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Dealing With OCD Spikes
My OCD has been calm lately. I knock on wood when I say that. Really, how well I manage my OCD is completely dependent on me. That’s not to say that I don’t have random spikes of anxiety. Some days I feel more anxious than others. Some days I see a million triggers, other days I see none. Some days, I automatically start compulsions and other days I don’t. The other day, my therapist wanted me to do research on a topic. I started to get anxious about this rather quickly. I didn’t know why she wanted me to research this. I started having a lot of automatic thoughts, “Does…
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Five Reasons Everyone Should Get Therapy
I love therapy. I’ve been going on and off for about eight years. Therapy is an important tool for me to stay on top of my mental health. When I was younger, I struggled with anxiety quite a bit. Therapy allowed me a safe space to divulge my fears and face them. I learned coping skills and anxiety no longer felt like a burden. It was something I had and after time, I didn’t even think about it anymore. Now, for the past year, my OCD has been popping up and bothering me once again. So, I’m back in therapy. Truthfully, if I wasn’t moving around so much I don’t…
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What to do When You Feel Out of Control
There’s been a lot going on lately. The world seems to have flipped upside down, at least in the United States. I’m not going to get into the politics of it. Right now, you might feel out of control. We’re all experiencing a little bit of feel helpless. So how do we deal with that? Here are some ideas to help you regain a sense of control! Turn Off the TV This is important. We all need to stay informed and up to date but it doesn’t have to be our primary focus. You need to take a step back. What is happening is not going to change if you…
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Creating a Vision Board
This week I was discussing with my therapist goals and self-care. Both are important in achieving what you want out of life. Finding self-care has been difficult for me lately. I’ve been in and out of appointments, along with school and other obligations self-care falls away. I always keep up my healthy patterns but during the day, I do very little to let myself take a breath. My therapist brought up a lot of various ideas but one that stuck with me was a vision board. Since I’m creating a new one, I figured I would outline what I’m doing. If you need a boost, I’d suggest you build one…
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Confronting Perfectionism
I have been a perfectionist for as long as I can remember. When I was in grade school, I had a 504 plan to aid me in my battle with anxiety. They tested me on a variety of skills to see exactly where I was struggling. I was given a puzzle and asked to complete it as quickly as I could. I sat there and moved with relative speed but continually went back and checked my work. As I continued to do this, I ran out the clock. What they saw and later explained to me, there were no issues in my ability to solve the puzzle. My inability to…
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A Review of the NOCD App
I’ve been using NOCD for about a month now. I’ll be honest, I haven’t been very active on it lately. There’s been a lot going on in my life and I’ve neglected to do my OCD tracking and homework. Because of this, I wanted to do a review of the app if you haven’t used it. Right away when I found this app, I got excited. It is tailored for OCD and not general anxiety which makes it easy to use. There are a few different elements to it. There’s a discussion board, exercise, SOS, and progress tracking. You can also speak with a therapist through this app. Since I…
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It's Not All or Nothing
Too often, I get stuck in the mindset of all or nothing. I’m going to do a hard workout or no workout at all. I’m going to get everything on my checklist done or procrastinate everything. The reality is, life doesn’t work like that. As much as my brain tells me it does, life is not all or nothing. This is a stumbling block for me. I associate productivity and happiness with accomplishing all of my goals. I may not be able to do that on a daily basis and that creates anger. Once again, I’m back to acceptance. We must accept what we cannot change and focus on what…
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Self Care: 101
I have been doing a little extra self care lately. This looks different depending on your lifestyle. These are some of my self care tips and I hope they help you find a self care routine. We could all use a little extra love in this time of quarantine. It might as well come from the person who should love you the most, yourself! Take a Bath I hadn’t taken a bath in years. I used to take at least one a day. The other week my muscles were sore, my hip was hurting and the chiropractor wasn’t an option. I decided it was time to revisit the idea of…
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Learning to be Mindful
Mindfulness is a term that has become well known. It’s good for everything. Mental, physical and emotional health can all be improved by being mindful. What is mindfulness? Living in the moment is a great theory but in practice it can be quite difficult. I’ve talked before about radical acceptance and how it can improve your life. Mindfulness can come with radical acceptance. It often comes hand and hand with many different mental health strategies. In pain prevention or response, mindfulness can be utilized to endure. It’s possibilities are endless, so where do we start? Right here…. Take a deep breath When anxious or in pain, we often start to…
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Overcoming My Fear of Death
Death is my greatest fear. I expected to have this healthy and unworldly understanding of death after having my throat swell. That didn’t happen. Instead, I continued to become more afraid. Dealing with this fear isn’t simple. It’s not like a fear of heights. Not that that’s simple because I’m still afraid of heights. My point is, how does one overcome a fear of death? This has been the theme of my OCD, when it senses something as a fear in my life I get anxious. It starts to pick out things that aren’t threats. Identifying what’s real and what’s not is very difficult. Anyone who’s dealt with anxiety can…
