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.
Your guide to ERP therapy for OCD
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.
A new response to trauma and PTOCD
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.
Managing climate anxiety
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.
OCD, self-criticism, and wearable technology
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.
Empowering & hopeful book recommendations
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.
The truth about people pleasing
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.
How to Maintain OCD Recovery Gains
A four-step process to turn OCD triggers into opportunities to make your OCD recovery stronger.
Why Doing ERP Homework Matters to Your OCD Recovery
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!
Overcoming Optimization OCD: Your productivity does not equal your worth
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.
Post-traumatic OCD: When OCD and PTSD Intertwine
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.
My Top 5 OCD-Taming Tips for Fred’s 5th anniversary
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!
The Mirage of the 4 Cs of OCD
Chasing the 4Cs of OCD is like being in the desert and chasing the mirage of an oasis that's not really there.
Using ERP Scripting for OCD (aka Imaginal Exposure)
The what, where, why, when, how of how I use ERP scripting (imaginal exposure) for OCD.
Managing Mental Compulsions on Your Anxiety Toolkit
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.
OCD as a Trauma—and How To Fight Back
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.
Managing Health Anxiety/OCD
7 tools for managing health anxiety/OCD with exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy. (And p.s. OCD doesn't have a medical degree!)
The truth about regret, part 2
Learn how to use self-compassion to manage regret when it's riding on the coattails of shame.
Guest post: I see your pain.
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.
Excerpt from The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD
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.
If you have OCD, you’re more resilient than you think
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!
Marrying Intention and Attention
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.
The Anatomy of ERP for OCD
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.
Breaking out of the OCD cycle: lessons from my younger self
Your younger self may have lessons to teach you about how NOT to get caught in the OCD cycle.
A Recipe for Suffering
It's unfortunately all too easy to create our own suffering using the tried and true formula of Pain x Resistance = Suffering.
Managing OCD about Coronavirus
Because of the toll the current coronavirus situation could take on people with OCD, Reid Wilson, PhD; Kimberley Quinlan, LMFT; and I have developed the following tips for managing OCD fears about coronavirus. We hope they will help you feel empowered and supported, so that even in this uncertain time, you can keep OCD from running your life.
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.
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...
Q&A for Interrupting OCD’s Mental Rituals with “May or May Not”
Here are the questions submitted about my blog Interrupt OCD’s Mental Rituals with “May or May Not” (MOMN) and my answers.
Interrupt OCD’s Mental Rituals with “May or May Not”
If you have trouble using Shoulders Back/Man in the Park because you keep transacting with your OCD in your mind, otherwise known as “mentally ritualizing” or what some call “pure-O,” read about an ERP technique that’s a bridge tool to help you develop the strength to do Shoulders Back/Man in the Park effectively.
Q&A for Shoulders Back! The Man in the Park
Here are the questions submitted about my blog post Shoulders Back! The Man in the Park and my answers.
Shoulders Back! The Man in the Park
The man in the park metaphor is one I use all the time with clients to explain how to most effectively handle OCD.
Aha! Moments from a magazine encouraging us to “Be a little OCD.”
I'm not going to say which magazine put "Be a little OCD" in print because this is not about shaming them; that would be doing the very thing that I'm advocating against. Instead, this is about education.
Aha! Moments from Stopping the Noise in Your Head
On Monday, as I was boarding a flight from Baltimore to Atlanta, I asked the flight attendant standing by the cockpit door [...]
Aha! Moments from The Five Things We Cannot Change
When you have OCD and/or anxiety, your life can be dominated by attempts to attain the BIG Cs: CONTROL and [...]
Aha! Moments from an Aha! Moment … and dog toys … and questionable holiday merchandising choices …
Why do I have a dog toy with a tissue taped to it sitting on my desk? And how [...]
Aha! Moments from Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World
I read the following paragraph from Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Mark Williams [...]
Aha! Moments from the 2015 IOCDF Conference, Part 2
"You can do this," I said as I held Lily's hand, the scene before me becoming blurry as my [...]
Aha! Moments from the 2015 IOCDF Conference, Part 1
As I sit here thinking about what an amazing time I had at the 2015 IOCDF Conference—the fun I [...]
The 2015 IOCDF Conference
We're less than one week away from one of my favorite events of the year: the International OCD Foundation Annual Conference. [...]
Aha! Moments from Brené Brown on Empathy
One of the most basic human desires is to be understood. To be heard fully and deeply by another [...]
Aha! Moments from Self-Compassion
Let's talk about something seemingly unrelated to OCD: the Stockholm syndrome. Named after a situation in the early 1970s where [...]
Aha! Moments from Frozen
When I was a little girl, I used to daydream that I had fantastic, magical powers. I would imagine myself [...]
Aha! Moments from the 2014 IOCDF Conference
When I attended my first International OCD Foundation conference in 2010, the whole thing was one huge Aha! Moment [...]
Aha! Moments from Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk: Your body language shapes who you are
Watching Amy Cuddy's TED Talk, "Your body language shapes who you are," gave me an aha! moment about a new way [...]
Aha! Moments from Man’s Search for Meaning and Unbroken
It was an auspicious coincidence that I decided to read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl and Unbroken: A World War [...]
Aha! Moments from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
I love the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. I have read the books and watched the movies countless times. [...]
Aha! Moments from Freedom from OCD
One of the things I love most about Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder by Jonathan Grayson, PhD is Dr. Grayson's [...]
Aha! Moments from The Onion
For as long as I can remember, I have personified my OCD and thought of it as an entity [...]