When you first come in to see a therapist for help with anxiety or OCD, you want to feel assured that the therapy is actually going to work. You understandably want to know that you will not be wasting your precious time and money on something ineffective. You are in a great deal of distress,…
In my previous post, I explained the worry process in detail: what it is, what keeps it going, and why it’s so hard to stop worrying. In this post, I’m going to show you what you can do about it to put an end to the worry cycle. Click here to read part one A…
If you struggle with worry, you’ve probably asked yourself plenty of times: “Why can’t I just stop thinking about this?” Well in this post, I will explain why. It’s a common scenario: a concern about the future randomly pops into your head one day. Without warning, this worry comes to dominate your thoughts. You can’t…
Your mind can be a real pain in the ass. How do I know this? Because my mind is a pain in the ass too. So is the mind of every client I’ve ever had. So is the mind of pretty much every single person on earth. Being a pain in the ass is what…
Sometimes when you feel frustrated about your anxiety, you might start comparing yourself to people who don’t appear to have much anxiety…people you consider “normal”. You might see yourself as flawed because of your anxiety problem, and you wonder why it seems so easy for other people to just not worry about things. You wonder…
At some point in therapy, usually during our first session, almost all of my clients ask me this question: “How did I get this anxiety problem? What started it?” With most people, my honest answer is that I don’t know…at least, I don’t know how the anxiety about their particular issue started. I can sometimes…
You’ve probably been through this before: You’re feeling anxious. You’re worrying about something that you know is irrational. You tell yourself to stop thinking about it, but you can’t. Then you get frustrated that you can’t make yourself stop thinking about it. And the cycle continues. You’re not alone. My clients tell me this all…