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Most people just know Mayim Bialik as one of the hosts of Jeopardy or for her acting roles on The Big Bang Theory, Call Me Kat or Blossom, but one thing many people don't know about the 47-year-old is that she has a mental health disorder.
Bialik suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder and on her podcast, Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, she spoke about the condition and detailed what people get wrong about it. She posted a clip from her podcast to her Instagram and in it, says:
"What a lot of people don't know about obsessive-compulsive disorder is it's not just about liking your shoes neat. I think what a lot of people sort of mistake colloquially is, like, 'I like to have things this way. I'm OCD,' and obsessive-compulsive disorder is a diagnosis that requires both obsessions and compulsions, and the obsessions are the things that we think about or ruminate on. The compulsions are typically actions that are done to expel the anxiety from the obsessions."
It's not her first time opening up about OCD. She previously appeared in a video for the Child Mind Institute called "Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and What I Would Tell #MyYoungerSelf." In it, she explains, "I grew up with and still have obsessive-compulsive disorder. One of the things that made my life really difficult was trying new things, and it's still really hard for me. What I found is that, with trusting other people and learning to trust other people and lean on them for support, you can make changes and still be okay. Change is possible, change can be good and even when it's scary, it's okay."
Per the Mayo Clinic, OCD "features a pattern of unwanted thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead you to do repetitive behaviors (compulsions). These obsessions and compulsions interfere with daily activities and cause significant distress."
Fans with OCD were grateful for Mayim's Instagram post, commenting things like, "Totally. Too many people throw ‘OCD’ around like it’s a joke term. It’s severely debilitating," and, "Lifelong struggle with checking and counting behaviors here. Thank you for bringing more awareness to diagnosed OCD," and, "Thank you for this. The abbreviation 'OCD' gets thrown around a lot by people who need to normalize their mildly eccentric behaviors not understanding who or what they are minimizing."
Mayim's podcast is all about "breaking down mental health so you don't have to," according to its tagline. You can listen to it on iHeartRadio.