About the Book
What’s the Worst That Could Happen? is an unfiltered memoir about living with obsessive–compulsive disorder in its most feared and least discussed form. It follows years of intrusive thoughts, catastrophic interpretations, spirals of shame, and the exhausting work of trying to think yourself out of terror. The book shows how OCD weaponises imagination – turning ordinary moments into threats, twisting memory, and convincing you that your darkest thoughts reveal who you are. It also shows how recovery is not a miracle but a long, uneven process shaped by therapy, medication, support and a gradual learning to sit with fear rather than obey it.
At its heart, this is a story about honesty. The memoir exposes the thoughts people never admit aloud – not because they are true, but because OCD makes them feel unbearable. It describes exposure therapy in vivid detail, from hand–in–the–toilet–bowl exercises to the slow dismantling of superstitions and avoidance rituals. It explores the wrenching ambiguity of living with uncertainty, the pain of rumination, and the unexpected relief that arrives when you finally stop hiding.
Through all of this runs a quiet thread of love: the partners, therapists and friends who respond with kindness instead of horror, and whose reactions make recovery imaginable. The memoir ends not with a cure, but with something more honest – a life that works, a family built through fear and transparency, and a joy that comes not from banishing OCD but from learning to live alongside it.
What You'll Learn
You will learn what OCD actually feels like from the inside – the intrusive flashes, the compulsive checking, the catastrophising, and the hours lost to mental rituals that no one else can see. The memoir shows how OCD convinces you that you are dangerous, how avoidance makes fear grow, and how attempts to “think your way out” only tighten the trap. It offers a clear portrait of how OCD distorts perception, memory and self–understanding.
You will also learn what recovery looks like in practice. The book details exposure therapy – how it works, why it feels impossible, and how tolerating anxiety slowly rewires your responses. It shows the role of medication, the limits of reassurance, and the difference between being “better” and being “cured.” You see how improvement is a long trend rather than a single turning point, and how setbacks, stress and fatigue still shape symptoms.
Finally, you will learn about the emotional landscape around OCD: the shame of intrusive thoughts, the fear of judgement, and the profound relief of discovering that others do not recoil when they hear what you are afraid of. The memoir gives language to experiences many people hide, making visible the private negotiations, small victories and deeply human contradictions that define life with OCD.
Who the Book Is For
This memoir is for anyone living with OCD, intrusive thoughts, or anxiety disorders – especially those who fear that their thoughts say something terrible about who they are. It is for readers who need to know that disturbing thoughts are common, meaningless, and not a reflection of character. It will resonate with people who feel alone, ashamed, or convinced that their struggles are uniquely monstrous.
It is also for partners, friends and family members who want to understand what OCD actually feels like and why reassurance, avoidance and logic do not work the way they expect. The book offers a rare insight into the hidden mental labour behind rituals and ruminations and explains how support, compassion and patience can change the trajectory of someone’s recovery.
And it is for clinicians, educators and anyone who wants a more honest picture of the lived experience behind the diagnosis – the part that rarely appears in textbooks. The memoir shows how stigma silences people, how fear shapes behaviour, and how openness can be transformative when it is finally met with understanding rather than judgement.
About Dan Cleather
Dan Cleather has spent most of his life trying to understand how people get better at the things they care about. Sometimes that has meant coaching athletes in weight rooms and on tracks; sometimes it has meant teaching critical thinking and research skills; sometimes it has meant writing books to make sense of training in a way that feels human rather than mechanical.
His work has always followed the same thread: training is a process of change, not a set of rules. Bodies learn, adapt, and reorganise themselves over time, because that is what the are designed to do. He tries to help people see that process more clearly - coaches, athletes, teachers, and anyone interested in long-term development.
Over the years he has worked across elite sport, academia, and high-performance environments, including the English Institute of Sport, St Mary’s University, and as a collaborator with national space agencies. Those experiences shaped his interest in how stress, rhythm, coordination, and load interact to produce real, durable change.
The Training Wisdom Collection brings this work together: a set of books, courses, and resources built on first principles rather than trends. The aim is not to provide a system to follow, but a set of tools to think with - a way of making sense of training that respects both physiology and practice, theory and craft.
He lives in Prague, where he writes, teaches, and continues to explore how people learn, move, and adapt.
About The Training Wisdom Collection
The Training Wisdom Collection began as an attempt to make sense of the ideas that kept returning in coaching conversations - the patterns that sit underneath good training, regardless of method or sport. Over time it grew into a set of books and courses that approach training from first principles, not fashion.
The Collection isn’t a system. It doesn’t claim to reveal the hidden truth of strength and conditioning or promise a shortcut to progress. Instead, it tries to show how training actually works: how bodies learn, how stress and rhythm shape adaptation, how coordination becomes skill, and why long-term development depends more on clarity and patience than on novelty.
Each book takes a different angle on that same problem. The Little Black Book of Training Wisdom was the starting point - a compact attempt to explain why simple principles matter, and the thread that runs through everything that followed. The Practice of Change looks at the rhythms of work and recovery that shape adaptation. The Force series examines how movement and load interact. The courses take these ideas into practice, turning them into tools a coach or athlete can use straight away.
The aim is simple. Training should feel understandable. It should have a shape that makes sense. And it should help people build capacities that last longer than the programmes they come from. The Training Wisdom Collection exists to offer that kind of clarity - not by reducing training to rules, but by giving people a language that reflects what actually happens when bodies change.
