What I Know Now

Working with individuals with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder has been incredibly rewarding and eye-opening. It’s become very evident to me, and subsequently my clients, that strength and determination will always be stronger than fear and anxiety. What has saddened me about working with this population is seeing how far in life some people can get without learning this. I have clients in all stages of life who have spent countless hours thinking that their fear and anxiety had the power to dictate their abilities to joyfully live their life. Do I blame them? Absolutely not! How can one prove this to themselves if their friends, families, and even therapists are telling them to “think about something else” or “avoid [fill in the blank] so you don’t have to feel that way anymore”?

I used to be one of those well-intentioned therapists who taught that messaging. Let’s be clear – for many people that messaging can be incredibly powerful and life-changing. For those with OCD however, it can be isolating, shame-invoking, and simply depressing. It can also actually encourage the use of more compulsions, like rumination, distraction, or avoidance. As I look at my career so far at a glance, there are many clients I now identify that I was giving wrong strategies to. Do I blame myself? Absolutely not! We’re all learning, which I see more and more in myself each day. I am grateful to now have the tools and be able to provide the tools to my clients. There’s nothing quite like seeing someone go from saying “I will never be able to do this,” to “I did it” or even “I want to do it again!”

My boss and CalmOCD founder, Dr. Sara Brungardt, shares a similar sentiment:

“When I train my staff I am always open and honest about the mistakes I have made while being a therapist early on in my career. I had the opportunity to work with amazing clients over the years and I can now reflect on which clients had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and I missed it. They presented with fear of vomiting, fear of not getting better, fears of harming others, perfectionism and more. In 2016 when I was trained in OCD I started to think about all of the former clients I did a disservice to by not catching their OCD and providing them with a proper diagnosis. Now that I know better I have to do better.”

As I tell my clients all the time – It’s unfair to blame “past you” for not knowing what you know now. It’s completely fair to encourage “current you” to take what you know and set “future you” up for happiness, fulfillment, and so much more.

And here’s what I know now… Often, our clients come to us with a former diagnosis of “anxiety” or “generalized anxiety disorder” and have sometimes gone decades without the proper obsessive-compulsive disorder diagnosis and therefore have not entered into quality evidence-based treatment. OCD treatment is meant to be short-term. More often than not our clients have been in traditional talk therapy for years with very minimal progress. At CalmOCD we strive to reduce symptoms quickly by helping our clients reduce avoidant behaviors. We educate our clients on the importance of healing their relationship with uncomfortable emotions. They learn they can feel the fear and do it anyway.