OCD and Anxiety Specialists of Dallas

11/23/2024

12/22/2023

Have you ever walked into a store and seen a sweater emblazoned with something like “Obsessive Christmas Disorder”? 🙄​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​You may hear people around you say, “I’m a little bit OCD” and then proceed to tell you about how they have their closet color-coded or enjoy cleanliness.

Popular culture’s understanding of what having OCD is really like is woefully off-base. When you hear people make light of it, it can leave you feeling alone, broken, and misunderstood. It's often really frustrating to see others talk about OCD in a way that minimizes the level of distress you feel.

12/20/2023

Making a list... checking it twice... ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The holidays can be an overwhelming time of year. Prioritize your mental well-being by taking the time with your therapist to review and refine your holiday coping strategies during your next appointment 🕎⛄️🎄🎅🏻

12/18/2023

Some individuals with OCD experience debilitating obsessions over causing danger or harm to others. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​For example, hit-and run obsessions are often triggered by hitting a bump in the road or seeing something on the side of the road while driving. As a compulsion, people go back and check to see if they have hit anything. These doubts can compel a person to check the news, call the police, and search the internet to determine whether they committed a hit-and-run.

I write about this example in my book, “Breaking the Rules of OCD,” available now.

12/05/2023

Download my FREE tools from "Breaking the Rules of OCD" on New Harbinger Publications's website!

It’s time to break the rules of OCD—and take charge of your life!If you have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), you may feel like you have to follow a ...

11/23/2023

Consider using an ERP Menu this Thanksgiving 🍽️​​​​​​​​
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Recipe:​​​​​​​​
☑️ Identify personalized OCD behaviors​​​​​​​​
☑️ Break them into manageable tasks​​​​​​​​
☑️ Confront them to embrace discomfort in line with your values​​​​​​​​
☑️ Rate distress from 0 (low) to 10 (high) for each scenario​​​​​​​​
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Think of an ERP menu as a curated list of challenges you want to face, helping you shift from obsessive thoughts and compulsions to meaningful actions in a specific area of your life. It allows you to start with one manageable step at a time. ​​​​​​​​
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11/19/2023

Obsessions about being tainted by an unwanted quality of people or places are referred to as emotional contamination. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​A person or place becomes associated with an unwanted characteristic that may contaminate a person struggling with this type of OCD.

The triggers can be diverse, ranging from specific individuals to geographical locations associated with traumatic events. For some, it could be the aftermath of a breakup, a death, or a traumatic incident that marks a place with a sense of impending doom.

Emotional contamination is usually combated through ERP and involves confronting fears by intentionally exposing oneself to avoided stimuli, like words and sounds associated with the obsession.

Understanding this aspect of OCD helps us show compassion and support for those navigating this challenge. 💪

11/17/2023

What would you say your values are?
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Perhaps you can think right away of values you hold—of aspirations that can structure your behavior and make your life meaningful. Or maybe your mind’s just gone blank. 😅
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Identifying your core values can be a powerful tool for guiding your life, especially when OCD has been a persistent companion.
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If you find it especially challenging to identify what matters to you, try looking at what causes you emotional pain—especially as it relates to your OCD, which tends to hit you where you hurt the most.
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As you explore your values, remember to be compassionate to yourself. This process might reveal moments when your actions don't align with your values, and that can bring feelings of guilt and shame.
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But here's the secret: nobody lives perfectly in line with their values all the time. We all stumble occasionally! 🙋‍♀️ Especially when it's easier to give in to compulsions instead of holding onto our values.

OCD can trick you into thinking that your compulsions serve your values when, in reality, they often undermine them. For instance, constant checking compulsions such as repeadedly locking the door and setting the house alarm might seem like they protect your family, but they rob you of sleep and precious time with loved ones. This is where understanding your values can help you regain control of your life.

11/15/2023

Scrupulosity is a common subtype of OCD. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Religious scrupulosity obsessions are characterized by blasphemousthoughts. Fear of committing sins or offending God and doubts of salvation are followed by prayer rituals, reassurance seeking, and confession compulsions.

Moral scrupulosity refers to obsessions about morality and the difference between right and wrong.

Perfectionism is a BIG contributor to scrupulosity obsessions and the "Everything Must Be Just Right" rule! Targeted practice with ERP can help those with scrupulosity obsessions respond to their OCD differently.

10/29/2023

One Rule of OCD is that you have to pay attention to EVERY single thought you have. Thinking is a natural process that occurs in your mind automatically.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Your mind can have creative, helpful thoughts, and it can generate thoughts to help you anticipate danger—which can sometimes be helpful, and sometimes not. The range of content that your mind creates is not within your control. For people who don’t have OCD or anxiety disorders, intrusive thoughts pass through their minds and are not interpreted as important. If you have disturbing intrusive thoughts and you attach an important meaning to them, you pay more attention to them, falling into a trap of exhausting rituals.

A counterintuitive response to unwanted intrusions—say, of pink elephants in your mind—is to allow yourself to think of pink elephants on purpose. That is, to let the pink elephant be there—even to welcome it in! In time, the intrusions will come and go less frequently.

When your mind interprets thoughts through a distorted lens based on these commonly held OCD beliefs, storylines develop. Your mind is a brilliant and creative storyteller—and when your stories are related to your OCD, your imagination can create elaborate, frightening worst-case scenarios.

Attempting to control your thoughts, to no longer have the ones that bother you, is futile—but you can respond to them differently. You can form a new relationship with your obsessions by treating them as the mental noise they are and purposely allowing them to pass naturally through your mind.

10/28/2023

By using ERP, you can weaken the association between what triggers your anxiety and the compulsions or avoidant behaviors that you respond with.⁣

10/21/2023

ACTing with Compassion to Ease Suffering During ERP​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​I'm speaking with Dr. Eric Goodman at the Online OCD Conference tomorrow, October 22!

Exposure and response prevention (ERP) involves systematically and courageously facing one’s deepest fears. The goal of ERP is to ease suffering over time while freeing one up to live based on their values rather than OCD’s directives. ERP often generates highly distressing emotions and can lead to increased short-term suffering in someone already dealing with OCD.

Two cognitive-behavioral therapeutic approaches that directly target suffering can be integrated into ERP: acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and compassion-focused therapy (CFT).

Dr. Goodman and i will talk about the basics of ACT and CFT and present a compassion-focused ACT model for dealing with distressing moments such as ERP:
1. Compassionate awareness
2. Compassionate acceptsance, and
3. Compassionate Action

Visit the website for more information!