How a Swiss Clinic Helped Me Manage My OCD


The clinic is multilingual and multidisciplinary. Medical, clinical, BMS, and hospitality teams work closely to support each patient’s needs; the breathing techniques I learn in my psychoeducation sessions reinforce the connection between mind and body and help me to center my thoughts. “When you get into the realm of the mind, it’s so personal, so complicated,” says Wilson. “You have to look at the whole person.”

I see a man looking at me expectantly in the corridor of the clinical area, and I’m introduced to Mert Ulusoy, my psychotherapist, with whom I have daily one-to-one talk therapy sessions. We discuss my aversion to touching anything that may have been handled by a “bad” person, potentially transferring their “evil” on to me. I attribute my compulsive reactions to being physically attacked by a stranger when I was 16, after which I found one of my assailant’s hairs on the coat I’d been wearing.

This led to the exhausting compulsive routine of avoiding potential contamination from others, and constant hand-washing, which I’ve been carrying out for more than three decades. On a daily basis, I avoid handrails, touchscreens, and door handles for fear of who has touched them before. But friends and loved ones are “safe” and, in a secure relationship with a partner I trust, contamination thoughts about them are lessened. In a soft tone, Ulusoy suggests I can tell myself a “different story”, and I feel a chink of light in my otherwise dark thinking.

Over the next few days, he gently delves deeper and I open up emotionally, to the point of ugly crying. He assures me that the solution to my OCD is a simple process, but one that can be extremely challenging: exposure therapy, for which I’d need more than the five days that I’m here. He suggests that I carry around a particular object from my home that I’m uncomfortable touching, then gauge how I feel. After years of being resistant to talk therapy, I realize I’m now more open to suggestion.

In a part of the clinic hewn from solid rock, psychiatrist and medical director Dr Randolph Willis walks me along the soothingly dark tunnel that leads to the Serenity Room, its vast glass wall looking out over the Alpine landscape. Using medical hypnosis, he puts me into a state of trance then guides me to visualize myself swinging from a place of contamination to a place of safety. My emotional response takes me by surprise, and I feel another positive and unexpected shift.

All this self-introspection is cushioned not only by Thai massage and the ringing of Tibetan bowls, but by the exceptional food and the amiable staff—and it’s the people who make this place. Nothing is too much trouble. When it’s clear that I can’t navigate the winding roads en route to some activities without experiencing motion sickness, the medical team supplies me with anti-nausea pills and arrangements are made for future travel to be made via the nearby funicular railway—a more gentle means of transport that’s enveloped by the surrounding greenery.



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