“Is it going to make me worse?”

Being a group leader here at CAOCD, I get so many questions surrounding the group therapy experience. I may be biased, but I believe group therapy is one of the single best interventions you can do for OCD (and this research supports it too!).

Why does my OCD always come home for the holidays?

Ah...the holiday season. Joyful as it may be, this time of year can also feel like a breeding ground for anxiety and OCD. Is it the most wonderful time of the year, or the most difficult?

As much as I wish there was a clear-cut answer, the true response to this question is confusing, because it's a mixture of no, somewhat, and partially (and saying that anxiety can completely be cured can have consequences, as noted in this article).

For many of us with anxiety and OCD, the prospect of free time can feel daunting or even threatening, as explained in this article outlining a research study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

How many times have you heard the phrase, “go with your gut,” or “you’ll know when you feel it!” These statements of certainty abound in modern conversation, but aren't they counter to everything we have learned about OCD?

Yes. Because we know that with obsessive-compulsive disorder, we can’t automatically trust our feelings. This is because they stem from unreliable threat signals from an overactive fight, flight, or freeze response (as outlined in this post explaining how the amygdala works).

Obsessive-compulsive disorder touches so many aspects of our lives, especially our relationships.

I like to remind my clients, “you don’t exist in a vacuum.” Meaning, OCD doesn’t sit on the shelf while we get on with other things in our life, it comes with us.

Knowing your values is one of the most important keys to recovery.

That's because while feelings change day to day or even hour to hour, what we value stays consistent. Identifying a core value like courage, loyalty or integrity offers us a roadmap to making good choices even when our emotions feel muddled, as they so often do when living with anxiety and OCD.

As an OCD therapist, many of my sessions start with a check-in to see how the previous week, and the exposures assigned, went for my clients. The work done in therapy is important, but what clients do between sessions is arguably the biggest indicator of long term success in managing OCD and anxiety disorders.

To put it simply, the work you do outside of therapy matters. A lot.

Most of our clients are curious to know if the questions they are asking their therapist, loved ones, professors, and most importantly, themselves, are compulsive and feeding into the OCD cycle or not.

If you have an anxiety disorder or OCD then you know exactly what it's like to live with intrusive thoughts. In fact, you're probably all too familiar with the experience of a brain incessantly looping your biggest fears day in, day out, 24/7. Maybe you've tried running down the rabbit hole and attempting to solve "the problem," or have spent hours seeking reassurance for the burning questions in your mind. Yet despite your best attempts at relief, your thoughts only grow louder and more persistent, not less.