Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) can take all the fun out of life. You feel like you’re stuck in an endless loop, doing rituals to try keep distressing thoughts out of your head. But they keep coming back, and fighting with OCD seems to make it stronger. It’s exhausting, and peace and happiness seem out of your reach.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
I’m Shala Nicely, LPC, and I’m a cognitive behavioral therapist specializing in helping people reclaim their lives from OCD using exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, the evidence-based therapy for OCD.
- I provide ERP therapy to clients with OCD in the state of Georgia in the US
- I write books, including Is Fred in the Refrigerator? Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life and Everyday Mindfulness for OCD.
- I write three blogs about how to use ERP to tame OCD, and you can browse them by category.
- I produce the free Shoulders Back! Tips & Resources for Taming OCD email newsletter.
- I offer an online workshop (6 CEUs for therapists) called Mastering the Subtleties of ERP for OCD: Preparing Your Clients for Success
BLOGS ABOUT TAMING OCD
OCD can influence your life in subtle (and not so subtle) ways that can affect how you view the world, how you approach treatment, how you manage your recovery, and how you function in relationships with others and the world around you. Often when I’m reading books or watching movies or videos, even ones that have nothing to do with OCD, I have moments of epiphany where I say, “Aha! That applies to people who have OCD!” In my Aha! Moments blog posts, I use my own experience with OCD to explain these epiphanies and how I apply them to my own recovery. In recent years, I’ve also expanded the blog to include descriptions of tools and techniques I’ve found helpful in my journey to tame OCD.
I also post on the Beyond the Doubt Psychology Today blog, where I share an inside perspective on life with OCD and the lessons of uncertainty.
If you’re pressed for time and would like some action-focused tips & tricks to help you tame OCD and reclaim your life, then check out my FredTalks blog, where I share posts you can read in a few minutes that are based on stories and concepts from my memoir, Is Fred in the Refrigerator? Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life.
You can browse my blog posts below, or by category, go to a list of all of them. As you probably already know :), my blogs are not a replacement for therapy, and I encourage all readers who have OCD to find a competent ERP therapist. See the IOCDF treatment provider database for a provider near you.
From Mental Compulsions to Mental Freedom
If mental rituals are keeping you stuck, you’re not alone. In this post, I share the tools that finally helped me stop the cycle of mental rituals, and how you can start using them today to build your mental freedom.
OCD vs ERP: Which will you choose?
When it comes to OCD, the "choose your hard" concept can be an especially helpful perspective-shifting exercise. Learn how OCD tries to warp our perspectives and how we can instead reframe them to empower you to make hard choices that help you reclaim your life.
How personifying OCD helps you win
Personifying your OCD helps you build insight by separating you and your desires from OCD and its desires for certainty, comfort, and control, making it easier for you to fight back with ERP.
You Want Me to Want My Anxiety During OCD Therapy?
While wanting anxiety takes OCD's power and makes it our own, it's not a fake construct we're using to fool OCD. Instead, it's how we live our lives when we're pursuing meaning.
