Blog | Dr. Jamey Hecht | Beverly Hills, CA

Posts in OCD

“Are you Mad at Me?” Obsessively Seeking Reassurance

“Are you mad at me?” The question is presented as an inquiry about the other person, but it isn’t really asking about that person. It’s more of a statement: “I now need another shot of reassurance, please” is the message. So it’s both a request, and a report about the speaker’s inner state of anxiety and affect-hunger. What it is not, is the very thing its literal meaning presents it to be: an expression of interest in how the other person is actually feeling. This mismatch between the question’s overt meaning and its real use can be annoying. Asked often enough, it can even make the hearer feel a little bit …mad.

Marriage, OCD, RelationshipsJamey HechtDecember 20, 2025OCD, reassurance

On Hoarding

Hoarding occurs on a spectrum of severity. It can be a light nuisance, a serious problem that impinges on one’s life-possibilities, or a severe mental affliction with potentially dire implications for physical health. It’s a distorted version of some natural and necessary mental functions. In the deeply ancient world, long before civilization, people generally kept only what they could carry. Evolutionary psychology of this sort can easily jump to mistaken conclusions, but it seems likely that somewhere along the line it became adaptive to try and hang onto stuff that might be useful later on. A temperament that disposed people to a more retentive attitude became partly heritable—despite the fact that it could also cause trouble...

Addiction, Depression, Trauma, OCD, Hoarding, Sociality and IsolationJamey HechtNovember 25, 2024hoarding, trauma, scarcity

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