me. And when I talk to my clients about OCD I mean I think I say the word gift all the freaking time and they're like stop saying gift stop saying gift and I'm like I'm not going to because it's true. There are certainly parts of OCD that if we want to lessen, if we want to rid, there are ways to do that. However, to completely diminish and say no part of OCD is good and all of it is bad keeps us in such a stuck grief place. And you know I I've recently experienced the the death of my mom and then my my dad died years ago as well. And so I've I've been so aware of how my OCD and it prior to my mom dying the largest OCD theme was existential death and dying related to my mom actually. And so it was like whoa I not only need to grieve my best friend my my my person but I also need to grieve one all of the time I wasted doing rituals because I didn't want her to die. Didn't change a thing she died. And two I also need to grieve that I can have OCD come in and I can also say not right now. I'm very cognizant of I'm so open and I'm so raw right now and OCD could come in and really mess with me or it could give me the exact type of pillow and security that I need to get through every single day. And if I didn't have my OCD I think I would be completely different than I am right now with my ability to show up with my clients and I'm incredibly grateful for that gift.

Maria 26:15

If we're naming it that way because I I think that's how I see it exactly. But even as you were sharing this I was like is this because of ableism like people who do not have any of this right they're telling us how what is it that we should look like feel like behavior like think like I mean fuck them but is that yeah yeah 100%.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

And I think you know ableism especially in our Western culture of we don't we're not connected to grief whatsoever. And we have a lot of misconceptions about any type of diagnosis as well. And there's also just the grief of like I don't want to tell anybody this because of the perception that they have of me will change. And then I'm like fuck that I have zero shame about my OCD I will shot it from the rooftop if need be that being said that took me a really long time to get to that place. And so it is it is about working with your clients in a pace that feels just enough uncomfortable for them to be able to continue to deepen into the octaves of grief and also holding yeah this is scary work. This is really hard and I'm asking to do a complete reframe of how culture has modeled

Diagnosis Hierarchies And Othering

SPEAKER_00 27:40

grief and OCD.

Liliana 27:42

Yes yeah absolutely I I just think that just so lovely to view it that way but yeah absolutely I mean this is another you know hour long conversation about like our systems that we are forced to work in are in an ableist system. We are being told how to diagnose what to diagnose and then how to treat that diagnosis based on white male patriarchal science you know systems. And to view OCD because yeah absolutely OCD is one of those diagnoses that comes with a lot of shame built into it right and it can absolutely be something that takes root and becomes your relationship with OCD I think you know your your sharing of of of your story so far is like even that is like the shift in your own relationship with OCD right being in a place now where it's like no like I'm I'm not gonna be ashamed by this this is this is a part of me but it's given me gifts it's also given me grief it's also given me heartache and difficulties but can we be honest like so many things in our lives do that. So many like relationships in general come with those pieces right and so to be able to just decrease this falsified intensity and severity and ostraziation that comes with this diagnosis I think again to me it speaks to just how you're able to humanize this for clients but also for clinicians so that there can be more help for those that want to explore their relationship with OCD and view it in that way. That's such a gift that you offer that is just because I think I think there's so many diagnoses that if we looked at it in terms of like well what is your relationship with this diagnosis right it becomes something that's a part of us but is not our complete identity which is so so important. And I love narrative therapy and you're like speaking my language when we talk about it this way. Yeah that's exactly it.

Maria 30:02

This is such a beautiful conversation again please come back anytime that you want to continue inline

Community Care And Family Systems

Maria 30:10

us and I just hang out and talk about it that's that's that's what this podcast is we just want to hang out with really cool people right like we can have we don't have to have the same information we can have a difference of opinion but the idea is can I learn from you and what is the takeaway of this conversation so for all of you who are listening what is your takeaway did you ever consider you know asking being curious about the grief about diagnosis or are you curious about OCD Bring just mentioned that she's offering consultation so please reach out book a consultation learn more about it we don't have to be mass have mastery on every topic but for sure we should be consultant when that is not your niche. So thank you for being here we will include your information below great this episode so they can reach out to you and come back anytime you want and I will I will yes thank you Bryn till next time thank you