Your Anxiety Toolkit

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast.  Today we are so lucky to have Dr. Jonathan Grayson on with us again. Dr. Grayson is a psychologist who has been specializing in the treatment of OCD for more than 40 years. He is also the author of Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and founder of The Grayson LA Treatment Center for Anxiety and OCD.  He is here today to talk to us about magical thinking. I am actually getting asked a lot recently about magical thinking.  People have a lot of questions about what it is and how it relates to OCD and anxiety. Dr. Grayson starts off by giving us his definition of magical thinking.  He explains that magical thinking is really on a continuum. On one end you may have a person without OCD who engages in minor superstitions and on the far end you may have a person with OCD who has magical thinking that is actually interfering in their daily life.  He says that most of the time with OCD, the magical thinking does not seem to have an obvious conn

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. We have a lot to tackle in this episode!  We are going to be talking about a really important topic which has a lot of confusion surrounding it.  Today we are going to explore the difference between an intrusive thought and a mental compulsion. OCD starts with an obsession. This is an intrusive, repetitive, unwanted thought, feeling, sensation or urge that you cannot control this.  Once you've had that intrusive thought, feeling, sensation and urge, you usually feel anxious and uncomfortable because it is unwanted.  You then have this natural instinct to try and remove the discomfort and the uncertainty that you feel. This is what we call a compulsion. Usually we feel some form of relief from the compulsion, but this becomes a problem because it only reinforces to our brain that the thought was important. Your brain continues to send out the alarm that the thought must mean something. Now many of us are aware of the form that physical compulsion

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast.  Today I want to focus a bit on OCD treatment.  I want to share with you all 8 tips that I think will really help to fast-track your OCD treatment.  The first tip is to get support. That may people from people in your life or it may be from social media, organizations in the OCD community, or online support groups. The second tip is to pace yourself.  Find a pace that works well for you, not too fast, not too slow.  The third tip is to give yourself time to feel all the feelings about your OCD treatment. You are likely going to ride a wave of emotions and that is OK.  The fourth tip is to stop judging yourself for your obsessions and compulsions.  Being critical of yourself on serves to get in the way of your recovery. So go easy on yourself. The fifth tip is to embrace uncertainty.  Learning to live with uncertainty is key to recovery in OCD treatment. The sixth tip is to stare your fear in the face everyday.  Remember when we turn away from o

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. Today we have on an amazing guest and therapist, Menije Boduryan. Menije is an OCD specialist as well as a specialist on perfectionism. She is here today to talk to us about perfectionism and to give us some tips on how to manage perfectionism in our own lives. Menije defines perfectionism as a drive to do things perfectly with anything less than 100% being unacceptable.  It is a desire to want everything to be flawless and in that desire, comes a lot of expectations or rules that people set for themselves.  She explains that perfectionism becomes a mindset and you begin to operate in the world expecting yourself to be perfect, as well as your partner, your best friend, your clothes, your work desk, what you eat, and how you exercise to all be perfect. It becomes powerful because our self-identity becomes so attached to this idea of being perfect. It is not just about the desire to do things perfectly, but it also becomes a belief that on

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. Today I want to talk about a concept that is really important to long-term recovery or just life in general, which is this question: Does this bring me closer to my long term goals?  Now, human beings are very reactionary. When there is an event, we quickly do a little data check in our brain. Is it safe? Can we proceed? Should we run away? Should we freeze? Should we just freak out? We have the whole process that happens in a millisecond, and then we respond.  Now the fight-flight-freeze system of the brain keeps us alive. It’s a reaction we have to danger. So if there is a lion, we know to either freeze, run away or fight it. For those with an anxiety disorder, we often go into the fight-flight-freeze when there isn’t any real danger. The more we react, the more we enforce our fears and the more that we get stuck in a cycle of reaction. One of the most helpful things in life for me has been to step back and look at the cycle, look at

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit. Today we are going to have a hard conversation and it honestly is causing a little bit of anticipatory anxiety for me. I want to talk to you about the lies we tell ourselves. You might be thinking "I don't tell lies. What are you talking about? I am a good person." So I want you to hear me out for a little bit and I want to share an experience I had this week. I realized that I had been telling a lie to myself and to my family about my choice to continue working so hard. I really want to take the stigma, the judgment, and the shame out of lies and just admit that we do it. That’s my main hope for today. Let’s just acknowledge that we sometimes lie to ourselves. We lie to other people, and we do it, not because we’re horrible human beings, but because we’re trying to protect ourselves. It’s a safety behavior. We’re trying to protect the story we create, and I had created this whole story of why I had to work so hard. So I sat down and thought ab

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. Today I want to talk about something that is so important to me. This is also something I think we all need a little reminder about from time to time and that is the importance of self-compassion. Today I want to share an exercise on how to practice self-compassion. I want you to imagine that someone you care about comes to you and says that they are struggling or having a hard time. What is your first reaction likely to be? You probably will say something along the lines of "Oh I'm so sorry. How can I help you?" Now I want you to try this same approach the next time you are struggling. You can learn how to practice self-compassion by treating yourself how you would treat a loved one or even a stranger who is struggling. Stop and say to yourself "Ok you are in pain. Let's tend to that pain." Our work is really to tend to ourselves the way we would tend to others. Respect ourselves the way we respect others. There is no exception to this.

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit podcast. Today I want to share with you all something that has been going on for a while now. For months, I have been harassed online by an anonymous troll who has been leaving really terrible, disgusting comments on my social media accounts. I want to share with you today some ways that I have dealt with this situation and to really give you some tools to manage the bully in your life, whether that takes the form of a real person or if that bully takes the form of fear and anxiety. Initially I tried doing what I would do when I am faced with fear. I simply tried not engaging. These are the same tools you would use to manage intrusive thoughts and anxiety, which is, you just don't engage with them. You set strong boundaries and you bring your attention back to the things that you value. So I was trying that for a while. Then I realized that I wasn't setting strong enough boundaries. I was keeping what was happening a secret because I was feeling a

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. Today I would like to discuss with you a question that comes up quite a lot when I am starting with a new client. So often my clients will say to me "What can I expect during my first session?" I want to share with you what I tell my clients about the things to know when starting therapy. The first thing I say to my clients is that your brain can change. You may have a disorder that was inherited or triggered by a certain event, but the good news is that by changing your behavior, you can actually change your brain. The second thing I say is that no matter your mental health struggle, there is a science proven way to treat that disorder. We have evidence based treatments and you can absolutely can get better. Thirdly, I tell my clients that no matter what struggles they are going through, it is not their fault. This is not something they asked to have happen. We are going to move away from assigning blame and move towards self-compass

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. Today I am so happy to have Jon Hershfield on with us. Jon is an author and the Director of the Center for OCD and Anxiety at Sheppard Pratt. The second edition of his book, The Mindfulness Workbook for OCD, has just been released and his new book, The Mindfulness Workbook for Teens, is scheduled for release in March. We had a great conversation about both books and Jon shares many of the OCD mindfulness tools that he describes in his books that are used to enhance treatment. In this interview, Jon explains why he wanted to write a book for teens and how he decided to approach the topics of mental health, OCD, and mindfulness in a way that would be relatable to teens and young adults. He discusses in more detail some of the topics in his book including how to understand your diagnosis, how to respond to intrusive thoughts, and how to incorporate meditation and mindfulness into your daily life. Jon also shares some OCD mindfulness tools

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit podcast. It's a new year and as we settle into 2021, I am actually going to ask you guys to set a little bit of a goal. Not a resolution, a goal. I am so excited to talk with you all today about this topic because I really hope that this will be the goal you set for yourself this year.  I would like for you to start the year by setting boundaries with fear.  Now why do I think setting boundaries with fear is so important? Think about it this way, if someone came into your home, you wouldn't just allow them to behave any way they wanted. Right? No, you set boundaries in your home about what kind of behavior is going to be allowed and we know that those boundaries must remain consistent. I want you to try setting those same boundaries when fear shows up in your life. I would encourage you to sit down and actually write out what boundaries are you going to set with fear this year? And then the work begins by holding those boundaries consistently.  Yo

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. As you all know, I traveled back to Australia to visit family last month. The Australian government requires a 14 day quarantine for any visitors coming into the country. When my plane landed, I was escorted by police to a hotel in Sydney. I was then taken to my room and told that under law, I am not allowed to leave or even open a window for 14 days. Now that I am home and reflecting on my time in Australia, I really want to share with you some of the skills that I had to practice all day every day to get me through that quarantine. I hope some of these skills can also help you when you are facing a difficult situation. The first skill was to become an observer to my thoughts. It is quite common to be feeling fine and out of nowhere this overwhelming sense of panic takes over and you start to think "Oh my goodness I can't handle this." When this happens, you really have to recognize that you are not in danger. This thought can be so powe

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. Today I am so thrilled to share a fantastic interview I did with Sommer Grandchamp. Sommer has OCD and anxiety and she, just like so many people, went through some not so great therapy until she found the gold standard treatment for OCD, Exposure and Response Prevention. However, along the way she found that she needed some additional skills to help with her mental health. With her therapist, she learned a type of therapy called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). Sommer is here today to talk with us about DBT and mindfulness and how these complements to ERP have been so useful in her recovery journey. I am a huge DBT fan and I actually use it a lot with my patients and clients, even though I tend not to discuss it too often. It really is so helpful to many people especially as an addition to ERP. Sommer not only shares some of her OCD story with us today, but she also shares the tools and different DBT skills that she uses to complime

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. I am so excited because today we are so lucky to have with us again Dr. Jonathan Grayson. Dr. Grayson is a psychologist who has been specializing in the treatment of OCD for more than 40 years. He is also the author of Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and founder of The Grayson LA Treatment Center for Anxiety and OCD. We did an episode a couple of weeks ago that I hope you all were able to hear and at the end of that conversation we both really felt that we needed more time to talk about acceptance. I first want to ask you all how often do you get stuck wrestling with the way things are? Feeling that you don't really like the way things are, that you're sad about the way things are, that you're anxious about the way things are. Maybe you feel anxious or uncertain, or you are beating yourself up because you do not feel that you are good enough or smart enough or well enough? If that sounds like you then you are going to really lo

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit. Today on the podcast, I am so thrilled to have such an amazing and talented guest, Georgia Lock, on with us. Georgia is an actor, presenter, OCD advocate, and poet. She lives in London and has so much wisdom and beauty to share with us. Georgia is here to share how she has used poetry to turn the pain of her experience with OCD into beauty. Georgia shares her OCD story and recovery journey with us. We also have a great conversation about shame, guilt, and grief. Georgia shares several of her poems with us and you will see why she is an award winning poet. Her poetry explains so well what it is like to live with mental illness, anxiety, and OCD. I just love when people can use words to perfectly describe what it is like to experience something, whether that be really joyful or really, really painful. Her poetry takes the pain that she has experienced and wraps it in such beauty. I truly hope you enjoy this conversation. It is a lovely story abou

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. Today I wanted to talk to you about something that I have been struggling with recently. So you all know that I made the decision to travel back to Australia to visit my family. This decision caused a good deal of anxiety initially, but I also soon recognized that feelings of hyper-responsibility, such as am I being irresponsible by going home, were popping up as well. I had to break this down. Why do we have this sense of hyper-responsibility to always do things "right"? That level of responsibility can cause us a tremendous degree of anxiety.  We tend to put expectations that are unrealistic on ourselves to be perfect, good, the fixer of all things broken. So how can we take a step back from that? We actually exist on a spectrum. When you are anxious, maybe you need to recognize that so much of that anxiety is driven from these feelings of hyper-responsibility, from this fear of being irresponsible. That's key, my friends. Just because

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. As I am working on this podcast, I am about to embark on an international trip where I will be gone for a long time, away from my family, and part of the time isolated, in a quarantine hotel for several weeks. My emotions, I'm not going to lie, are all over the place. I swing from being grateful to angry to sad to happy to fearful. So I thought this was actually a perfect time for the subject of this episode which is your feelings are meant for feeling. Right now, I am having all of these different feelings, opposing feelings. Some of them are pretty strong and aggressive. Some will cause me significant discomfort and pain and some will be new, and I'll be curious about them.  We tend to get into trouble when we start to believe that we are supposed to control our feelings and be the gatekeeper of them. We allow some feelings and push others out. I want you all to know that you are supposed to feel your feelings, all of them. When you f

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. On today's episode I am so excited to have Sean Shinnock with us. Sean is an amazing artist and mental health advocate and he is just one of the sweetest souls that I know. I am so thrilled to have Sean with me today to talk about the monsters that live inside us.  Now, for those of you who have heard Sean speak before, you know that he has a project called Draw Your Monster. The idea is for you to draw your monster, personify it, and actually bring that monster to life. You can then begin to have a conversation or a relationship with your monster which actually helps you with your recovery.  In our conversation today, we talk about our own monsters and what they look like, but we also go on to discuss the stigma and shame that lives within us and the pain that we go through when living with a chronic illness as well as a mental illness. We discuss the importance of accountability and strong support systems and we also have a beautiful

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. Today we are going to be talking about a subject that I hope will resonate with a lot of you. We are going to be discussing the stages of grief because I really want to normalize the experience of grief and give you all permission to grieve what we are collectively going through right now. The stages of grief were first identified by psychiatrist and researcher, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. The first stage is denial. You may deny that the event happened, or deny your feelings, or you isolate away from people so that you don't have to talk about your feelings. The second stage is anger. You are grieving the loss of something and that makes you angry because it feels unfair. You may be angry about coronavirus or the loss of a loved one or maybe even your mental illness. The third stage is bargaining. You may do an analysis of the event and then start to go into a negotiation process in your mind. "If only I hadn't done this, it would have been be

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. Today on the podcast we have a wonderful interview with OCD and mental health advocate Mimi Cole. Mimi is currently working on her graduate degree in counseling and she is here to talk with us today about her lived experience with OCD, scrupulosity, and an eating disorder. Mimi so beautifully states that she wants to share her story in order to increase awareness, education and resources while decreasing the shame and misconceptions surrounding OCD. Mimi shares her OCD story, specifically her struggles with scrupulosity. She describes how her religion and her religious upbringing became intertwined with perfectionism and OCD. She shares a bit about her exposures for scrupulosity and what motivated her to begin ERP. Mimi also describes her experience with orthorexia and her obsessions surrounding clean eating and how she feels this became a link between OCD and an eating disorder. We discuss that intersection between body image, clean ea