Most people with OCD struggle with ambiguity, but getting comfortable with ambiguity, uncertainty, and imperfection are actually part of the process to recovering from OCD. That being said, there are very crucial steps that myself and all of my clients have followed to get to the recovery stage with OCD. That’s why I created The Path, a cost-effective membership program to help people recover from OCD, despite the type of OCD that you struggle with, named or not. I’ve done it and I help people do it every day. What does The Path look like? It actually requires very specific steps that I teach ..read more

ERP, exposure and response prevention, is the gold standard (and only evidence-based) treatment for OCD and worked wonders with me and has with all of my clients. Unfortunately, I often work with people who have either tried to do ERP on their own, or gone to someone who isn’t properly trained, and therefore only lose faith in the treatment itself. The good news is…ERP DOES work when done effectively! Below, I will explain some common mistakes I see in the process and how to work through them. Doing the Exposure Exercise With the Intention of Getting Rid of the Anxiety Compulsions are tricky ..read more

by Danielle Thornton, Life Coach The short answer to this questions is, yes, and no. Let’s start by getting to know more about your mind. The Conscious Mind The conscious mind includes the thoughts, sensations, and perceptions that you are currently aware of (your conscious awareness). What you may not realize is that the conscious mind only consists of about 10% of the thoughts you have on a daily basis. The conscious part of your awareness includes your logical thinking, critical thinking, will power, short-term memories, sensations, and anything else you are aware of at any given moment ..read more

Anxiety Anxiety is defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. While anxiety can be a helpful emotion when facing a dangerous animal, our fear response can easily get out of whack and cause a lot of emotional and physical distress in life. According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, over 40 million people suffer from anxiety, I suspect there are a lot more who’ve gone undiagnosed. When a person struggles with relationship anxiety, they have the tendency to get anxious or nervous about or ..read more

Since I started helping others reach full recovery from OCD (relationship, contamination, and all themes), I’ve come across hundreds of OCD stories and subsequent failed recovery attempts. It always amazes me at how often OCD is misdiagnosed, therefore going untreated and even treated but done so improperly. OCD Is Often Misunderstood When most people think of OCD, they picture the person with contamination OCD, washing their hands many times throughout the day, or the person who has to organize objects in just the right order before they are at ease. I’ve even had several friends tell me “yea ..read more

Anxiety and depression don’t happen overnight, that is, unless you’ve recently experienced a major loss or traumatic event in your life.  In that case, feelings of sadness, anger, despair, and anxiety are a normal part of the grieving process that will lessen with time. While some people know they suffered from anxiety or depression as a child, for others, these issues tend to creep up more slowly throughout life.  You may have felt like you had a pretty good childhood growing up, but you struggled to make friends or never felt like you really fit in with other kids.  Or, may ..read more

By Danielle Thornton We often hear how important it is to love ourselves, but what does that mean really?  Most of us would say we have self-love, but do we really? Self-love consists of a multitude of behaviors from the way we talk to ourselves (we all do this all day, every day), to the way we get ready for work, to how we interact in our relationships. The way you feel about yourself influences every aspect of your life, yet when many of us stop to REALLY look at how we treat ourselves, we’re shocked to see just how hard we are on ourselves. Positive self-talk is probably the most cr ..read more

There is a compulsion with OCD called “self-reassurance” where in order to gain certainty and ease anxiety, a person will essentially reassure themselves (as opposed to asking for reassurance from others). If you understand OCD at all, you’ll know that compulsions are what keep the OCD cycle going and just reinforce this fear pattern in the brain. So while it’s normal to self soothe at times, when someone struggles with OCD, they have to be careful of when and how they’re self-soothing so that it doesn’t become a compulsion, as almost ANYTHING can become a compulsion for someone with OCD if it ..read more

Rumination is defined as the action or process of thinking deeply about something. While we all have times where we deal with life stressors or worries and we need to spend some time processing, rumination goes beyond this scope. If you have anxiety or OCD, you can spend hours, days, weeks, and even years thinking about the same subject or obsession, usually about something that happened in the past or that might happen in the future. Your brain is doing this to try and protect you, with the idea that if it analyzes enough, it will come up with some sort of solution to keep you out of danger ..read more

While OCD is challenging for the sufferer, it can also be difficult for the loved one(s) as well. The constant behavioral rituals like checking the doors or locks, to someone with harm OCD having to leave the house to retrace their steps, or a relationship OCD sufferer asking for constant reassurance that you’re being faithful or that your relationship is okay. These all take up substantial amounts of time and energy in both of your lives. The good news is…there is help and support for both of you. For many of my clients, a partner session can be very beneficial. I meet with my client and thei ..read more