OCD Straight Talk

Chris talks through two major challenges to making real and lasting progress with OCD and the anxiety-related disorders. The first challenge is learning how to find compulsions. Many people, including even people who've been to therapy, don't know how to do this. And that's a major problem. Because if they don't know how to find compulsions, then it's only a matter of time before OCD is a step ahead of them again. The second challenge is patience. The truth is getting better in a real way takes time and work. Another way to say that is, it takes patience. And people who want results quickly (and, of course that's all of us to some degree) are in for a rude awakening.

Chris discusses some of the gears and guts of working with Contamination-OCDers.

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Chris discusses Relationship OCD, its faces and presentations, and gives some practical tips on what to do if that's YOU.

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Chris discusses so-called Just-Right OCD and the feeling that task didn't get completed right. He also presents some variations of Just-Right OCD and subtypes that often present with it.

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Chris discusses Illness Anxiety Disorder, and provides a look at the many ways this condition affects patients. He provides examples and shows how some tools can be applied to relevant worries in different ways.

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Chris presents and explains a question he asks patients in therapy that is intended to help them summarize in short-form what they're learning in the process of better managing symptoms.

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Chris shares some of his own experiences with OCD, and discusses some common experiences others have with seeing around the OCD-lens.

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Chris discusses a conversation with a listener seeking reassurance, and explains a tool that he gave her. As he's said before, uncertainty is your friend, not your enemy.

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Chris discusses the idea of OCD being an obsession much more with uncertainty than a concern with objective danger.

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Chris explains the concept that exposures are really just opportunities to practice skills that allow you to interact with your anxiety-system in a different way. The biggest hurdle that you will face in trying to "treat yourself" is not having a therapist there to ask you the real questions. Why are you not working harder to get better? Why are you gravitating back to the same old way of interacting with your anxiety when you know that that way doesn't work?

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