Matt's Audio Letter of the Week

Hey everyone, and welcome to this week’s FBL — the Feel Better Letter.

This is Matt, and I hope you’re having a great week.

Today’s topic is OCD as a persona. I’m going to explain what that means, and why I believe that viewing OCD through the lens of a persona — understanding it as a persona — can really change the outcome and trajectory of your healing and recovery, if you can truly buy into and grasp the idea.

So let’s start with: what is a persona?

The root word of persona, its etymology, means mask. A persona is a mask that we put on. It’s not who we truly are. And we all wear different personas at different times in life. We might put on a certain persona with one group of friends, a different one at work, and so on. Essentially, a persona is a way we get our needs met.

I’ve thought for a while about this idea of what causes someone to develop OCD. Often, a persona is also how we protect ourselves from emotions that, in our past, felt overwhelming or too much to handle — so much so that we had to bury them.

Here’s what happens:

• We experience core emotional wounds.

• We form beliefs out of those wounds.

• Then we develop personas to protect ourselves from ever feeling those emotions again.

So when we ask, what is OCD protecting us from? — it’s often a certain emotional state.

This means there are two real layers to healing:

1. First, confronting the surface emotions of OCD: the fear, the guilt, the anger, the pride — all of it.

2. Once your nervous system feels safe, then you can move into the second layer of healing, which is about unraveling the protective beliefs, the core wounds, and the emotions that lie underneath.

The problem is, many people try to skip layer one. They want to dive straight into the deep wounds, but if your nervous system doesn’t feel safe, you can’t do that effectively. If you can’t feel surface emotions, you won’t be able to process the deeper, more painful emotions stored in your system.

When you understand that OCD is not a disorder but develops at a persona level, you approach it differently. A persona causes you to project your emotions onto the environment and then try to solve the environment in order to regulate yourself.

For example, many people with OCD take on personas like being overly conscientious — constantly thinking about others. Why? Because often, in childhood, we needed to do that to stay safe. We became hyper-aware of others’ states, and we were validated and praised for it. So we kept the persona. But in doing so, we buried our own emotions, which then led to projection and, ultimately, the OCD loop.

Another example: many people with OCD are very imaginative. While imagination is a beautiful gift, it can also become a mask. Escaping into imagination is a way of avoiding uncomfortable feelings. Over time, that imaginative persona can fuel intrusive scenarios about bad events happening.

So when you step back, you start to see that OCD develops at the persona level.

Now, this doesn’t mean ERP isn’t part of the process. Exposure and facing fear — feeling the emotion of fear — is absolutely part of recovery. But if you only do ERP at the surface level, targeted to a specific theme or trigger, the persona just shifts and projects onto a new topic. That’s why people end up doing ERP again and again, thinking, I have this chronic condition. I need to do ERP for this theme, and this one, and this one…

That’s a limited understanding. It’s what happens when the process is taught only from theory, without lived insight. Yes, ERP is part of the process, but it’s only a layer one technique. It helps you feel through the initial surface emotions. Once you can do that, you move into layer two — working with the deeper emotions, core wounds, and protective beliefs underneath.

Healing happens layer by layer. It becomes clearer when you understand how the psyche develops: we form identities, beliefs, wounds, and then personas that generate anxiety and other symptoms.

This is why the Feel Better Letter is named the way it is. Because true healing is about learning to feel. Learning to feel through, to release somatically — that’s one of the most critical skills you can master in life.

But just listening to this won’t create mastery. Knowledge alone doesn’t change anything. This isn’t school, where you learn information, take a test, and get praised for knowing it. What matters is whether you can take knowledge and apply it — embody it in your life.

And that’s where most people get stuck. Out of fear, they stop at understanding, without ever moving into embodiment.

So I’m sharing this today to help you see OCD in a new light, but also to encourage you not to stop at “I understand this.” Understanding alone won’t transform you. You need to practice, embody, and live it. That’s what creates real transformation.

If you found this helpful, please share it with someone you know.

I hope you have a great week and a great weekend. I look forward to seeing you soon.

-Matt