One of the first exercises I assign to my OCD clients is maintaining a diary of their obsessions and compulsions. Until now, I've allowed clients the freedom to create their own formats, but I realized it was time to design a diary that captures the essential information needed to tailor their treatment plans. In this week's blog post, I'm excited to share the latest version of the diary format that I’m currently using with my OCD clients. This format will also be included in an online OCD course I hope to complete soon (more on that later).
Read MoreAs I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, OCD can be very sneaky, often disguising obsessions and compulsions as simply being careful or thorough. One particularly tricky way OCD manifests is through obsessing over past decisions that have already been made or future decisions yet to be finalized.
Read MoreWe all experience anxiety in life. And most people have experienced flushes of panic in particularly stressful moments, like right before stepping on stage for a performance or taking a make-or-break test. Some of us have even had particularly frightening "out of the blue'' panic attacks. But only a few people--about 3.5% of the total population--go on to develop panic disorder. So the question is, what is happening for those relatively few people who do develop panic disorder?
Read MoreAs I mentioned in my last post, OCD can be a difficult disorder to manage because it is full of tricks and unless you understand these tricks and learn how to play the game to win, then OCD has the upper hand. It's almost as if the OCD has a tenth degree black belt in karate and you are just beginning. In this blog post I will list three tricks that OCD uses to "trick" people into doing compulsions. Understanding and recognizing some of the tricks and distortions that OCD uses can be helpful when seeking to manage OCD.
Read MoreOCD has many tricks, maneuvers and distortions that keep you repeating your compulsions over and over, and one of the subtler ones is that the minute you don’t want a thought/feeling/urge then, guess what, you have that thought/feeling/urge! And the less you want it and the more you resist it…the more you get it! This is especially relevant when the type of OCD is the Intrusive Thought version – usually unwanted sexual or harming thoughts about an inappropriate or vulnerable target.
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