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.
AHA! MOMENTS
I’m always thinking about how books, movies, and events apply to people suffering from OCD and related disorders, anxiety or depression. Which means that I’m also thinking about how they apply to me. Because yes, along with being an OCD and anxiety disorders therapist, I also have 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 own recovery.
You can browse the Aha! Moments below, or go to a list of all of them. Sometimes the posts will be found on this website and sometimes I post them on my Beyond the Doubt Psychology Today blog, and in that case, I provide links to each of the Psychology Today posts.
As you probably already know :), my blogs are not a replacement for therapy, and I encourage all readers to find a competent ERP therapist. See the IOCDF treatment provider database for a provider near you.
Ruby Campbell’s Gift to the OCD Community
As we celebrate OCD Awareness Week (#OCDweek), October 13 -19, 2019, let’s keep the memory of Ruby Campbell alive by remembering her [...]
Are You Handcuffed to Your Devices, and Is OCD at Fault?
In an effort to stop rushing around the way Emmy Rossum elegantly captures in her song “Slow Me Down," a little over a month ago I took both The Focus Course and The Margin Course. I wanted to learn how to make better progress on important projects with less racing around and more breathing room. Assignments in both courses asked me to identify distractions that interfered with my ability to focus. I came up with a list of 11 types, including email, my phone, my Fitbit, social media and even OCD...
The Subtle OCD Compulsion You Might Not Know You’re Doing
OCD wants you to have the "right" emotion, the one that matches its scary and depressing stories. The exposure exercise is to purposely call forth the "wrong" emotion, the one that's the opposite of how OCD wants you to feel. To learn more, read this post on my Beyond the Doubt Psychology Today blog.
