OCD can make people feel isolated from and misunderstood by those who love them most. Here’s what OCD really feels like, how recovery helps rebuild connection, and how understanding and compassion from loved ones can make all the difference.
Wondering how to strengthen your OCD recovery between therapy sessions, whether you're working with a therapist or doing therapy on your own? Learn how asking yourself two simple questions can help you make your ERP more effective.
OCD's dislike of uncertainty makes us forget that it's also the bedrock of hope.
Struggling with OCD and sleep? You’re not alone. In this post, I share how OCD turned sleep into a nightly obsession—and the ERP tools that helped me break the cycle so I could rest, recover, and reclaim my nights.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A round-up of pitfalls that can sabotage your OCD recovery and how you can address them.
Micro-monitoring your OCD symptoms in hopes that you can finally eliminate them all often backfires, and here's why.
Because our executive reasoning capabilities go offline when we're in the throes of OCD, talking about the content of obsessions tends to make OCD worse.
What I've learned in the almost 15 years of my OCD recovery is the more I live a lifestyle of ERP and the less I interact with OCD either physically or mentally, the fewer intrusive thoughts I have, and the more my life stays my own.
Understanding and addressing the shades of grey in both how OCD manifests and how we approach and implement ERP therapy can truly help us supercharge our efforts and our recoveries. I've selected the posts for this guide from the more than 100 I've written in the past decade because they highlight the most important of these nuances, these spaces between the black and the white that can give you the biggest OCD recovery rewards.
Here are some creative strategies you can use to motivate yourself to do ERP for OCD.
Watch my talk from the 2024 IOCDF Conference to find out how I learned first-hand that post-traumatic growth is available to those of us with intertwining OCD and PTSD, otherwise known as post-traumatic OCD.
I was held hostage and scammed because I'm a therapist. Here's how to recognize the scam so it doesn't happen to you. Plus....forgiving those who hurt us and becoming anti-fragile!
The belief that we're bad can turn into its very own sub-type of OCD: self-punishment as a ritual. Here's how you can use an expected type of exposure and response prevention therapy (ERP) to break free.
When was the last time you blamed someone or something for a negative occurrence in your life? I’m asking because I used to be an expert at blaming (both myself and other people), and for that I blame (yes, pun intended) my OCD.
Worried about climate change and/or the environment? You're not alone! Climate anxiety, or eco-anxiety, is manageable, and in this post, I share how to get started.
I share some of my own examples of how wearables and OCD can interact, as well as criteria you can use to make decisions about whether wearable technology is right for you and your OCD recovery.
Three books I've enjoyed and recommend—even though they have nothing to do with OCD—to help you feel more empowered, hopeful, and optimistic. Also, find out more about your own primal world beliefs and how they might change over time.
You don't have to have OCD to engage in people pleasing, but people with OCD often end up participating in this compulsive behavior of doing things for others for fear-based reasons.
A four-step process to turn OCD triggers into opportunities to make your OCD recovery stronger.
What if you knew why doing your ERP exercises for OCD was so important? What if you understood how it was helping you take back your life? Then doing your ERP homework would seem a lot more motivating, which is what this blog post is all about!
Your productivity does not equal your worth! Learn about optimization OCD and how to use ERP, exposure and response prevention therapy, to overcome this mix of OCD, feelings of unworthiness, and workaholism.
I'm joined by Dr. Caitlin Pinciotti of Baylor College of Medicine for this blog post about post-traumatic OCD: what it is, current research about it, how it's treated, things to know for your recovery journey, and where to find treatment.
Five OCD-taming tips in celebration of the five-year anniversary of my memoir, Is Fred in the Refrigerator? Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life!
Is your brain deceiving you? If you have OCD, you'll probably say yes, but you may be unaware that your brain's deception can go far beyond OCD.
Chasing the 4Cs of OCD is like being in the desert and chasing the mirage of an oasis that's not really there.
Read "The Best TED Talks for People with OCD: Part 3" to learn how you can shift your relationship with anxiety to turn the tables on OCD.
The what, where, why, when, how of how I use ERP scripting (imaginal exposure) for OCD.
Finding an OCD/ERP therapist is often not as easy and straightforward as one might hope, so here are the steps I recommend to help you find a therapist that's right for you.
Read one of the most popular blog posts I've ever written about the subtle compulsion of engaging in OCD-influenced emotions and how it can fuel the compulsive cycle.
Kimberley Quinlan, LMFT, and I discuss how to manage mental compulsions as part of her 6-part Your Anxiety Toolkit podcast series on managing mental compulsions.
If you’ve ever felt like you have trauma from having untreated OCD, you’re not alone...and here are some ways to fight back.
If the news sounds a bit too much like your OCD, read Positive News for "journalism that inspires."
Thinking about the compulsions you could do, aka "trying on" compulsions, IS an OCD compulsion, even if you don't do them!
If you've been engaging in self-indulgence when it comes to your OCD instead of self-compassion, a day of ERP might help you get back on track!
7 tools for managing health anxiety/OCD with exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy. (And p.s. OCD doesn't have a medical degree!)
Learn how to use self-compassion to manage regret when it's riding on the coattails of shame.
Now is the time for the courage to hold space for the pain in the world, to look it in the eye, to say I am here—with you—and I won't turn away.
Regret is keeping some secrets from you, and the truth about this common emotion can help set you free.
Telling OCD it's irrelevant lets OCD know that you think it's important. Instead, act as though the OCD doesn't matter!
Kimberley Quinlan, LMFT, has graciously given me permission to publish an excerpt from one of my favorite parts of her amazing new book, The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD: Lean into Your Fear, Manage Difficult Emotions & Focus On Recovery.
A recent study reported that “individuals with OCD demonstrate resilience to large-scale crises.” So if you have OCD, you're more resilient than you think!
Want to really poke your OCD? Try the Invisible Ink ERP Game!
If you have OCD or related disorders, you can use self-compassion to escape from the mental nursery of nonstop negativity.
OCD and your smartphone both send you notifications when they want you to so something, but marrying your attention to your intentions can keep you from getting lost in either the digital world or OCD hell.
So how exactly do I approach ERP (exposure and response prevention therapy) for OCD? I share the process and steps I use as well as the difference between proactive and reactive ERP.
Join Reid Wilson, PhD, Ethan Smith, and me to learn more about the attitude of OCD recovery for COVID and beyond!