LIVE IOCDF KEYNOTE: How ERP and the OCD Community Changed Our Lives

In this special episode of The OCD Confessional, we're sharing the keynote address that Liam Martin and his wife, Dr. Lia Martin, delivered at the International OCD Foundation's Global OCD Conference.

Together, we reflect on what it was like to build a marriage while OCD was quietly shaping nearly every part of our lives. We talk openly about the fear, confusion, reassurance-seeking, and moments when OCD threatened to pull us apart—and the lessons we learned as we found our way through it together.

Liam also shares his personal journey with OCD, including the years he spent searching for answers, how Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) transformed his life, and why discovering the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) became one of the biggest turning points in his recovery.

In this keynote, we discuss:

•  How OCD affects romantic relationships and families 
•  The hidden impact of reassurance and accommodation 
•  Liam's journey from diagnosis to recovery 
•  Why ERP remains the gold-standard treatment for OCD 
•  The life-changing role of the OCD community 
•  Finding hope—even when OCD tells you there isn't any 

Whether you're living with OCD, supporting someone who is, or simply looking for hope, we hope this conversation reminds you that recovery is possible—and that no one has to face OCD alone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome into another episode of the OCD Confessional. This is gonna be a bit different. As you might have heard, Alicia and I ventured to the IOCDF Global Conference in Seattle in July, where my wife, Dr. Leah Martin, and I had the honor of being this year's keynote speakers. I wanted to talk about my experience with OCD, and Leah was there really to talk about her experience as a partner of someone with OCD, and that included her background as a clinical psychologist. And so this week we thought we would share that keynote speech with you in case you didn't have a chance to watch it live. I am so proud of Leah for getting up there and sharing her story. She does not love public speaking, but she absolutely crushed it as I knew she would. And so this is us at the global OCD conference put on by the IOCDF. I'm Alicia. And I'm Liam. We both have OCD. And instead of spiraling alone, we decided to turn our symptoms into a podcast. You're welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Here we overshare real stories, laugh through the anxiety, and talk to actual experts who can explain why your brain keeps asking, What if I accidentally marry my cousin?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Whether your thing is hand washing, mental rituals, or just silently panicking during normal conversations, congrats. You have found your people.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

This is a safe place, unless you're an intrusive thought. In which case, get in line, buddy. We're booked.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

So grab a weighted blanket, cancel your plans for the fifth time, and let's dive in. This is the OCD Confessional.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

And yes, we did check this recording four times before uploading it.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

You ready?

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Ready. I didn't fall.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Wow. Thank you so much for that warm welcome, Kevin, and to the IOCDF for putting on this remarkable event. This is actually our first OCD con, and what an introduction it has been. We are incredibly honored to be here, although I will say that this is a bit of an exposure for Leah because she has a crippling fear of public speaking.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Just a tad. And for Liam, as you'll hear today, one of his main themes is relationship OCD, and that I'm going to leave him. So unbeknownst to him, here is his ERP exposure for today. You got it. You'll be great.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Where are you going?

SPEAKER_02 2:27

I'll see you later. Maybe.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Maybe, maybe not.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Maybe not. Just kidding, guys. I wouldn't do that to him as I've reassured him many times.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

You're not supposed to reassure me.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Isn't that what that is? Whoops. I learned about that, about reassurance and so much more about my own IOCD through all the amazing resources from the IOCDF. I was put in touch with them the minute I went public about this battle I've been having. And it has been so helpful to me in my journey with this complex and endlessly frustrating disorder. In fact, all that support is what has brought me here today. As Kevin was saying, I spent 15 years as a television news anchor, eventually achieving this dream position that I never thought was possible. Morning anchor at the legendary Boston news station, WBZ News, the oldest TV news station in the country. And when I started my career, Leah can attest, I did not think I was going to get to that level. And I worked incredibly hard to get to that spot in my career, loved every moment of it. And then about two years ago, I very publicly threw it all away. I wrote an article about it at the time for Boston Magazine titled Why I Gave Up My Dream Job. Though a more accurate title might have been Local Man Has Mental Breakdown, Questions Capitalism, Chooses Dinner with His Family. And the real headline of all of that is that OCD, which I didn't even know I had, I didn't really know what it is, had left me in a very dark, lonely place. But before we get to all of that and our journey together as a couple with this disorder, we've got to go back to the beginning for me. I have this distinct memory of being eight years old and developing this obsession that my parents were going to die. So I would sit in bed and I would worry about this, and I would eventually get out of bed to check on them on the couch. They were watching TV, and I would creep in, and I didn't want them to know I was there. And then I would go back to bed and I would recite a prayer, which was so lodged in my memory that to this day I remember it. It was, dear God, this is me, Liam Royne Martin. I'm at 67 Lambert Slane, Coassa, Massachusetts, 02025. Please protect my father, Donald Richard Roy, and my mother Elizabeth Violet Martin from all harm and especially death or serious injury. Which I love the idea that God had the power to save them, but not the power to know where we lived. I had to let him know every time. Still here. We didn't move yet. And for five minutes, that prayer said four times in succession would calm my fears. But then the thought would come back. I would creep out of bed again. I'd go down the hallway, I'd look at them again, I would say my prayers, it was rinse and repeat for hours on end.

SPEAKER_02 5:27

By the way, his parents are still very much alive, which I am mostly happy about.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

That's it's honestly it's because of all my praying.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Probably.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

They should be thanking me for saving their lives all those times. Uh that was just one of the many intrusive thoughts that I was experiencing at the time, and I had compulsions to fight back each one of those. I loved basketball, for instance, and I remember shooting free throws in my driveway in a snowstorm, and I had to hit 20 in a row before I could go inside. And I imagine that if I didn't, my family, my brothers, my mom and dad, they would die. So talk about high sticks. I definitely learned how to shoot free throws under pressure. Uh but the wild thing is that neither I nor anyone in my family clocked this as OCD. My parents thought I was maybe a bit anxious or awed or intense, but nothing more than that. This was in the 1980s, and I think we've come a long way in awareness of OCD. My parents certainly did not know what it is. And it's also partly because I didn't really fully share it with them, which would become a theme in my life. They knew I was worried they would die. I confess that to them, but that's a normal fear for a child. I didn't tell them about the compulsions and the praying and the checking that I was performing to ensure that they didn't. They didn't know about the constant prayers, light switches. They didn't know that I feared if I didn't hit those 20 free throws in a row in the snowstorm that they and my brothers would die. They didn't know that because I was a master at hiding it, which, as you will hear again, that's a theme. I didn't want them to know that because even at that age, at eight years old, I carried this intense shame about those compulsions. And largely because of that, things got a lot worse. It morphed in my teen years into several bouts with different themes at different levels of intensity, all the way up until I met Leah in my late 20s.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

And then we met and I fixed everything.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

End of story. In fact, that's the end of our end of our speech.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

Thank you guys. No, but in all seriousness, when I met Liam, my first impression was that he didn't need any fixing at all. It was really one of the things that initially drew me to you was that he seemed like he had it all put together. He was very focused, determined, polished, like he had it all figured out. What actually I should be clear, he seemed so put together when we first met that it was actually kind of intimidating, and I thought he was going to be a bit of an uptight jerk.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Jury's still out.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

So when he first approached me in a college bar, as one does in their 20s, I actually tried to dodge his initial attempts to speak to me. But after a good friend encouraged me to go out with him and get to know him, I realized pretty quickly what an incredible guy he was. He's very funny, kind, smart, diligent. Is this going to your head? Very career-driven, very open and honest. And we really talked very candidly about a lot of things in the beginning of our relationship. We had a bit of a whirlwind romance, moved in with each other after just three months. And one of the things we talked about very openly actually was his anxiety. I knew he had some level of anxiety right off the bat. It really wasn't a secret. He talked about how he felt his anxiety was helpful to him, how it drove him to succeed and put his all into everything he did. He also acknowledged that it limited him in some ways. He could be a bit rigid, a bit of a black and white thinker. We joked about it and we even put it into our wedding vows. One of the lines we wrote literally was, I promise to always help you see the gray in life instead of just the black and white. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

But even She wrote that, obviously not me.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

It was good. But even after we moved in together, I really didn't see his anxiety for OCD. I noticed he had some little quirks. Like if we talked about the possibility of some catastrophic thing happening, I would have to knock on wood an even number of times. Like literally, he would make me add an extra knock if I only did three knocks.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Can't be three.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

But I didn't pick up on this. He was super regimented and tightly controlled in everything he did, from his exercise to his work ethic, his sleep and hygiene routines, his diet. He was the cleanest, most boring eater when we met. He literally ate the same things every day. But don't worry, I broke him up that really fast. I introduced him to the joy of French fries. But again, I just brushed all of this off as little personality quirks, little endearing idiosyncrasies of his personality, or even a healthy dose dose, excuse me, of neuroticism, more like a personality trait than a clinical disorder. I thought, oh my gosh, a kindred spirit. A type A girl meets her type A counterpart. But looking back, I probably should have known or didn't realize this was all related to obsessions that I just didn't even know about. The really wild thing about all this though is that when we met, I was deep in the throes of graduate school. I was a third-year doctoral student in clinical psychology, working towards my PhD, literally having to memorize diagnostic criteria for different syndromes, seeing patients in our training clinic, coming in for help for all sorts of things, including OCD, and yet I didn't see it in him.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

And a big part of the reason she couldn't identify it as OCD is that again, I was hiding most of my inner turmoil from her, really from everyone. I would share little bits, you know, I feel sad today, that kind of thing, but not what was truly going on. And that was true my whole life. I was obsessed, no pun intended, with appearing successful, charming, like I had it all. I even built a public image of that through my television career. If there were an Olympics for masking, I would be the gold medalist. I'd be somewhere on that podium. And there were multiple times during our marriage when the mask almost cracked. When our daughter was born in 2014, Everly, she's in the front row right now. Uh, she ended up needing open heart surgery just a few weeks after her birth. She was our our first child. And so, as often is the case with OCD, that traumatic event triggered new obsessions for me. So when she came home from the hospital, and even after she had been given the all-clear from the doctors, I became obsessed with the idea that she was going to die from SIDS. So I would spend most nights, many hours, checking her breathing over and over. I would wake up multiple times to watch her through the little slaps in her crib and make sure her chest was moving up and down. I joked with Leah at the time that they need to develop a some sort of technology that will tell if the baby stops breathing on the mattress. And now they actually have that. I could have used that at the time. Although then I would have become convinced that the batteries had died or whatever. It doesn't matter. I still would have done it. So I would recite prayers again over and over as I had done with my parents many years ago, and then I would knock on wood, and then I would flip the light switches the perfect number of times to ensure her health, and none of it would be enough, so I would do it all over again.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

This was a really fun time for me guys. I was I was postpartum, completely sleep deprived, grasping to what little shreds of rest I could get, and I would wake up in the middle of the night to Liam frantically searching the sh the sheets for our not breathing baby, who coincidentally did not co-sleep with us. She was happily snoozing away in her own crib, in her own room, or I would wake just to find him missing from the bed and having no idea where he had gone or what he was doing.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

So despite all of that, neither Leah nor I knew that the source of this was OCD. It remained that way all the way until my late 30s. And I know that for a lot of people with OCD, that later in life diagnosis is a shocking reality. And for me, it came because I just finally had that full mental health breakdown. I had been, you know, a perfectionist for most of my life. I was like, I am gonna perfect the breakdown. It's gonna get really dark, really dark. Um, I was anchoring the morning show at the time, and so I was up at 2.30 in the morning five days a week, and if I was lucky, I was getting into bed at 7.30 at night to try to sleep, and I don't mean peacefully drifting off after a relaxing evening. This was more like a be a raccoon in human pajamas trying to convince my nervous system that it was time to go to sleep. But despite my best efforts, it all finally caught up to me. I was still trying to be the playful and present dad for our kiddos that they had always known, and the silly, devoted husband my wife had always known. And on television, I was putting all this effort, this mental effort, into continuing to present as polished and upbeat and happy. It's the morning show. You want people to start their day fresh. But internally, I was unraveling. And even with my masking, you started to notice some of the cracks in the facade.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Yep. You guys might find this surprising given what we've talked about so far. But up until this point in our lives, when it came to parenting and just everyday life stuff, Liam was actually the more laid back of the two. He's more patient, less quick to anger with our children, he's silly, he's playful and light. But suddenly he was irritable. He was losing his patience with me and sniping at me over little things. He was less patient with the kids, getting set off by the tiniest things. And it was like a dark cloud had settled over him, and it was confusing to me. I felt like I was interacting with a completely different person when all the while, and I didn't know it, I was interacting with his OCD. We also had had this very relaxed and trusting relationship up until this point. And during this time, I remember that I told Liam I was going on a friend's bachelorette party in New Hampshire. And it was going to be actually a pretty lame affair, just a bunch of women in their late 30s having a murder mystery night. But he told me he really didn't want me to go, and it actually led to a really big argument between the two of us.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

For whatever reason, my main subtype at this time, lucky me, I had a bunch of them, was relationship OCD. I feared that Leah would leave me, that I wasn't good enough, that she was going to have an affair, that she no longer found me attractive, that I was no longer man enough for her. That became a real fear for me. I don't know what that gesture meant. What did that mean? Reassure me. Please. Okay. And that uh this pain I was experiencing was going to drive her away. That was the irony, is that I on some level knew, okay, I'm in this state, and I want to share it with her, but I can't, and I my fear is that she'll leave me, and then everything I was doing was, of course, making it worse, making that more likely in some ways.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Quick break. We'll be right back. But first, a word from our sponsor. The same distressing, unwanted thoughts keep playing over and over in your mind. The same rituals keep eating up your time, holding you back from enjoying your life. You've tried talk therapy before and spent session after session diving into those thoughts, trying to understand them, trying to fix them, but somehow they just get worse. And the shame piles on because you think, why isn't this working? What's wrong with me? If this sounds familiar, here's what you need to know. You're not the problem. You're experiencing something that a lot of people with OCD experience. Getting your life back is possible because OCD is highly treatable. It just requires a completely different approach than other mental health conditions. In fact, standard talk therapy often makes OCD worse because it encourages you to analyze those intrusive thoughts or try to replace them with positive ones. But with OCD, the more attention you give the thoughts, the stickier they become. That's where No CD comes in. No CD provides virtual therapy designed specifically for OCD. Every single one of their therapists is extensively trained in a type of therapy called ERP, or exposure and response prevention, which is the most effective treatment available for OCD. And they get the training from world-renowned OCD experts so they truly understand what you're dealing with, even the stuff that feels impossible to say out loud. In live face-to-face virtual sessions, your No CD therapist will teach you how to take the power away from truth of thoughts so you can live the life that you want to live. In between sessions, you'll be able to message your therapist anytime, join dozens of life support groups, and continue your progress with other expert developed therapy tools. No CD is also covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans, and their team makes it really simple to get started. Visit nocd.com and book a free 15-minute call. That's no cd.com to learn more and talk to someone who can help because you deserve treatment that actually works for OCD.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

And I knew, again, that on some level that it was illogical, but that's the tricky thing with OCD. It's the world's worst detective. Um, it finds stupid clues everywhere and develops conspiracy theories around all of them and is almost always wrong. So after years and years of hiding all this from Leah, from everyone, no one in my family knew, no one knew. Uh, my OCD did me the favor of getting so bad that I finally had no choice but to open up. I had spent so much time convinced that my anxiety was an asset to some extent, that it had driven me to some of the successes in my life. As Leah said, I didn't want to lose that edge, uh, but the edge had become very sharp, and it was slowly killing me. And I'll never forget the conversation we finally had. I sat Leah down and I was like, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna actually do this, I'm gonna go fully into this. And I explained what had been going on with me, and she listened, and then she had kind of a curious look on her face and said, Why haven't you told me sooner? And I said, I didn't want you to think that I'm weak. And what did you say?

SPEAKER_02 19:11

I said the strongest thing you can do is to ask for help.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

And that yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Oh God.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

And that went through me like lightning. Um thank God I was able to take those words and believed them, and I set out to find a therapist, I think, right away, and I did. But I still did not know at this point that OCD was the cause, as has happened to so many people with this disorder, and I'm sure in this room. The first therapist I found didn't spot it either. This gets into that 95% statistic that David and Becky were sharing. We did talk therapy, which is what I thought I was supposed to do. And I did take some valuable lessons from the experience. That therapist encouraged me to get on an SSRI, which did help me greatly. But I also quickly learned that sitting with her, discussing my parents' divorce, my dynamics with my siblings, meditating, imagining myself safe on an island somewhere, was not the answer that I was looking for.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

And this is really common in the field of mental health. As a clinical psychologist, I took great pains to help find Liam someone that I thought was really well trained and really well qualified to work with him. But despite him being really open with his therapist about his experiences, she missed the OCD. He wasn't diagnosed with that this time. She was being, he was treating, he was getting treated for depression. And again, she was a great therapist in a lot of ways. But Liam's experience also highlights the real gap in adequate knowledge about OCD in the field of mental health. It actually made me think back to my own training experiences in graduate school, where as a beginning clinician, we would present cases in a group setting for consultation with our supervisors and professors. And one day, my colleague, and I will never forget this, she presented a case to us where a young man had come into the clinic and described having intense, intrusive fears that he was a pedophile. And he reported to her that he was constantly checking pornography websites to make sure he didn't enjoy looking at them. And she actually correctly diagnosed him as having POCD. But there were some faculty and supervisors in the training session who had really strong reactions to the case when she presented it. And they didn't have a good enough understanding of OCD to recognize really how devastating these thoughts were to this young man and how courageous it was of him to come and share this. And I really don't share this as a knock on my field, and we've come a long way. I don't want to age myself, but this was. Some time ago. But to be really honest about the fact that there is still a lot of education that is needed about OCD, even among professionals. And not just about having the knowledge to correctly diagnose OCD, but also the knowledge to correctly treat it.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

And what I found is that I was initially getting worse from talk therapy. I was spending a lot of time fighting with the thoughts and trying to rationalize them away. And as a result, they were just getting louder and louder. And I was left with this real sense of hopelessness that I shared with you on multiple occasions. I finally went and got the help. I opened up to my wife. I did all the things you're supposed to do. I found the therapist, went through the labyrinth of insurance and all of that. And I was worse. It was like an overcorrection. It probably became too much. Every night I was like, let's talk about our feelings again.

unknown 22:58

I loved it. I loved it.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

And I was really struggling, so I I kept leaning on her. And it was during one of those trauma dumps that a light bulb actually went off for you.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Yeah, so I did the thing that people in my field usually try not to do, which is I psychologized you. But what I really did was that I asked him to describe the anxious thoughts that he was having in really deep detail and to tell me how it made it him feel in his body, and to describe what he was doing to cope when he felt that way. And pretty quickly, once he really disclosed to me all the different ways that he was compulsing to deal with his obsessions, I realized that we were dealing with more than just depression or your garden variety anxiety. We were dealing with OCD. It all came out and it suddenly all made sense to me. The tapping, the mental rituals, the prayers, the checking in various ways, making doctors' appointments with specialists for rare medical diseases. He confided me and he confided to me that he really wanted to check my phone and text messages, even though he never did. The urge was there.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

And that eureka moment, the you know, eureka moment for Leah of oh my god, it's OCD, was what set me on the path to an answer. So at 38, 39 years old, I finally had a name for what I had been experiencing. That was incredibly powerful. Um, but not only did I have a name for it, through the IOCDF, I learned that there is a highly effective treatment for it, exposure and response prevention. So I left the talk therapy, I found a qualified therapist eventually, and began ERP. And as I'm sure many of you in this room can relate with, it was a real rough go at first. Um I'm actually not supposed to share a whole lot with Leah about my exposures, but we went right at the themes. We took a gradual approach, but it was really rough. I was forced to sit with the discomfort, the uncertainty, not perform the compulsions, and the mental checking that had become so habitual. This was 38 years of learned behavior for me. And over time, with each session, the discomfort got a little more manageable and then a bit more, and we kept building on that. We developed what are called exposure response messages, little phrases that help me prevent my typical response. The one I like most right now, and I might get this tattooed on me, just so you know. Breaking news. Uh the longer I sit with this discomfort, the stronger I become. I really like that one. And I have definitely become stronger as a result and less controlled by my obsessions. And of course, this isn't the end of my OCD. All of this has taken time and remains a work in progress, but I have gotten immense relief. And none of it would have happened if I hadn't been willing to open up to my partner.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

I want to make this very clear. I was not uniquely qualified to support Liam when he first talked to me about his OCD, or even at any point in his journey, because of my professional degree and because of my training. It helped us to identify his OCD faster. 15 years. Whatever. For that, I am grateful. But what really made me uniquely qualified to be there for him, to be the one supporting through him through all of this, is that I love him. I love him and I want him to be not suffering. And anyone can do that for their partner or for their child or their sibling or their friend.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

And that was the driving force of my recovery. Of course, the medication and the ERP have helped immensely, but none of that was possible without love. That was what drove all of this. Wanting to be in a better place for my loved ones, and my loved ones wanting me to be in a better place for me.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

That's the thing about OCD. It can make it really hard to love yourself. It brings so many feelings of shame, and I know for Liam, feelings of self-loathing. And so people with OCD sometimes just need someone who can love all of their parts, including their OCD parts, when they can't do it for themselves. Even if the OCD doesn't make sense to you, even if you don't fully understand it.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

And it's also for the partner about education around what OCD is and how it affects us. When Leah didn't know I have OCD, she was reassuring me left and right. Um I had very sneaky ways of getting that reassurance, uh, in fact, because I didn't want to seem needy or vulnerable. So I would find these innovative ways to get it. It was quite quite brilliant, actually. Credit to me for some of the ways I would get that. Um I would pay her a compliment on how she was looking, and then I would make sure I was looking really good so that she would give it back to me. And uh now she just rolls her eyes at me.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

So it's one downside to Is that why I don't get compliments anymore?

SPEAKER_00 28:05

You look beautiful. By the way, you look beautiful right now. And no. So that knowledge for both of us about how OCD impacts me and the best way to approach it is super important. But above all, it is love and support. It is knowing, not because she tells me, but because I see it, that she has my back and I have hers, and we will get through all of it together. So thank you for giving me that comfort. You're welcome, and this community really has been the other key. I often say one of the more powerful interventions for me has been hearing from and talking to other people who are living with this disorder. It makes me feel less alone in it, less weird. Uh I like to say we can all just be weird together. Um so thank you to the IOCDF and everyone in attendance here this weekend for showing that same love and support to one another. It makes a world of difference. Thank you all. Thanks for listening to another episode of the O C D Confessional. Be sure to follow the show so you get new episodes. You can subscribe to us on YouTube or find us on Instagram and TikTok at the O C D Confessional.