The Skittles and the Truth About OCD
Why Real Exposure Requires Unreasonable Courage
In 2015, the International OCD Foundation hosted its annual conference in Boston, bringing together clinicians, researchers, families, and individuals living with obsessive–compulsive disorder. What makes this event unique is the combination of academic learning and lived experience. The honesty, vulnerability, and clarity offered by both groups can be transformative.
One exercise from that conference has become almost symbolic of the disorder’s demands. A presenter scattered Skittles across the floor and invited attendees to get down on their hands and knees and pick them up using only their tongues.
Someone asked a fair question:
“Why do we have to do this? Most people would never need to do this.”
The presenter responded without hesitation: "Because you’re not normal. You have OCD. And you have to do much more than typical." It was one of the most compassionate truths I’ve heard in our field.
“Because OCD does not play by typical rules.”
It was not meant to shame. It was a statement of clinical reality. People with OCD are required to confront fears at an intensity that far exceeds what most people ever need to face.
Exposure Is Not Designed for Comfort
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is not about gradual reassurance or gentle avoidance. It is intended to retrain the brain by preventing escape from fear. The goal is not comfort. The goal is learning.
ERP teaches the nervous system that intrusive distress does not equal danger. The brain must learn that anxiety rises and falls naturally. If avoidance continues, the disorder expands.
Going Beyond the Fear Hierarchy
Many people imagine exposure as a staircase, slowly moving toward a frightening situation. For OCD, that staircase is often not enough. To create neurological change, individuals may be required to approach fear at levels that feel unreasonable, unnecessary, or unfair.
Not once.
Not occasionally.
Repeatedly.
OCD demands repetition because reassurance strengthens the disorder, and avoidance cements it.
The Courage Required on Both Sides - Effective ERP is built on courage.
The person confronting OCD must tolerate uncertainty, contamination risk, blasphemous thoughts, relationship doubt, moral discomfort, or physiological panic.
But courage is also required from the people facilitating the work; clinicians, family members, and supporters. ERP treatment means tolerating distress in someone you care about without offering rescue.
That may involve:
- refusing to provide reassurance
- refraining from answering checking questions
- allowing someone to approach feared objects or tasks
- maintaining boundaries even when anxiety rises
In OCD treatment, the goal is not to help a person feel certain. It is to help them learn that uncertainty can be survived.
The Compassion in Difficulty
The Skittles demonstration was memorable not because of candy, but because of compassion. It reflected an uncomfortable truth:
OCD recovery is achieved through unreasonable bravery.
People living with OCD must work harder than most to overcome distortions in threat perception. The task is demanding, unfair at times, and emotionally draining. But the alternative, the cycle of avoidance and reassurance, allows the disorder to spread.
Long-term improvement requires leaning into discomfort until the brain learns a new rule:
“I do not need to escape this. I can handle it.”
That principle remains at the core of recovery. The work is not easy. But courage, practiced repeatedly, is what leads individuals out.