by | | Curated Content
May 1st 2025
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WellBeing Magazine
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I’m freewheeling high above the sea, cycling through blooming coastal heathlands and baking under a hot October sky. Far below floats a tri-coloured tapestry of baby-blue lagoons, rugged reefs and sailboats swinging at anchor in patches of bright white sand.
This summery seascape that flanks Perth’s most beloved island is utterly irresistible. So I park my bike, amble down over the cliff, strip off and fall right on in. I surface with a gasp that makes my daughter laugh, chilled by icy waters that flow straight out of Antarctica.
It might be breathtakingly cold, but the water clarity is insane. I stand waist-deep, watching my daughter duck and dive through schools of translucent fish while the dolphins that give Porpoise Bay its name hunt on the fringe. I might be anywhere on the blue-hued West Australian coastline, but only this one, picturesque island is monopolised by quokkas.
The Whadjuk Noongar people call it Wadjemup, meaning “place across the water where the spirits are”. But when Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh sailed by in 1696, he saw an island ruled by marsupials and called it Rotte Nest (or rat’s nest) for the quokkas and wallabies found in abundance.
Today, snapping a quokka selfie is de rigueur for Perth-bound travellers who cycle great distances for a head shot with a herbivorous, cat-sized quokka. Rottnest Island, or Rotto as locals call it, is the quokka’s stronghold, supporting two-thirds of the 15,000 creatures left in the world, all of them found only in WA’s southwest corner.
Tackling a big lap
Located a 30-minute ferry ride from Fremantle Harbour, Rottnest is small as islands go, just 11km long and 4.5km at its widest point. In a leisurely day of cycling, you can just about see it all, detouring to the sea to discover snorkelling spots and surf breaks, reefs for fishing and diving, and lookouts that elevate you above vast inland salt lakes.
For those with more energy, there are lots of trails to hike too, and one tremendously sweaty climb to the Wadjemup Lighthouse for lofty vistas and much-needed coffee and snacks. We set out to tackle it all, hiring a trio of island bikes and helmets, and hitting the slow road in search of quokkas and serene sea views.
As wild as it all seems, Rotto caters for a constant, year-round stream of West Australian holidaymakers, with waterfront accommodation for all budgets, cafes and bars, gear rental and tour shops, all clustered together in the visitor hub known as The Settlement.
We cycle beyond the hubbub for brighter views, joining other cyclists shooting the breeze and pulling off the road wherever and whenever we please. The first stop is Parker Point to snorkel beneath rugged limestone cliffs, then a sandy detour to Salmon Bay to see if the surf break is working.
We push our bikes up the steep side road to Wadjemup Lighthouse for big-picture vistas that reveal an extraordinary sanctuary of salt lakes far below. Sea birds ride the thermals while we queue for coffee, then we snare a lucky seat in the shade to sip and dunk our cookies.
When I first discovered Rotto, the island’s roads were sleepy and the quokkas abundant. In the decades since, the pace (and the heat) has cranked up quite a bit, and with roads now abuzz with tour buses, I wonder where all the quokkas have gone?
Spotting quokkas
We leave the lighthouse behind us in a fun freewheeling descent, and suddenly turn a corner to find a crowd gathered roadside. At the centre of the scene crouches a tiny fawn-coloured quokka, grazing amid the selfie-seeking throng.
We watch awkwardly from the sidelines as the tourists chase their head shots, and the quokka patiently ignores its onlookers. It doesn’t appear to mind the limelight but its “vulnerable” status on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species would suggest otherwise.
In recent decades, the quokkas’ population has halved, challenged both on and off the island by habitat loss, rising global temperatures and increasing bouts of drought that diminish summertime water sources. Incongruously during this time, the quokka’s popularity has soared thanks to a growing pursuit of the celebrity-driven quokka selfie.
When the WA government paid tennis star Roger Federer to promote Rottnest Island a few years ago, it’s said that his quokka selfie was seen by one in seven internet users. Visitor numbers rose and the fans kept on arriving, adding much-needed tourist levies to the slush fund dedicated to saving the quokka.
We leave the photo shoot behind and cycle on, past an endless stream of blue coves and white-sand beaches. Even without the allure of these enigmatic wild things, Rotto is worth every minute that I spend on the bike.
We crank uphill and hike to rugged limestone lookouts, to stand atop remnants of a fossilised coral reef. Across Narrow Neck and back again, the cerulean sea calls us, so we ditch the bikes and hit the sand to swim at Ricey Beach. Only when we finally complete our loop around the island do we encounter a pair of quokkas, scavenging on the outskirts of the settlement.
As mesmerising as they undoubtedly are, the backdrop is all wrong, so we haul back to the dock and make a beeline for the pub. We order icy brews and sit by the sea, but the quokka under the table is an unsettling juxtaposition. I feel like I’m sitting in his spot and, in many respects, I am, and these tourist-friendly conveniences have lured us both in.
The hard past
Before sea levels rose around 6500 years ago, Rottnest was connected to the Fremantle coastline, and was a place of ceremony and meeting for the Whadjuk Noongar peoples. Sealed off by the sea, the island was safeguarded for thousands of years but, ironically, the Whadjuk people returned as prisoners in 1838.
In the century that followed, 4000 Indigenous men and boys — children as young as eight and elders, leaders, warriors and lore men — were exiled on the island and held in a labour prison known as the Establishment.
As families dissolved on the mainland and cultural connections were lost, the prisoners endured grim lives marked by disease, constant cruelty and hard labour. So many Indigenous males died on Rotto that their unmarked graves now rate as Australia’s largest site of Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
It’s very possible to visit Rottnest Island and know none of this story, despite its most handsome architecture being prisoner-built: the seawall, the original Wadjemup Lighthouse, the superintendent’s cottage and the old prison known as the Quod.
Place of the woylie
The history that built Rottnest Island built nearby Fremantle too, so when our ferry docks back on the mainland, we decide to settle in and scratch the surface. Fremantle’s Noongar name “Walyalup” means “Place of the Woylie”, a critically endangered mammal once common in Fremantle. Today, Freo is wild in an entirely different way, loved for its food and music scene, markets, cafes and coffee.
We refill our mugs on the High Street and start our wander early, meandering through bewitching historical streetscapes with more spark than most. Everything is early 19th century, and these stone relics are revived as world-class museums, surf shops, wine bars and microbreweries.
The WA Shipwreck Museum rates as the most renowned in the Southern Hemisphere, and its original restoration of the shipwrecked Batavia, using 400-year-old timbers unearthed from the seabed, is nothing short of spectacular. We stand inside a tiny prison cell in the 12-sided Round House — WA’s oldest public building — then incongruously wander next door to check out an ocean-themed art exhibition.
We take our appetites to the Fremantle Markets, shop for organic fare at Kakulas Sister and lose an hour at Three Stories, browsing surfboards, sustainable clothes and books worth buying. Outside, the streets are filled with art galleries, seriously good second-hand clothing stores and a head-swimming variety of coffee houses.
Finally, we settle in for fish and chips, digging our heels into the sand on Bathers Beach as the afternoon sea breeze — the Fremantle Doctor — blows our way. All of this exploring fills long happy days, and the money we save on so many free-to-enter museums and galleries gets spent on our gastronomic journeys.
Fremantle, and all that lies within reach of its turquoise coastline, remains a favourite place to spend time, regardless of how frequently I return. Steeped in history, much of it uncomfortable to uncover, it’s a place more vibrant, sustainable and forward-thinking than any I’ve found on the West Coast.
There’s a famous Indigenous Australian proverb that dwells with me when I travel. It’s a prescript for living life in general, but it resonates with me on this coastline: “We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love … and then we return home.
Escape Routes
Go
Ferries to Rottnest Island depart from Fremantle (25 mins, adults $84–$90 return), Hillarys Boat Harbour (45 mins, adults $90 return) and Perth (90 mins, adults $119–1$24 return, same day). All ferry operators offer free travel for kids under 12 years (conditions apply). Choose Sealink, Rottnest Fast Ferries or Rottnest Express.
Visit
Clear skies and sunshine make summer the best time for swimming off Rottnest Island and Fremantle, but peak-season pricing can double accommodation costs. Consider a less crowded, more affordable off-season stay during September/October or March/April.
Island Stay
On Rottnest Island, rooms at Samphire Rottnest start from $300/night (low season, samphirerottnest.com.au). Overlooking Pinky’s Beach, deluxe safari tents range from $580 to $1240/night (low/peak season, discoveryholidayparks.com.au). Budget options include campsites (from $43/night, low season), cabins (from $93/night) and hostel dorm rooms (from $65/night).
Fremantle Stay
Private rooms at the Fremantle Prison start from $174/night (yha.com.au), and there’s nothing like recycling an entire building to attract spectre-seeking guests. Purpose-built using sea containers and with its own brewery, the Hougoumont Hotel offers superior cabin rooms starting from around $233/night (hougoumonthotel.com).
Pack
Swimwear, snorkelling gear, clothes for cycling, reef-friendly sunscreen, a hat, refillable coffee mugs and water bottles (free drinking water stations are located around Rotto).
Rottnest Island Bike Hire
Daily bike and helmet hire costs $33 (adults), $23 (kids) and $11 to $21 for extras such as baby carriers, tagalongs or trailers.
More Information
Plan your trip and book accommodation and tours at rottnestisland.com and visitfremantle.com.au
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Wandering Wild – Western Australia
by | | Curated Content
May 1st 2025
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WellBeing Magazine
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Somatic practices offer a future-focused approach to holistic wellness, providing gentle yet powerful benefits for overall health. Somatic exercises focus on the mind-body connection, offering a transformative approach to physical and mental wellbeing. Unlike traditional fitness routines that often emphasise external performance and strength, somatic practices focus on internal awareness and the subtleties of movement. By helping you to foster greater self-awareness, somatic exercises can alleviate pain, improve posture and enhance overall mobility. Moreover, they encourage a deeper understanding of how stress and emotions manifest physically, promoting holistic healing that extends beyond the physical body to encompass mental and emotional wellbeing.
With this etymology, a somatic movement is practised consciously with the intention of focusing on the internal experience of the movement rather than the external appearance or the result of the movement. Technically, any movement can be somatic if you focus your attention on what you’re feeling in your body as you move. It is about removing the numbness that many of us have become glued in. There are lots of different ways to practise somatic movement, for example, shaking exercises and shouting as you bend and move, or dancing in freedom with the intention to release stress and trauma. Depending on how they are approached and practised, yoga and breathwork are also examples of somatic workouts.
Somatic exercises offer several health benefits, mainly by enhancing body awareness and promoting a deep connection between the mind and body. Here are some of the benefits:
- Pain relief and tension reduction: Somatic exercises help release chronic muscle tension by focusing on controlled, slow movements. By increasing awareness of physical sensations, individuals can identify and release tension in areas that often go unnoticed. This can relieve chronic pain, particularly in the neck, back, shoulders and hips. By fostering a mind-body connection, somatic exercises can help release emotional tension stored in the body.
- Improved posture and alignment: With regular practice, somatic exercises promote better body alignment and posture. By retraining the neuromuscular system to move more efficiently, individuals become more aware of their posture and can correct imbalances that may lead to discomfort or injury.
- Increased mobility and flexibility: These exercises encourage gentle stretching and movement, which can enhance joint flexibility and range of motion. Unlike traditional stretching, somatic exercises focus on awareness and control, leading to long-term improvements in mobility and a reduced risk of injury.
- Enhanced nervous system functioning: Somatic practices stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, helping to regulate the body’s response to stress. This leads to a calmer state, reducing anxiety and promoting relaxation.
- Better body awareness and mindfulness: Somatic exercises encourage individuals to become more mindful of their bodies and movements, cultivating a heightened sense of awareness. This mindfulness can improve mental clarity, focus and even emotional resilience, as people become more in tune with their body’s responses to stress and emotions.
- Support for holistic healing: Somatic exercises address both the mental and physical aspects of health, making them effective for individuals seeking a holistic approach to healing. They can be especially beneficial for people recovering from trauma, as they offer a safe way to reconnect with and process bodily sensations.
- Rehabilitation and recovery support: Because somatic exercises involve gentle movements and can be modified for individual needs, they are particularly beneficial for people recovering from injury or illness. By focusing on gradual, mindful movement, these exercises support safe and effective rehabilitation.
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Somatic exercises for mind and body
by | | Curated Content
May 1st 2025
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WellBeing Magazine
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“Faith gives us strength and allows us to remain increasingly unshaken in the ups and downs of life. We begin to receive nourishment from within. We discover the inner source of the nectar of contentment and joy. It brings us fulfilment and the power, stamina and agility necessary to pursue our path.” Ram Dass
George Michael said it. Bhagavad Gita said it. If there’s one thing in life you’ve got to have, it’s faith. Faith will hold you steady when nothing else can and connect you to a deep inner strength that no one can take away. But what exactly is faith and how do we practise it when nothing seems to be going our way?
What is faith?
Faith can be understood in many ways, but there are two key definitions we see most commonly used. The first is centred around a fierce commitment to a particular religious or spiritual belief. My grandfather was the living embodiment of this kind of faith. I witnessed how it held him steady throughout his life and gave himself, and those who loved him, peace in his death. He believed he was leaving this life to go somewhere better, and so the grace with which he faced his final days made me much less fearful for him. His faith was really a gift for us.
Some of us have an allergic reaction to the idea of faith in this way, due to the cultural understanding of it being wrapped up in dogma where organised religions have caused equal amounts of pain and suffering as the joy they have created. If this is the case for you, the other definition of faith may be far more liberating. It requires us to have trust in someone or something, either tangible or imperceptible, and the belief that they will always have your back. Building trust or confidence in any relationship doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, patience, curiosity and deep humility. And in the process, we gain much self-knowledge and fearlessness in the choices we make. Faith, from this perspective, may be considered a lifetime practice benefiting us and the people around us, rather than something we just obtain.
Trust in the intangible
Shraddha in Sanskrit is referred to in many of the yogic texts. Patanjali refers to it in Yoga Sutras, as does Krishna in Bhagavad Gita, as being a key practice to reach enlightenment. From the yogic perspective, shraddha is faith, trusting in something intangible but not the blind following connected to the first definition. In the world of visibility today, seeing is believing, and we have lost the art of trusting in the unseen and unknown. The senses are constantly pulled outwards towards solid things in the manifest world every moment of every day. If I can see, feel, touch, hear, smell and taste it, then it exists.
We like to “know”, because from an evolutionary perspective, predictability makes us feel safe. Studies have shown that unpredictability can bring discomfort and uncertainty may lead to neural stress response, triggering the amygdala and even hypervigilance. It’s why we wonder what’s happening on our phones when we’ve been away from them for a while, and why waiting on test results, a job interview or a text from a new crush can feel like absolute torture. But faith says, “Whatever the outcome, you’ve got this.” It grounds you and offers a deep connection to your inner strength, come what may.
Yoga and mindfulness practices foster our capacity to trust the unknown. When we do some asana, or conscious breath or meditate, the results aren’t tangible. They’re even hard to describe to others when we try to explain them. We just feel different — connected, centred, that post-yoga glow. The more consistent we are in practice, the more we have confidence in that indescribable, invisible shift in our state of being. It becomes easier to then trust in something we cannot see, hear, smell, taste or touch because we have experienced it, and it’s often better than all the things we “know”.
The idea is to be okay with not knowing. Leave your phone in another room. Let go of the need to know everything and notice how good the unseen, unknown things like post-yoga practice really can be. For all the control freaks out there, this can be particularly challenging, so be kind and patient with yourself.
The universe has your back
Shraddha is the deep conviction you are moving in the right direction. It is the belief that the universe is conspiring for your growth. It says that everything is exactly as it should be, but not in the sense that the universe will give you everything you want. Rather, it will provide you with opportunities for you to grow. Our job is to stay curious and humble in the process to understand where we need to change and transform into who we were always meant to be.
Growing pains
Growing is not easy. It can be uncomfortable, messy and complex. My 11-year-old is currently up many nights with growing pains, as his body does the miraculous job of creating more cartilage and then using calcium to turn the new cartilage into bigger bones. In Greek mythology, the phoenix, the symbol of transformation and renewal, must make a nest and set itself on fire when it’s time to be reborn again as a young phoenix. If you want to keep moving forward in your life, you’ll need to keep developing on your path and that will not necessarily be comfortable.
Svadhyaya: self-knowledge
I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. That doesn’t make sense to me when you witness so much suffering and violence in the world. But I do believe in the yogic practice of using every experience as an opportunity for self-knowledge (svadhyaya) to get out of a victim mentality and into a growth mindset. After all, as Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist spiritual leader, said, “No mud, no lotus.” When you practise acceptance and perceive challenges as potential for growth, everything becomes more easeful. It changes the way you face obstacles and gives you the stamina to “just keep swimming”, like Nemo.
“A person is what his shraddha is.” Bhagavad Gita 17.3, translation by Eknath Easwaran.
Shraddha is connected to the heart, to our belief systems and to how we see the world. The more self-reflection and svadhyaya we practise, then the more faith we will have. There is nothing passive about staying awake and using everything that happens in your life to understand more deeply who you are. It requires a great deal of courage, discipline and tenacity.
A great leap of faith
Hanuman, the great monkey god of the Ramayana, was completely devoted to Rama. When Rama’s beloved wife Sita was kidnapped by a demon, Hanuman leapt continents to save her. He was tireless in his efforts and even burnt his tail in the process. Especially in the absence of proof, or when we feel like things are not going our way, it’s not easy to have faith. Hanuman embodies devotion and illustrates how sometimes we must take a great leap of faith. Even if we get burnt like hanuman or the phoenix along the way, we will learn, grow and perhaps also help our friends along the way.
Faith is the cocoon that we wander into caterpillar-like. We may feel like we are shrouded in darkness, but we are also wrapped tightly in faith’s arms. We can do the messy business of sprouting our butterfly wings and fly. Faith brings immense freedom and fearlessness, and it may be the one thing that holds you steady in life when nothing else does.
Practice
This practice is centred around hanumanasana, honouring the monkey god while we open the psoas, hips and hamstrings. It is a big pose, so if you are an experienced practitioner and want to take the full pose, please make sure you also do some sun salutations first.
Ragdoll
With your feet hip-width apart, fold forward over the legs. Keep your knees soft. Catch the elbows and let the upper body hang. Gently rock side to side to open the back and the hamstrings gently.
Three-legged adho mukha svanasana — downward-facing dog
From all fours, set your hips over knees and your hands slightly in front of shoulders. Tuck the toes and extend the legs into downward-facing dog. Lift the right leg high and keep toes pointing down. Step the right foot forward between the hands to set up for the next pose.
Low lunge with quad stretch to half hanumanasana
Place back knee down, setting right knee over heel and left hip over left knee. Pick the pelvis up so you are stretching front of left hip. Stay here or, if you can, catch the left ankle. Keep lifting the pelvis up and hugging the heel toward the buttocks. Take five breaths. Then extend the right leg, flexing the toes back. Keep the spine long and fold forward over the leg. Take five breaths. To swap sides, return to downward dog. Lift left leg up and step the left foot forward. Repeat on left then back to downward-facing dog.
Crescent lunge to pyramid pose
Step right foot forward, set right knee over right heel and have left back heel over ball of foot. As you reach the arms up, keep lifting the frontal hip bones. Take five breaths. Then, hands to the earth or blocks and extend the front leg as you fold forward over the front leg. Five breaths. Swap sides.
Lizard pose with quad stretch
Set the right foot forward, turn the toes out, like a squat, in the front leg, back leg extended. Either tuck back toes and extend leg or have the back knee down. Extend the arms or take forearms down to the earth. Let the right knee open out to the side. Take a few breaths. Take right arm around behind you and catch left foot. Take a few breaths. Swap sides.
Uttanasana
With feet hip-width apart, catch the inside of big toes with peace-fingers grip. Fold forward, keeping side waist long. Lift the kneecaps and quads by firming the muscles at the front of the legs.
Uttitha hasta padangustasana
Standing on the left leg, bend right knee and catch inside edge of right big toe with peace-fingers grip. Extend the standing leg fully and then extend the right leg a little or a lot. Drop the shoulders down and lift the sternum up. Take five breaths. Swap to the other side.
Hanumanasana
Set up in half-hanumanasana again with the right foot forward. Repeat half-hanumanasana. Or, if you are warm and have been practising for a while with a teacher, send the right heel forward as you flex toes back to your face. Firm the quadriceps and pull the right hip back in line with the left. Blocks can be helpful — place hands on blocks set up on either side of hips. Climb the sternum and frontal hipbones up. Take five breaths and swap over to the other side.
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Yoga to foster faith
by | | Curated Content
May 1st 2025
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WellBeing Magazine
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Have you ever had a thought that was hard to ignore? Perhaps one that tells you to eat an extra slice of pizza when you’re already full, or to tell your boss what you really thought about their comments at the morning meeting.
But what if these thoughts were much more distressing? Perhaps they are about losing your job or your home, becoming seriously unwell or accidently causing harm to someone you love. These thoughts could pop into your head several times a day — when you’re brushing your teeth, during a work meeting, while you’re on the school run. For many of the approximately 500,000 Australians with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), this is their reality.
While many people may think of OCD as simply a trait of being a “neat freak”, the illness is much more complex and, for many, a debilitating condition. And it’s more common than you might think.
According to OCD Bounce — an Australian research collective focused on obsessive compulsive and related disorders — in any given year, about one in every 50 Australians lives with OCD. Globally, it’s estimated that around three per cent of people will experience OCD at some point in their lives.
The disorder can cause people’s relationships to break down, their finances to suffer, prevent them from engaging in education or work and, in extreme instances, perhaps even stop them from leaving the house for weeks, months or even years.
Obsessions and compulsions
When you picture someone with OCD, you might think of a person who is excessive with handwashing or who keeps their wardrobe neatly colour-coordinated. But these stereotypes are far from the full picture of what OCD really is.
“You can think about OCD as having two main parts,” says Adrian Allen, a Sydney-based clinical psychologist and researcher, specialising in treating OCD. “There’s obsessions and there’s compulsions.”
The internal thoughts are the obsessions component. “[Obsessions] might be a thought or it could be an image that comes to mind. It could be an urge, and people misinterpret these thoughts or intrusive experiences as threatening in some way. It’s what then causes them to feel anxious and fixate on those ideas, which then prompts the need, or the compulsion, which is typically some kind of behavioural response or a mental ritual that people will use to try to reduce the anxiety about the obsession.”
The obsession is the “intrusive thought” or worry. The compulsion is the action or behaviour — whether a mental or physical ritual — that the person will do in response to the thought in order to neutralise it.
Research tells us that most people have had intrusive thoughts at some point. But for people with OCD, these thoughts consume them. They are the fuel that ignites the compulsions and keeps them stuck in a cycle that can be hard to break.
Melissa Mulcahy is a Perth-based clinical psychologist who primarily sees clients who experience OCD. She’s also a member of the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF). “Over time, what people find is they become more and more dependent on the compulsions to manage the distress,” says Mulcahy. “And because an anxious mind has an endless capacity to produce more questions and more doubts, it further fuels the cycle.”
Types of OCD
Several of the most common categories that symptoms fall into are:
- Contamination and health — obsessions about coming into contact with dirt, germs or foreign substances. This might result in the person washing excessively, cleaning their home for hours, or taking steps to avoid being exposed to germs. Perhaps not drinking from communal mugs in the work kitchen or taking a long journey home to avoid using public restrooms.
- Checking and doubting — doubting their own memories or capabilities and fearing that their “careless” actions could cause danger or catastrophe. For example, “If I didn’t turn the iron off properly, my house will burn down,” or “If I make a typo in this email, I’ll get fired.” This can spur the need to continuously check things, perhaps in a certain sequence or a certain number of times, until they feel “right”.
- Repetition — people may feel they need to repeat certain words or phrases, either aloud or in their head. They may feel the urge to repeat certain actions, such as walking through a door, turning off a light switch or opening and closing the fridge.
- Hoarding and collecting — some people with OCD may hold strong emotional attachments to their possessions and find it difficult to discard useless or worn-out items. It’s not just refusing to let go of a pair of jeans that no longer fit. OCD-related hoarding (classed as separate to “hoarding disorder”) is holding onto anything, from old magazines, junk mail or worn-out clothes and shoes, in response to an obsessive thought and anxiety.
- Ordering and symmetry — those who feel anxiety when things aren’t deemed to be balanced, organised or in alignment. They may feel the need to arrange tin cans so that their labels all face the same way or feel the urge to eat food off a plate in a specific order.
- Counting — the persistent urge to count actions, people or items. That might be counting the steps on a staircase or counting how many times they blink. Some numbers may be favoured or avoided. For example, a person may have an avoidance of odd numbers, as even numbers “feel right” or balanced to them.
The spectrum of OCD
Like other mental health disorders, OCD is not a one-size fits all. Everyone experiences it differently. For example, in 2005, The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) published their guidelines for the treatment of OCD and BDD (body dysmorphic disorder). Within this, they published data on the various types of compulsions that people with OCD reported. Around only two per cent reported counting rituals as a compulsion, around six per cent reported ordering or symmetry rituals and almost 29 per cent reported checking rituals.
Where someone sits on the scale of severity will determine how the disorder impacts their life. Adrian Allen explains, “If I take the extreme example of those people that have a real preference for order and neatness, they might spend a lot of time folding clothes in a certain way and become very concerned if that [routine] is disturbed.
“If people have difficulty with the doubting and checking form of OCD, they might spend a lot of time making sure that they have got their wallet and phone on them. It could include very specific ways of checking; it might include a minimum number of checks in order to get out the door. Often what happens if something disrupts that process is they’ve then got to start from the beginning.”
Although people without the disorder may experience symptoms that appear similar to OCD, such as worrying about whether they locked the front door or double checking that they have their wallet, the difference is how much distress it brings, and how much it impacts their life. Allen explains, “If people say they’ve got a preference or need to be neat and tidy, but they don’t have to spend a lot of time doing it, and it doesn’t really cause significant anxiety, they might just do a quick check that they’ve got keys and phone on them. That’s not OCD, which is much more debilitating than that.”
For those with OCD — particularly on the more severe end — this sense of needing to alleviate the anxiety by doing things in a certain way can have a knock-on effect on many other elements of a person’s life, including relationships, finances, career and physical health.
“If they find it too time consuming to get out the door, sometimes people will just stop going out, so it does affect other areas of life,” says Allen, who explains that one example might be someone who develops intrusive thoughts about driving, becoming fearful they may cause an accident or hit a pedestrian. Their constant checking and compulsions to neutralise these thoughts could result in them giving up driving altogether.
“It affects how or where they can get to work. It affects where they can get to for their kids or their partner, it affects where they can go shopping, or what they can do in the case of an emergency. Often these things that most of us don’t even think twice about, become — in its worst case — inaccessible to people.”
Myths about OCD
OCD is a commonly misunderstood condition, and myths about it are rife. These myths often lead to the person feeling stigmatised and isolated. Some of the most common myths are:
- People with OCD are just uptight or neurotic.
- It’s enjoyable or advantageous to have — far from being a “superpower” or positive trait, the condition can be exhausting and debilitating.
- People with OCD wash their hands all the time — only around 26 per cent of people with OCD experience cleaning or washing rituals as a compulsion, according to NICE.
- Those with OCD are “crazy” — OCD is a mental health condition in the same way that an eating disorder or depression are. None of these conditions make the person “crazy”.
- It’s untreatable — treatments are available and around 70 per cent per cent of people benefit from first-line treatment.
Are you feeling “a bit OCD” today?
When asked what the stereotype is of someone with OCD, you might think of someone who isobsessively neat and organised. You might have even heard — or maybe even used — the phrase, “He’s a little OCD” in reference to someone who has alphabetised their bookshelves or who keeps their desk immaculately neat.
“Some people might, for example, think of the character of Monica Geller on Friends, who really likes things to be clean and organised and has a real sense of satisfaction when things are kind of ‘right’ in the environment,” says Mulcahy. “That really is very different to what we see in OCD, where it’s driven by these distress-provoking intrusive thoughts and sensations. And [that causes] the compulsions, the ways that somebody tries to eliminate or reduce that anxiety and distress, and there’s no sense of pleasure, achievement or satisfaction associated with those compulsions.”
It might be tempting to refer to a Monica in your own life as being “very OCD”. However, if you want to be a better ally to people who really experience OCD, be more mindful of the language you use and avoid using the term “OCD” as an adjective or personality trait. For those living with the condition, using the term out of context can be ostracising, stigmatising and can trivialise the seriousness of their illness.
Mulcahy says, “In the same way that we know that it’s not helpful to be joking around about an eating disorder or making light of depression or of somebody’s experience of schizophrenia, I think we really need to have the same approach [about language] with OCD.”
Treatment options
One of the most common treatments for OCD is exposure and response prevention (ERP), which is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a form of antidepressant that can help to alter the balance of brain chemicals, are also sometimes prescribed either as an alternative or alongside ERP.
If one or both are used, they must be administered by a trained professional, such as a psychologist or psychiatrist. According to the International OCD Foundation, around 70 per cent of people will benefit from either ERP or medication for their OCD.
Allen has worked closely with OCD patients on ERP. The treatment is designed to gradually expose the patient to their fears, while withholding from compulsions. Using the example of someone with intrusive thoughts around driving, Allen explains how ERP works. “We create what’s called an ‘exposure step
ladder,’” he says. “This is a list of situations going from the least up to the most anxiety-provoking.”
The person may have fears about knocking over a pedestrian with their car, resulting in “checking” rituals, perhaps driving past the same spot over and over, or checking the rear-view mirrors an excessive number of times to ensure they haven’t caused an accident.
“It might [start by] driving around the block, continuing to check the rear-view mirror and driving very slowly. Do that repeatedly until you get more comfortable and then gradually drop one of the checks,” says Allen. “Then start driving into situations where the anxiety goes up a little more and do that repeatedly to get more comfortable doing that and then you’ve built [the exposure] up.”
Comorbid disorders
Living with OCD doesn’t always mean just living with OCD. Often, it means juggling other conditions or disorders alongside it.
According to research published in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry, 90 per cent of OCD patients also suffer from a comorbid disorder (or comorbidity), which is when one disorder occurs alongside another. For example, a person may experience OCD alongside generalised anxiety disorder or depression.
“Research tells us that having one mental illness leaves you vulnerable to developing another mental illness,” explains Carly Dober, a director of the Australian Association of Psychologists Incorporated and a clinical psychologist who works with many OCD clients.
“Many people who have OCD have a comorbid condition that adds another level of challenge or complexity to their treatment or recovery,” says Dober. “The most common disorders that someone with OCD might have are anxiety and depression, but others include neurodevelopmental conditions like ADHD, body dysmorphic disorder, autism, eating disorders and PTSD.”
According to Dober, things that put someone with OCD at a higher risk of comorbidity could be a stressful life event, physical abuse, trauma or having a genetic predisposition.
Anxiety vs OCD
Although OCD was once classed as an anxiety disorder, it’s now categorised under obsessive compulsive and related disorders, which also includes body dysmorphic disorder, compulsive hair pulling and skin picking disorder. However, generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and OCD often occur alongside one another.
“OCD and anxiety are very separate mental health conditions with distinct symptoms. However, a person can have both OCD and anxiety at the same time,” explains Dober. “Stress and anxiety can also cause OCD symptoms to worsen significantly, so there is a high overlap.”
While those with GAD may engage in some “safety behaviours” — such as constantly seeking reassurance — it doesn’t have the element of intrusive thoughts or compulsions in the same way that OCD does.
In the two most recent national surveys on mental health and wellbeing, the first being in 2007 and the most recent in 2020–2022, there has been an increase in anxiety-related disorders and an increase of about one per cent for OCD specifically.
Allen says, “We don’t know exactly know why there is a very slight increase, but actually every one-point jump is a significant number of people in the population. It’d be hard to speculate [on the reason for the increase] but, in general, it can take a really long time for people who have OCD to actually get the diagnosis.”
Research echoes this. According to OCD Bounce, it can take an average of nine years for a correct OCD diagnosis and about four months to get any form of help.
First steps towards help
If you are concerned that you or someone close to you may be experiencing OCD, there are things you can do to explore this and seek help if needed.
Seek feedback — Ask a trusted person whether they have noticed unusual behaviours in you, they may have noticed something you haven’t. “Get some feedback from people around you, like friends, family members or your partner,” suggests Dober. “[Ask them], ‘Would you say, I’m an anxious person?’ ‘Have you noticed anything that strikes you as a bit different or a bit strange at times?’”
Do research — Seek out research from reputable sources to broaden your understanding of OCD and how to talk about it openly. Good starting points are the International OCD Foundation or OCD UK.
Speak to your GP — Tell them your concerns and ask them to refer you to a psychologist who is trained in treating OCD.
Always remember you’re not alone — OCD may feel lonely, but seeking help and support from others who have experienced it can help you recognise that there is nothing to be ashamed of.
Self-care for OCD
For those who have received a diagnosis, living with OCD can be tough, but there are ways to manage it. Alongside guidance and treatment from an OCD-trained psychologist, there are simple self-care and mindfulness techniques that people experiencing OCD can use to stay a little more grounded and to help prevent the mind wandering to distressing or unhelpful thoughts.
One technique that Mulcahy suggests is to focus on a simple, short task, such as brushing your teeth or washing the dishes. Focus with your full attention and mindfully come back to the task as soon as you notice your attention has wandered to something off-task. “With practice, people can learn to be more flexible with their attention, notice when they are caught up in ruminating on their OCD thoughts and bring their mind back to the present instead.
“Another mindfulness strategy involves learning to watch thoughts in a detached way without getting caught up in them. [For example] imagining sitting by the side of the road and watching our thoughts pass by as though they are cars travelling on a road, without jumping into the street to try to stop them or chasing after them,” says Mulcahy. “Learning to observe our thoughts in this way can help with learning how to accept obsessions and treat them as ‘just intrusive thoughts’, rather than giving them excessive attention and importance, [which] can help ease anxiety over time.”
With OCD being such a misunderstood and often stigmatised illness, finding a community can also help you feel seen, understood and less alone. “Joining an OCD support group, attending an OCD-specific therapy group or becoming involved with the OCD community can also help alleviate the sense of embarrassment, shame, self-stigma and anxiety that people living with OCD commonly experience,” says Mulcahy. “When people have the opportunity to meet others who may experience similar thoughts or difficulties, they often come to see themselves in a different light, which often improves their anxiety and OCD as a result.”
Organisations that can provide further help and support
Lifeline: 13 11 14
OCD Bounce: ocd.org.au
International OCD Foundation: iocdf.org
OCD UK: ocduk.org
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Living with OCD
by | | Curated Content
May 1st 2025
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WellBeing Magazine
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Artificial intelligence is the latest buzzword that every tech head seems to want to reference. For anybody tasked with looking ahead at the future, it is a dependable fallback to use. Yet virtually nobody has voted for it, or signed a petition urging its wider adoption.
While the rollout of such disruptive technologies is commonly presented as a foregone conclusion, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy dynamic, it’s important to remember that this line of messaging may be spread by those people who have the most to gain from it economically.
Alongside this, AI is also a focal point for tech-dystopian headlines, and its downsides are increasingly being recognised. Nevertheless, it may offer certain important benefits, especially in the field of scientific research. A central question is whether it is possible to find some regulatory arrangement that curbs its unhelpful excesses.
The AI landscape
Today’s AI models date back to about 2022, with the last few years seeing explosive development in the field. Less visible is the formative thinking on the subject during the 1940s and ‘50s, including from mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, and the decades of research that have accumulated since the middle of the 20th century.
Many models have been developed by tech giants such as Microsoft, Facebook, Google and X (formerly known as Twitter). Some are generative, meaning that they can create content on request, while others can work as intelligent assistants for users of certain browsers, platforms and email services. The most prominent player is OpenAI, whose major offerings include ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) and GPT-4, both “large language models”, which means that they have been trained on vast quantities of online content in order to learn.
Becoming embedded in society
The primary advantage that AI offers companies is an economic one, given the savings on staff wages and the potential to speed up operations. Specialised applications in the real world are also multiplying, including in fields such as:
- Agriculture, where it can identify pests quickly, monitor soil health, aid with drone-delivered herbicide applications and enable laser weed control at an incredible speed.
- Healthcare. China has recently unveiled a virtual AI-based training hospital. It extends to robotic surgery, generating doctors’ notes and interpreting various types of medical scans faster and with the potential for more accuracy than human experts. At present, human oversight may be required, given that AI models do sometimes make mistakes. AI chatbots are increasingly used by the public for diagnosing medical conditions and managing mental health issues.
- Warfare, through quality of military imaging, the choice of targets and increasingly lethal autonomous weapons.
- Scientific research, where it can accelerate pharmaceutical development. It has also been an unqualified success in predicting three-dimensional protein structures (“protein folding”), replacing slow and time-consuming human-directed scientific techniques.
Another consideration is what technology critic Cory Doctorow describes as the “human in the loop” scenario for certain AI applications, where a high-tech activity involves hidden human labour and a high level of vigilance. According to tech website The Information, Amazon’s chain of checkout-free, supposedly AI-powered, “Just Walk Out” Amazon stores required more than 1000 workers in India to track customer purchases.
Choice or no choice
An insidious aspect of AI is that it can work its way into everyday life, sometimes with no opt-out clause, and this can feel like being dropped into a Black Mirror episode. The same opt-out issue applies to other high-tech manifestations such as digital ID systems, supplying biometric information and the slow creep of smartphone-mandatory activities.
Online, the average person is increasingly likely to encounter AI when not looking for it. This can involve online chats on shopping platforms that default to chatbots and which may transfer you to a human being if you ask persistently. Travel websites encourage AI-powered trip planning. On some search engines, AI options are available alongside the regular search, and for some others such as Google, content is ranked using AI algorithms as well as keywords.
Meta has been propagating AI use across its platforms by inserting it in numerous places. When using Facebook and Instagram on phone apps, the search bar defaults to an AI search that is hard to turn off. On Facebook groups, an AI bot may make a comment if no answer has been provided within an hour. In one bizarre example, on a New York City parents’ group, a bot claimed to have a gifted child and the comment was top-ranked by Facebook’s algorithm.
AI is increasingly making the world a more impersonal place. It is used in justice systems for bail, parole and probation decisions, in place of avenues such as face-to-face interviews. Another contentious use is in the human resources field, for resume screening and online job interviews. A 2024 study from the University of Washington found a strong bias towards white and male applicants. Similar racist AI bias can result in unwanted police attention targeting individuals or neighbourhoods. Once bias has been adopted by an AI model, it tends to become baked in.
As a challenge to creativity
In the realm of creative endeavours, AI offers cheating shortcuts such as the ability to spit out college essays, and it can also write generic-sounding news items for media outlets. In such instances, its use can only be identified through what is known as electronic watermarking, which would require a level of regulation that legislators have been very reluctant to apply.
AI image generators such as DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are trained through exposure to creative art. Training on copyrighted work, while currently legal, is arguably a form of plagiarism. When the corporate sector makes purchasing decisions, this AI art is often sourced in place of the real thing, thereby robbing artists of income, and human creativity is at risk of becoming increasingly redundant. Recently, 10,500 creatives, including Robert Smith of The Cure and Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, signed a petition against the unlicensed use of their work.
In the written medium, the number of lawsuits against AI training is multiplying, especially those filed by authors and news outlets. In this complex landscape, some publishers such as Axel Springer and Hearst Magazines have taken a different tack and have signed deals with OpenAI.
The information landscape
Deepfake AI imitations of photos, and particularly video footage, are becoming increasingly hard to distinguish from the real thing. The old saying about believing only half of what you see is as pertinent as ever. Debate is raging over the use of deepfakes to create political disinformation, especially during election campaigns, and how they can facilitate online radicalisation and a shift towards the far-right. Similarly, voice fakery, including of famous people, can be very realistic, and imitation voices of relatives have been used in scam phone calls.
However, using AI for automated content moderation on social media platforms introduces a range of other concerns relating to the risk of accurate or contested content being censored. One of the weaknesses of AI is its challenges in understanding humour and satire.
Sometimes these models “hallucinate”, by putting out false information, or making absurd or dangerous suggestions, such as Google AI suggesting eating rocks for health benefits and attaching cheese to pizza using glue. Some individuals such as Brian Hood, mayor of Hepburn Shire Council in Victoria, had false AI-generated content attached to their names, in his case because he was formerly a whistleblower regarding a bribery crime, and the model confused him with the perpetrators. This was fixed in an updated version.
AI and the environment — a positive or negative?
According to the hype, AI offers substantial environmental benefits and even has the potential to save the world. It can help with monitoring environmental conditions, improving the accuracy of measurements and modelling, aiding reforestation via drone, and fast and accurate identification of elements of waste streams.
But it could be argued that a problem such as climate change that is not technological in origin cannot largely be resolved by a technology that offers a diversion away from difficult belt-tightening sacrifices. AI’s benefits need to be weighed up against the environmental downsides of its data centres, which include energy and water use, material use and downstream e-waste, and droning noise pollution affecting nearby residents.
Data centres as a whole represent about 1–1.3 per cent of world energy consumption, although this figure is far higher in certain countries. Ireland saw 21 per cent of its electricity go to powering data centres in 2023, and this figure is predicted to rise to 32 per cent by 2026. A ChatGPT request is estimated to consume about 10 times as much energy as a Google search.
Looking at water consumption, a “hyperscale” data centre is estimated to consume roughly the same as a town or city of 30–40,000 people.
Financial services company Morgan Stanley has predicted that globally data centres will emit three times more CO2 between now and the end of the decade than they would if generative AI had not been developed. Importantly, this survey also looked at the embodied carbon from construction and building the infrastructure.
The US is seeing a data centre trend towards seeking out nuclear power, which has the attractions of being a baseload energy source that is generally considered very low carbon. Some of this involves “small modular reactors” (SMRs), which are hoped to become commercially available within a few years. Some other deals involve companies working on nuclear fusion.
Perhaps most revealing are the high-stakes strategies for tackling climate change, outlined by tech CEOs and former CEOs. Sam Altman, head of OpenAI, believes in powering ahead and relying on geoengineering, an unproven high-risk set of interventions. Bill Gates believes that AI will offer techno-fixes for tackling the climate challenge. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, believes that we are not going to reach our climate goals anyway, and this technology is more of an asset than a liability in finding a way forward.
Assembling the contradictions
A recent survey of thousands of researchers has found a 5 per cent median risk of AI destroying humanity, although this figure hides a wide disparity. Perhaps only in the field of high tech, with its tendency towards addict-style thinking, would this level of risk be widely accepted.
In June 2024, industry insiders from OpenAI and Google DeepMind came forward in an open letter warning that safety-related concerns are being stifled, with no scope to alert the public.
AI takes on a messianic angle when it is championed by Effective Accelerationism (sometimes shortened to e/acc), a relatively extreme pro-technology Silicon Valley movement. This is best exemplified by the Techno-Optimist Manifesto written by tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, whose ideas are founded on a mixture of techno-capitalism and ideological conviction. They have a “post-human” orientation, with a vision of AI ruling over humanity, and an absence of limits and guardrails. (For most of the rest of the world, the issue of humans retaining control over the AI project is of central importance.)
Another, more influential, champion of AI is the World Economic Forum, which consistently advances AI-dominant high-tech visions of the future. As a whole, regulation is currently very laissez-faire. This is generally portrayed as a desire not to stifle innovation, and is sometimes framed as geopolitical rivalry between countries, especially the US and China, to determine who dominates a future high-tech global order.
If the most outrageous ideas are up for consideration, they would have to include the possibility of narrowly restricting it to those areas where it is considered to have the greatest societal benefit. The environmental damage from AI infrastructure is a function of the extent of its use, and much of it is currently trivial, characterised by material generated for clickbait and distraction. However, this restrictive measure would put the technology in the hands of an elite group, rather than democratising it.
At present, much of the debate looks at the way in which AI will dominate our lives in the future, rather than examining whether this is in fact a good idea. The path of least resistance is an easy one to take, but it may lead to a trap.
Resources available on request.
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Panacea or problem?
