Finding the right therapist for your anxiety can be the difference between a deeply productive relationship and, in some unfortunate cases, a reinforcer of your anxious thinking patterns.  Anxiety treatment is variable and it is helpful for clients to be savvy about the different approaches. CBT and ERP are the most commonly utilized treatment modalities for OCD and anxiety; however, they are by no means the only options!

For an OCD voice, everything is catastrophic, incredibly important, urgent, and definitely not funny. However, when we can step back and laugh at some of the requirements that our OCD places on us, we can truly see the absurdity in its rules!  Laughing at our OCD makes it smaller and weaker.

Emetophobia is a common condition that is characterized by chronic fear of vomiting.  People with this disorder will enact a wide array of compulsions and avoidance mechanisms around food, motion, germs, or pregnancy.  Emetophobia is a subtype of Specific Phobias, but is also commonly associated with OCD.

IFS (Internal Family Systems) is a burgeoning model for both therapy and self-understanding. In the IFS model, the mind is seen as a pluralistic structure. In this formulation, our psyche is made up of parts that take on specific roles based on the person’s needs. An IFS therapist supports their client in befriending all parts of ourselves, even those aspects of our mind that provoke anxiety, or intense reactivity.

In our sessions, I often assign behavioral experiments for homework. An example might be asking a chronic “lock checker” to refrain from checking the lock at night, or a client with perfectionistic OCD tendencies to send an email without double checking for spelling errors.

A bigger behavioral challenge assignment might be to spend a day prioritizing honesty over niceness.

My clients recognize the smirk on my face when I challenge them to do the opposite of what their OCD wants. My flippant remark to a client’s pushback is often: “well, let’s see what happens.”

As a mother of three teens, and therapist to dozens, I am so concerned by the tremendous uptick in anxiety disorders among this demographic. Teens no longer trust adults with their emotional and physical safety. I believe that this lack of trust is part of the fall out of schools suddenly going virtual, the world shutting down in a panicked state, sexual assaults going unpunished in our school systems, violence on the political scene, climate change as an obvious disaster that our teens will inherit, and the feeling of inevitability of mass shootings.

Sharing is healing. While CBT and ERP individual sessions can be anxiety-activating rather than soothing, groups focus on the act of sharing as a main vehicle of healing. The very act of articulating internal struggles to a supportive group is tremendously powerful. It is truly something you have to experience to understand the effect of having multiple eyes and ears attending to your story in a receptive, collective environment.

As important, or potentially more important, than the Ketamine experience itself is the post-session integration.  While therapeutic Ketamine treatments build in a talk therapy session immediately after the effects wear off, moments of integration can happen for a significant time period after treatment.  You are especially receptive and heart-open in the 48 hours following a session.  

I decided to experience two Ketamine journeys as part of my professional training, before coming back to Boulder to expand our KAP (Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy) program at Kairos Wellness Collective. While some clinicians are favoring a stronger approach, Kairos has chosen a more measured, gentle approach to Ketamine work.

OCDland or the Land of Doubt is a magical world that exists in our brains that hijacks reality and replaces it with a fully different narrative about the world. This narrative is one where uncertainty is replaced by a negative certainty, simply to squash the uncomfortable doubt.

As a client relates their OCDland outlook to me, they often interject “But I know this is silly…” or “This sounds crazy but…” We don’t ever fully inhabit our OCDland but there are days when it feels more real.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder feels like having a very persuasive bully that lives in our brains. Many times we can tell that the OCD is distinct from our core thoughts and core beliefs. We can tell that we are getting led away from our intelligent selves into a viewpoint that does not have a strong basis in logic. Why is the OCD successful in conning us and how does it do it? Here are four techniques that it uses to trick our brains.

I have truly mixed emotions about the phrase “I’m so OCD.” On one hand, I appreciate the attention that this generation is placing on mental health, and the openness with which neurodiversity, mental health, and trauma is discussed in popular discourse. Overall, that is undoubtedly a good thing. Young people know how to recognize a panic attack and how to support their friend with grounding exercises. Friends, often connected on social media and messaging apps, support each other at all hours of the night through dark moments.

In OCD treatment, connecting to fictitious depictions of OCD is actually part of the healing process. In an effort to externalize OCD, we differentiate our core personality from our OCD and attach an image, character, and name to this mental bully.

Thought-Action fusion is an often-overlooked aspect of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  In this form of OCD, a sufferer believes that just because they think a thought, that it will come true.  This is a form of superstition – in other words, the distortion of magical thinking. The risk of a thought-action fusion is that it can cause a person a tremendous amount of mental anguish, and can inspire various unhealthy compulsions.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is known to be a highly intellectual and conversation-based form of therapy that includes homework. How is it that therapists can apply these principles to working with children, even young children?

While children may not be able to readily name the 12 major negative distortions, such as personalization, catastrophization, and discounting the positive, they are usually able to notice a negative interpretation. Children are natural debaters and questioners. When enlisted as detectives rooting out the truth in their thoughts, young minds can be very inquisitive.  

OCD can be easily misdiagnosed as Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) in children.  Most pediatric clinicians are well-versed in GAD but have no training in OCD. Physical compulsions can look like “quirky” kid behavior.  Ordering, arranging, and checking behavior can be rewarded in a school or home environment, as it can be seen as “responsible,” mature behavior.  Adults may feel pleased with how compliant a people-pleasing child may be, without understanding that the root of this behavior is extreme anxiety. 

Checking is essentially a form of reassurance-seeking, where the individual with OCD is responding to the intolerable reality of not being sure. 

This lack of sureness is not actually cured by the checking behavior in the long term (only temporarily!) because as we know, checking is a constant, insatiable need.  

In Exposure Response Prevention, we are asking kiddos to sit with discomfort and have a tolerance of uncertainty. Parents must go through this process as well in order to properly model and guide their children towards healthier coping strategies.  

Contamination is the most commonly known form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. However, most of us have a simplified understanding of how contamination obsessions present – it is far more complicated than simply hand washing!

Exposure Response Prevention is, quite simply, the art of finding the area just outside your comfort zone and pushing yourself to spend a little time there.