Conscious Living Counseling & Education Center

10/08/2025

🧠 As adults, our brains are constantly integrating past experiences and predicting the future.

When your brain makes too many false predictions or gets stuck in rumination loops, you start to distrust itself:

😰 You feel anxious about a future you can’t rely on.
🌀 You get stuck replaying a past you can’t learn from.
🚫 Learning in the present becomes harder.

✨ CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) can change this. It helps you become a better historian of your past and a more accurate predictor of future threats — giving your nervous system permission to settle into the present moment, where thriving happens.

09/11/2025

Premenstrual Exacerbation (PME) of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been reported in 20-42% of women, often occurring in the premenstrual phase and extending a few days past the beginning of a woman's period. For OTHER ANXIETY conditions, women can experience worsening social anxiety, panic attacks, and an increase in repetitive negative thinking.

Premenstrual exacerbation of an existing psychiatric disorder refers to the worsening of symptoms inherent to the condition during the premenstrual phase. Research consistently indicates that hormonal fluctuations during the menstrual cycle present ...

09/08/2025

"Do you ever find yourself staring at a half-finished project or pushing something important into the “someday” pile?
​
If so, it’s easy to think that you’re lazy or unmotivated; but the truth is that procrastination is tied to anxiety, overwhelming feelings, disconnection from your values, or perfectionism."

Podcast Episode · Well, hello anxiety with Dr Jodi Richardson · 08/19/2025 · 25m

09/03/2025

It's okay to be
confused.

08/21/2025

10 Things You Need to Do to Recover from an Anxiety Disorder.

Read below for 10 mental shifts you can make to support your anxiety disorder recovery. Keep in mind, this list doesn't even begin to look at nutrition, gut health, brain health, and sleep. Recovery from ANY BODY condition is THE BIG MESSY. When you set off to improve your mental or physical health, you're in the area of systems. Every complex system has at least 10 components. This is why we get so frustrated! This is my professional goal: to continue to provide stellar CBT care for patients while helping them identify gaps in their treatment plans.

Read below for core mental shifts you can make to fully support your anxiety disorder recovery:

1. Accept That Recovery Is Not Clean: Recovery is rarely linear.
2. Learn How to Feel Without Fleeing: Tolerating anxiety without needing to fix it is a core
skill for healing.
3. Stop Treating Your Thoughts Like Oracles: Not all thoughts are meaningful.
4. Expose Yourself: Face what you fear intentionally. Exposure helps rewire your brain.
5. Get Curious, Not Controlling: Ask what's happening vs how do I make this stop?
6. Create Safe, Non-Safe Spaces: Build environments that are supportive but not overly protective.
7. Nourish the Nervous System: Support your healing with sleep, movement, nature and other goodies.
8. Challenge Mental Filters: Catch and question your cognitive distortions, like catastrophizing.
9. Let Go of Perfectionism in Healing: Learn to flow, but metric (measure) anything you want to increase.
10. Find meaning bigger than fear: Identify one thing you want in life. Start working toward it while anxious.

08/19/2025

Hmm. Seems like more women are getting diagnosed with ASD. The diagnostic threshold has definitely shifted for some psychologists. Maybe it's time we take another look at this?

08/04/2025

https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/10-must-listen-podcasts-for-people-with-ocd?psafe_param=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=NOCD_PM_US&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=14264737132&gbraid=0AAAAADEWRhZx68SsYPfMRG0THgRNnaxLb&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtMHEBhC-ARIsABua5iQeAFBx1cjlZaVrPXr9RGg4Y9XuPRozsLgpWIF-N93sbpnZUpCyK8oaAnrkEALw_wcB

Accurate representations of your experience can be life-changing. That’s especially true for those experiences that are commonly misunderstood or

07/22/2025

Red flag signs for “autoimmune OCD” could include (sub)acute onset, unusual age of onset, atypical presentation of OCS with neuropsychiatric features (e.g., disproportionate cognitive deficits) or accompanying neurological symptoms (e.g., movement disorders), autonomic dysfunction, treatment resistance, associations of symptom onset with infections such as group A streptococcus, comorbid autoimmune diseases or malignancies. Clinical investigations may also reveal alterations such as increased levels of anti-basal ganglia or dopamine receptor antibodies or inflammatory changes in the basal ganglia in neuroimaging. Based on these red flag signs, the criteria for a possible, probable, and definite autoimmune OCD subtype are proposed.

Another nationwide study from Sweden in 30,082 patients with OCD demonstrated a significant correlation with different autoimmune disorders: Individuals with OCD had a 43% increased risk of any autoimmune disorders
//www.nature.com/articles/s41398-021-01700-4

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a highly disabling mental illness that can be divided into frequent primary and rarer organic secondary forms. Its association with secondary autoimmune triggers was introduced through the discovery of Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated w...

07/14/2025

Are you a creative professional or entrepreneur who also has ADHD?

Whether you have a diagnosis or suspect you have ADHD, you’re probably very aware that you think differently.

As a creative professional, thinking differently is a good thing! When your brain is working its magic, you’re an idea-generating powerhouse.

Are you a creative professional or entrepreneur who also has ADHD? Whether you have a diagnosis or suspect you have ADHD, you’re probably very aware that y...

07/13/2025

Understanding the role of counseling in recovery is challenging. Finding the right help for anxiety seems like it should be easier. There is research that lists gold standards (the most effective treatments based on the anxiety concerns), but some professionals don't receive training in these approaches. And over-specialization can lead to failures in treatment with complex issues. Also, the word "holistic" literally can mean anything. What happens is that people looking for help often fall between the cracks in a medical system that is overcrowded, expensive, and ineffective. How do you navigate it? In starting to work with a provider, put your head up and your shoulders back and advocate! PAY ATTENTION TO HOW YOU FEEL. Did they ask lots of questions so they understand your situation? Start with these questions: What's your theory on what's happening? What does current research say about my situation? What are the differentials that you will rule out? What are the other interventions that I should include in my work with you? How can we make this process more cost-effective for me? These are 100% rational, logical, common-sense questions.

07/09/2025

Together, Dr. Wentz and Dr. Henderson explore full thyroid panel testing, the impact of gut health on thyroid medication absorption, the autoimmune mechanisms behind Hashimoto’s, and why early intervention can sometimes reverse the need for lifelong medication. This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking deeper answers in their thyroid healing - a common root of anxiety for those struggling with Hashimoto's.

In this episode of Thyroid Pharmacist Healing Conversations, Dr. Izabella Wentz interviews Dr. Brittany Henderson, a board-certified endocrinologist and foun...

07/08/2025

Life can feel very confusing when we tie ourselves into knots. Unraveling our personal needs can be tricky some days. Modern mental health strategies offer so much more than talk therapy. People are craving connection, yes, but so often they are craving more - true strategies to navigate a modern world. A world where the basics of health are even more critical. Additionally, the ability to process and organize complex information, emotions, and needs is required.