Let’s face it….obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) can take all the fun out of life. Your mind is filled with distressing thoughts or images that you didn’t ask for…and don’t want. You feel like you are stuck in an endless loop, doing rituals you feel you need to do to keep those awful thoughts or images out of your head. But they just keep coming back. In fact, sometimes fighting with the OCD seems to make it stronger. It’s exhausting. And it feels like happiness and peace are always out of your reach.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
There is hope for people suffering from OCD. According to the International OCD Foundation, the majority of people with OCD will benefit from either medication or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The type of CBT that has been proven by research to be the most effective for OCD is exposure and response prevention therapy (ERP).
I specialize in helping people take back their lives from OCD with an individualized treatment program based on ERP. Using an empathetic, caring approach, I customize the treatment program based on your needs to help you win back your life from OCD.
I also provide free OCD-taming tips & resources through my Shoulders Back! email newsletter, which I sent out every few weeks. All new subscribers to Shoulders Back! will receive my Top Five Tips for Taming OCD.
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 OCD advocate and author Jeff Bell and 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 new FredTalks blog, where I share posts you can read in a minute or two 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 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.
3 Ways to Power Up Your OCD Therapy
Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed that the people who tame OCD most effectively are those who make three strategic shifts in their attitude toward not only exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, the evidence-based therapy for OCD, but to life itself. Read 3 Ways to Power Up Your OCD Therapy on my Psychology Today blog to learn what they do.
When Fear Stops Making Decisions for You
I’ve let fear make a fair number of decisions in my life. But no more. I put my shoulders back and do the things I want to do, acting like all the noise in my head is irrelevant. And you can, too!
An OCD-Taming Attitude: Making OCD Pass Out
Have you ever thought about taking the same arrogant attitude with your OCD that it takes with you when you do ERP therapy? Watch this video to watch how I approached ERP with a new attitude that helped me turn my life around.
OCD is Not What You Think
What's wrong with saying, "I'm so OCD"? The hypothesis is that when people who have untreated OCD hear other people misuse the name of their disorder, it discourages them from seeking treatment.
