I usually plan my blog posts weeks in advance and then try to follow my schedule, but this week, however, a particular comment made by one of my OCD clients struck me as something I should expand upon. I think it captured many of the challenges people face when dealing with a particular version of OCD.
Read MoreSafety behaviors provide us with a false sense of security which reinforces the belief that they are actually working and perpetuates the idea that the elephants are real. When we “keep ringing the bell” and our feared consequences don’t happen, we attribute it to the fact that we did a safety behavior, instead of the fact that the elephants weren’t there in the first place.The more we believe the safety behaviors are working, the less likely we are to stop them.
Read More"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
Read MoreIt may seem odd to use words like “surrender” and “acceptance “ when referring to how to manage an anxiety disorder, but I’ve come to appreciate just how valuable these concepts are when trying to cope with anxiety. We get so caught up in trying to eliminate anxiety because we believe that the source of our problem is experiencing anxiety in the first place. What if that really isn’t true at all? What if the problem is caused by our efforts to control the anxiety and not the anxiety itself?
Read MoreMost people have heard of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), but many are unaware of what are called “OCD Spectrum Disorders”. One category of “OCD Spectrum Disorders' ' is called Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors or BFRB’s.
Read More