Obsessive- Compulsive Disorder
Living with OCD is incredibly difficult, isolating, and sometimes even scary. It’s also one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented mental health conditions–you probably already know it, but OCD is so much more than a preference for an organized space, or the need to check the locks before bed. When your thoughts and worries feel out of control and out of alignment with your values, it can feel like your brain is no longer a safe place. Folks struggling with OCD often feel like they are constantly shifting between doubt, fear, anxiety, and shame or guilt. It is an incredibly hard way to live.
Luckily, proper treatment for OCD is incredibly effective, and it is possible to get to a place where it doesn’t feel like your life is held hostage by your intrusive thoughts (and the corresponding compulsions).
When we are working together to tackle OCD, I will work to help you understand how obsessions and intrusive thoughts work (hint: OCD brains love to grasp on to the things that are most important to us, causing us to react so strongly to those intrusive thoughts!). We’ll look at societal factors, your history and experiences, and values that can inform your obsessions and OCD “themes”. And finally, you will learn ways of responding to these thoughts differently and tolerating the discomfort associated with them.
My hope for all my clients struggling with OCD is that you are able to internalize the fact that your thoughts do not determine your worth or your “goodness”; having OCD or disturbing intrusive thoughts does not make you a bad person. You are so much more than OCD, and I’d love be the person to walk beside you on this journey!
General Anxiety
Anxiety can be so tricky because it’s unfortunately an inevitable part of the human experience. We all experience varying degrees of anxiety, whether it is an expected response to the stressors of everyday life, like a work deadline or running late for an appointment, or in a way that feels less manageable. There are also so many different manifestations, themes, etc. that it likes to latch onto–usually the things that are most important to us or cause us the most distress.
When I work with clients around anxiety, one of the biggest things we look at is the degree to which anxiety is impacting your life–what are you missing out on, avoiding, or unable to enjoy? Then we look at strategies for making anxiety more manageable–not making it go away fully, because of the whole normal part of human experience thing. But maybe we can get to a place where anxiety feels more like a whisper in the back of your brain, rather than someone screaming into a megaphone. Sounds significantly more manageable, right?