Podcasts about bfrbs

JOIN DESTINY'S MEMBERSHIP - for folks with chronic pain & illness→ ⁠Join Welcome To The Waiting Room⁠ (ongoing support for staying regulated while living with chronic illness - This does not replace therapy, but it's a great addition to your regular therapy appointments)**Episode summary:In this episode, therapist Pamela Madsen, MS, LPC, explores the often-overlooked connection between narcissistic abuse and chronic pain conditions. Pamela breaks down the four types of narcissistic parents (grandiose, covert, malignant, and communal) and explains how growing up with narcissistic caregivers creates hypervigilance that extends beyond scanning the environment to scanning the body internally, amplifying pain perception and contributing to conditions like fibromyalgia, IBS, and migraines. She discusses why many high-achieving adults don't recognize their childhood experiences as traumatic, how complex PTSD manifests in successful people who come to therapy for seemingly unrelated issues, and why addressing the underlying trauma through therapy can significantly improve both emotional well-being and physical pain symptoms. Pamela emphasizes that healing begins with repairing the relationship with oneself and recognizing that you deserve care and are worthy of good things, rather than existing solely to benefit others.MEET DESTINY: Website / Instagram / BlueSky / YouTube / TikTokMEET GUEST: Website / Instagram / FacebookPamela is the owner of Sea Change Therapy, where there is a variety of specialties in the office with accessible building and easy parking access. Pamela also provide supervision and clinical consultation to other professionals.SIGN UP FOR DESTINY'S NEXT LIVE WORKSHOP→ Beyond the Behavior: Understanding hair pulling, skin picking, nail biting, or other body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) in Chronic Illnesshttps://www.thechronicillnesstherapist.com/workshops→ READ THE BLOG FOR THIS EPISODEASK DESTINY ANYTHING→ Submit your questions hereFOR YOU, OUR PODCAST LISTENERSJOIN DESTINY'S MEMBERSHIP - for folks with chronic pain & illness→ ⁠Join Welcome To The Waiting Room⁠ (ongoing support for staying regulated while living with chronic illness - This does not replace therapy, but it's a great addition to your regular therapy appointments)FOR MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS

Join your host, Nicole Morris, LMFT and Mental Health Correspondent, as she sits down with Aneela Idnani, co-founder of HabitAware and a passionate advocate for the Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior (BFRB) community. Aneela shares her powerful personal journey with trichotillomania (hair pulling), the shame and secrecy she carried for years, and how one moment of vulnerability led to the creation of the Keen bracelet—a groundbreaking tool for building awareness and reclaiming control. Together, we explore the emotional complexity of BFRBs, the importance of community and compassion, and the incredible hope that comes with understanding and support. So join the conversation!

Welcome to the Personal Development Trailblazers Podcast! In today's episode, we're diving deep into something that hits close to home for so many of us—those unwanted behaviors we keep repeating, even when we're desperate to stop.Laura Hope is a Behavior Transformation Coach who helps people break free from unwanted habits and reclaim their confidence. At Hope and Healing Coach, she combines her years of clinical experience with deep empathy to guide clients toward lasting change, specializing in body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) such as hair pulling or skin picking as well as other frustrating behaviors such as stress eating or impulse spending. When she's not empowering clients to embrace radical self-acceptance, you'll find her advocating for BFRB awareness, tending to her ever-growing plant collection, or spending time with her two sons and husband. Connect with Laura Here: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hopeandhealingcoachInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopeandhealingcoach/Website: https://hopeandhealingcoach.com/Grab the freebie here: Try This Instead: Regulation Strategies to Overcome Unwanted Behaviors: https://hopeandhealingcoach.kit.com/335ecb9780===================================If you enjoyed this episode, remember to hit the like button and subscribe. Then share this episode with your friends.Thanks for watching the Personal Development Trailblazers Podcast. This podcast is part of the Digital Trailblazer family of podcasts. To learn more about Digital Trailblazer and what we do to help entrepreneurs, go to DigitalTrailblazer.com.Are you a coach, consultant, expert, or online course creator? Then we'd love to invite you to our FREE Facebook Group where you can learn the best strategies to land more high-ticket clients and customers. QUICK LINKS: APPLY TO BE FEATURED: https://app.digitaltrailblazer.com/podcast-guest-applicationDIGITAL TRAILBLAZER: https://digitaltrailblazer.com/

Holly @hollylynnj is 35 years young and has been living with trichotillomania since she was 16 but that isn't her only BFRB—she also lives with dermatillomania and has since puberty. Holly currently lives in Tampa, Florida with her boyfriend of almost 10 years, she's a cat mom to 2 fur babies, and is a goal oriented go getter who is ready to speak her truth about living with BFRBs.— This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware and use code LALLYLOVE for 10% off sitewide! Did you know HabitAware also offers virtual peer coaching? This one-to-one peer-based program will coach you through shifting mindset, practicing healthy strategies and creating your personal roadmap to recovery. To work with me, Ellen or Aneela, head over to habitaware.com/coaching today.—Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Trich Talks.Begin your journey to self-acceptance with trichotillomania by enrolling in my course, Sharing Our Stories. Sharing Our Stories does a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. You can learn more at barbaralally.com

In this inspiring episode, Dr. Elizabeth McIngvale and Cali Werner sit down with Aneela Idnani Kumar, a TED Talk speaker, entrepreneur, and advocate for individuals living with body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) such as trichotillomania (hair pulling). Aneela shares her personal journey from silent suffering to creating HabitAware, a smart bracelet that helps users bring awareness to their BFRBs and make meaningful changes. This episode dives into mental health innovation, stigma reduction, and how to transform pain into purpose.Key Points:[0:00] - Introduction to Aneela Idnani Kumar and HabitAwareMeet Aneela, a TED Talk speaker and inventor of HabitAware, a Time Magazine Best Invention, aimed at helping individuals with BFRBs like hair-pulling and skin-picking.[15:50] - Turning Pain Into PurposeAneela reflects on how her father's cancer diagnosis triggered her BFRB and how her personal struggles inspired her to create tools that help others.[22:54] - How HabitAware WorksLearn how the HabitAware bracelet tracks behaviors in real time, notifies wearers, and supports behavioral change—integrating seamlessly into therapy.[32:26] - Breaking the Silence Around BFRBsAneela discusses the stigma surrounding BFRBs and how awareness, education, and compassion can encourage individuals to seek help earlier.[37:30] - Advice for Those Suffering in SilenceAneela shares heartfelt advice for anyone struggling with BFRBs: from self-compassion to seeking support, you don't have to walk this journey alone.Quotable Moments:[22:51] “Turning pain into purpose is the most powerful thing we can do.”—Aneela Idnani[32:44] “Suffering in silence keeps you stuck. Taking the first step—telling someone—changes everything.”—Aneela Idnani[37:25] “Your behavior doesn't define you. There's help, hope, and community waiting for you.”—Aneela IdnaniLinks Mentioned: • HabitAware: www.habitaware.com • Aneela's TED Talk: https://youtu.be/WkfBtT4VbI4?si=HPyyD91KGISLp_s7 • Anxiety Society Podcast Website: www.anxietysocietypodcast.comAneela's inspiring journey is a testament to the power of awareness and the importance of turning personal challenges into opportunities to help others. If you or someone you know struggles with BFRBs, this episode is a powerful reminder that healing is possible, and you don't have to face it alone. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who needs it!

In dieser Episode ist Prof. Dr. Christian Stierle, Verhaltenstherapeut und Professor für klinische Psychologie, zu Gast. In unserem Gespräch erklärt Christian u.a., was es mit der Compassion Focused Therapy auf sich hat, wie wichtig Mitgefühl - mit sich selbst und anderen - im Alltag ist und welche Bedeutung ihm in der Behandlung von psychischen Störungen zukommt, bei denen Scham und Schuldgefühle eine zentrale Rolle spielen. Es geht um Selbstkritik, den Umgang mit Emotionen und auch um die Frage, warum es (manchmal) so schwer ist, mit sich selbst und anderen mitfühlend umzugehen. Gegen Ende der Folge gibt es außerdem einige Ideen, wie sich dem Thema Compassion bzw. Mitgefühl nähern und erste Schritte im Alltag umsetzen kann. Buchempfehlungen (unbezahlte Werbung): Stierle, C. (2022). Compassion Focused Therapy in der Praxis. Beltz Neff, K. & Germer, C. Selbstmitgefühl (2019). – Das Übungsbuch. Arbor Verlag GmbH **************************************************** Wenn Du diesen Podcast gerne unterstützen möchtest - hier geht es zur BFRB.care Kaffeekasse: https://ko-fi.com/bfrbcare (Falls Euch das lieber ist: Ihr könnt auch einfach direkt via Paypal an (bfrb.care(at)gmail.com) überweisen.) Weitere Infos zu Skin Picking bzw. Dermatillomanie, Trichotillomanie, Nägelkauen und anderen BFRBs findest Du auf meiner Homepage: www.skinpicking-trichotillomanie.de Wenn Du Fragen, Ideen oder Wünsche für bestimmte Themen hast, schreib mir einfach gerne über meine Homepage oder auf Instagram unter: https://www.instagram.com/bfrb.care/

In this episode, hosts Dr. Elizabeth McIngvale and Cali Werner explore body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) like hair-pulling and skin-picking with Dr. Suzanne Mouton-Odum, a leading expert in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). They discuss the science behind BFRBs, the importance of comprehensive treatment, and how to reduce shame while promoting self-regulation. Whether you're a professional, a parent, or someone experiencing these behaviors, this episode is packed with insights and actionable advice to foster understanding and support.Key Points:[0:00] - Introduction to Anxiety and Today's TopicElection Day sets the stage for a candid conversation about anxiety, self-regulation, and the challenges of navigating tense moments.[8:15] - What Are BFRBs and Why Do They Matter?Dr. Mouton-Odum defines BFRBs as self-regulation behaviors and dives into their complexity, including their emotional, sensory, and psychological triggers.[17:50] - Dispelling Myths About Trauma and BFRBsA discussion on why BFRBs are often misunderstood and not always linked to past trauma, emphasizing the importance of targeted treatment.[27:00] - Comprehensive Behavioral Treatment (Comb)Exploring the core principles of Comb therapy, including sensory, cognitive, emotional, motor, and environmental factors.[43:30] - Breaking the Shame Cycle and Promoting AwarenessHow understanding the function of behaviors can reduce shame and foster effective treatment for individuals struggling with BFRBs.Quotable Moments:[7:30] “Anxiety isn't dangerous; it's uncomfortable, but it's part of living.”—Cali Werner[20:45] “You are not the sum of your anxiety, OCD, or hair-pulling. You are a whole human being.”—Dr. Suzanne Mouton-Odum[47:15] “Shame impacts the whole person. Addressing the behavior is just the beginning.”—Dr. Suzanne Mouton-OdumLinks Mentioned: • TLC Foundation for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors: www.bfrb.org • Anxiety Society Podcast Website: www.anxietysocietypodcast.comDr. Mouton-Odum's expertise highlights the importance of addressing both the behaviors and the shame associated with BFRBs, while empowering individuals with practical tools. If you or someone you know struggles with BFRBs, this episode provides hope, insight, and actionable strategies. Don't forget to subscribe, and join the Anxiety Society community to continue this important conversation.

Do you struggle with skin picking, hair pulling, nail biting, or other repetitive behaviors you just can't seem to stop? These actions, known as Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs), go far beyond “bad habits” and can have deep emotional and psychological roots. But what causes them? And more importantly, how can they be managed? In this episode of The Happier Life Project, licensed therapist and BFRBs specialist Nathan Peterson joins us to explore the complexities of these compulsive behaviors. With years of experience working in mental health clinics, hospitals, schools, and his private practice in Texas, Nathan has dedicated his career to helping people navigate OCD, anxiety, tics, Tourette's, and BFRBs. He also runs a popular OCD and anxiety YouTube channel, providing education and hope to millions. BFRBs often serve as coping mechanisms for stress, anxiety, boredom, or perfectionism, but they can also occur without conscious awareness. These repetitive self-grooming behaviors impact daily life and can be physically harmful, leading to hair loss, skin infections, and scarring. The emotional consequences range from shame and self-consciousness to anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphic disorder. In this episode, we explore what makes a BFRB problematic. Is it a symptom of something deeper, such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, or OCD, or rather an isolated issue? Are BFRBs hereditary—can the repetitive compulsion be passed down? We also examine the connection between skin picking and perfectionism, along with the deeper psychological and emotional factors that drive these behaviors. Plus, we take a closer look at the role of compulsions and frustration in maintaining BFRBs, how can they be treated, or perhaps even accepted, and practical strategies for managing and resisting the urge to pick, pull, bite, or chew. If you're seeking answers and support, this episode is packed with insights to help you take control of your BFRB or support someone you know who struggles with this condition. To download the My Possible Self app: https://mypossibleself.app.link/podcast To follow My Possible Self on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mypossibleself To follow Nate on Instagram: www.instagram.com/ocdandanxietyonline Nate's self-directed course for hair-pulling/skin-picking:  www.ocd-anxiety.com Nate's YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/ocdandanxiety   The most common Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs) include: Trichotillomania (Hair-Pulling Disorder) – Compulsively pulling out hair from the scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes, or other areas of the body. Dermatillomania (Skin-Picking Disorder/Excoriation Disorder) – Repeatedly picking at the skin, often leading to wounds, scarring, or infections. Onychophagia (Chronic Nail Biting) – Habitual nail biting that can cause damage to the nails and surrounding skin. Lip Biting (Lip Chewing Disorder) – Biting or chewing on the lips, sometimes to the point of causing sores or bleeding. Cheek Biting (Morsicatio Buccarum) – Biting the inside of the cheeks, leading to irritation, sores, or thickened skin. Rhinotillexomania (Compulsive Nose Picking) – Frequent and intense nose picking that can result in nasal damage or infections.

In this episode, hosts Ash and Dusty dive into the topic of Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs), which are common among individuals with ADHD. They discuss behaviors such as skin picking, nail biting, and hair pulling, highlighting how these actions serve as manifestations of underlying hyperactivity and sensory issues. Dusty shares personal anecdotes about her struggles with nail biting and cuticle peeling, emphasizing the importance of understanding the triggers and habitual patterns that lead to these behaviors. Ash adds insights into how daily routines and grooming practices can help mitigate these tendencies by addressing the sensory discomfort that often drives them. The hosts explore practical solutions for managing BFRBs, ranging from habit reversal techniques to the use of fidgets and sensory aids. They emphasize the importance of maintaining a balanced lifestyle with adequate sleep, exercise, and self-care to reduce the occurrence of these behaviors. By engineering a life that aligns with the needs of an ADHD brain, individuals can better manage their attention and reduce stress, ultimately decreasing the frequency of BFRBs. Ash and Dusty encourage listeners to cultivate an awareness of their habits and to implement small changes that can lead to significant improvements in managing repetitive behaviors. Episode links + resources: Join the Community | Become a Patron Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Asher and Dusty For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com

Stacy Nakell @stacynakell_lcsw is a licensed clinical social worker, therapist, and author specializing in treating body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) such as trichotillomania and skin picking. Having lived with skin picking herself, Stacy leads with a compassionate and evidence-based approach that she has shared with clients and treatment professionals alike. Learn more about Stacy by visiting her website: https://stacynakell.com/— This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware and use code LALLYLOVE for 10% off sitewide! Did you know HabitAware also offers virtual peer coaching? This one-to-one peer-based program will coach you through shifting mindset, practicing healthy strategies and creating your personal roadmap to recovery. To work with me, Ellen or Aneela, head over to habitaware.com/coaching today.—Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Trich Talks.Begin your journey to self-acceptance with trichotillomania by enrolling in my course, Sharing Our Stories. Sharing Our Stories does a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. You can learn more at barbaralally.com

Why do some people compulsively pull their hair or pick at their skin? In this episode, Dr. McGrath breaks down body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs), including trichotillomania (hair pulling) and excoriation disorder (skin picking). He dives into why these compulsions happen, the cycle that keeps them going, and — most importantly — how to break free. If you or someone you know struggles with these habits, help is available. Visit https://learn.nocd.com/YT to connect with a specialized therapist and kickstart your recovery journey.Follow us on social media:https://www.instagram.com/treatmyocd/https://twitter.com/treatmyocdhttps://www.tiktok.com/@treatmyocdFollow us on social media:https://www.instagram.com/treatmyocd/https://twitter.com/treatmyocdhttps://www.tiktok.com/@treatmyocd

Kate Blake @kate_blake_author grew up in the United States, moved to South Korea then Japan, and now lives in Australia with her husband, daughter, and two rescue dogs. She's had trichotillomania for over 20 years—since she was 13 years old. She recently published the book BFRBs for Kids: A Gentle Introduction to Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors, an affirming, non-judgmental book for little ones with BFRBs.Get a copy of Kate's book here!—This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware and use code LALLYLOVE for 10% off sitewide!Did you know HabitAware also offers virtual peer coaching? This one-to-one peer-based program will coach you through shifting mindset, practicing healthy strategies and creating your personal roadmap to recovery. To work with me, Ellen or Aneela, head over to habitaware.com/coaching today.—Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Trich Talks.Begin your journey to self-acceptance with trichotillomania by enrolling in my course, Sharing Our Stories. Sharing Our Stories does a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. You can learn more at barbaralally.com

In dieser Episode teile ich ein paar Gedanken zu den Weihnachtsfeiertagen und zum Jahresende mit Euch - Gedanken zu all dem Stress und den Ansprüchen und Erwartungen, die so in der Luft liegen. Und es geht u.a. um die Fragen: Wie viel Platz ist an den Feiertagen für schwierige Gefühle? Muss ich immer funktionieren? Wie sieht es eigentlich mit meinen Erfolgen und Vorsätzen für das ablaufende Jahr aus? Muss ich mich deswegen schlecht fühlen? Darf ich stolz auf mich sein? Und über allem steht die Frage: Wie kann ich es mir vielleicht ein wenig leichter machen? Wie kann ich ein wenig milder mit mir und anderen umgehen? Wenn Du diesen Podcast gerne unterstützen möchtest - hier findest Du die BFRB.care Kaffeekasse: https://ko-fi.com/bfrbcare (Falls Dir das lieber ist: Du kannst natürlich auch einfach direkt via Paypal an (bfrb.care(at)gmail.com) überweisen.) Weitere Infos zu Skin Picking bzw. Dermatillomanie, Trichotillomanie, Nägelkauen und anderen BFRBs findest Du auf meiner Homepage: www.skinpicking-trichotillomanie.de Wenn Du Fragen, Ideen oder Wünsche für bestimmte Themen hast, schreib mir einfach gerne über meine Homepage oder auf Instagram unter: https://www.instagram.com/bfrb.care/

Francesca @francizoia has lived with body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) from a young age, often feeling weird and out of place because of it. However, as an adult she was able to do a lot of therapy, participate in many support groups, and find her community of BFRBers. This inspired her to create the first Italian community @comunita_crfc aimed to raise awareness and support those with BFRBs. She now co-hosts a podcast that translates to “What a bad habit” and has been able to help hundreds of people feel like they're not alone.Join her community: https://www.comunitacrfc.com/Listen to her podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/1AZkbP8Rqi7zSPEz79esRt— This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware and use code LALLYLOVE for 10% off sitewide! Did you know HabitAware also offers virtual peer coaching? This one-to-one peer-based program will coach you through shifting mindset, practicing healthy strategies and creating your personal roadmap to recovery. To work with me, Ellen or Aneela, head over to habitaware.com/coaching today.—Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Trich Talks.Begin your journey to self-acceptance with trichotillomania by enrolling in my course, Sharing Our Stories. Sharing Our Stories does a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. You can learn more at barbaralally.com

Nina Rifkind is the founder of the Anxiety & OCD Therapy Center, located in northwestern New Jersey. Her practice roots from her own childhood, when she constantly battled social anxiety, panic attacks, agoraphobia, and self-doubt. Today, she shares her 20 years of experience in the field treating adolescents and adults with anxiety disorders, phobias, OCD, health anxiety, body dysmorphia, BFRBs and more. She integrates CBT, ERP, ACT, and other psychodynamic techniques to help her patients navigate through their journey with mental health. In this episode we talk about:  ◾️ Differentiating Agoraphobia and OCD ◾️ Approaching phobias through therapy ◾️ Facing fears & phobias in everyday life Find Nina here: ocdnj.com Find Zach here: zachwesterbeck.com/ocd-coaching @zach_westerbeck Discover the transformative power of my Concierge OCD Coaching program, where personalized support meets proven strategies to help you overcome intrusive thoughts and reclaim your life. Experience up to two one-on-one coaching sessions each week, tailored resources designed specifically for your journey, and a customized roadmap that guides you every step of the way. Plus, enjoy text support between sessions to keep you on track and motivated. This isn't just coaching; it's a life-changing opportunity to unlock your potential and embrace a calmer, happier existence. Don't wait—take the first step toward your transformation and apply now:  Disclaimer: Nothing here is medical advice. Please do your own research. The information above is just for informational and educational purposes. If you require assistance with any mental health or medical issue, please contact your healthcare provider for any medical care or medical advice.

Join your host, Nicole Morris, LMFT and Mental Health Correspondent as she kicks off the annual OC-Related Disorders (OCRDs) Series! Nicole starts with guest experts, Dr. Marla Deibler, PsyD, & Dr. Renae Reinardy, PsyD. Together, they explore the nuances of BFRBs, discussing how these behaviors function as coping mechanisms and the importance of individualized, compassionate treatment. This episode touches on how BFRBs impact individuals and their families, touching on parenting strategies, treatment models and adult relationships. Join the conversation, as we unpack the complex nature of BFRBs, offer valuable insights, resources and a whole lot of hope!

Nearly 30 years with trichotillomania, Jen @the_jennifer_grace has been through it all, tried it all, felt it all, and has come out even stronger—as the super mom to help her kids with BFRBs and build up self-love :)Listen to Jen's first appearance on Trich Talks by clicking here!— This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware and use code LALLYLOVE for 10% off sitewide! Did you know HabitAware also offers virtual peer coaching? This one-to-one peer-based program will coach you through shifting mindset, practicing healthy strategies and creating your personal roadmap to recovery. To work with me, Ellen or Aneela, head over to habitaware.com/coaching today.—Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Trich Talks.Begin your journey to self-acceptance with trichotillomania by enrolling in my course, Sharing Our Stories. Sharing Our Stories does a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. You can learn more at barbaralally.com

Comments or feedback? Send us a text!Compulsive reassurance seeking can be a challenging issue for both clients and therapists to manage. Clients are often highly adept—sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly—at eliciting excessive reassurance from therapists and family members. At the same time, resisting the urge to seek reassurance can feel nearly impossible for clients. In this episode, Amanda Petrik-Gardner, LCPC, joins us to discuss core themes from her new book, "The Compulsive Reassurance Workbook". Our conversation covers:What compulsive reassurance seeking is and its significance across various mental health presentations.Differentiating between normal reassurance seeking and compulsive reassurance seeking.Common triggers that lead to compulsive reassurance seeking.The importance of distress tolerance in managing reassurance-seeking behaviors.Mental health disorders that are more susceptible to compulsive reassurance-seeking behaviors.he cycle of reassurance seeking and how it perpetuates anxiety.Avoiding the use of clinical interventions (e.g., a thought record) as a safety behavior.Key components of the reassurance-seeking cycle.Effective metaphors for psychoeducation.Guidance for family members on navigating this specific challenge.Treating compulsive reassurance seeking in complex situations (e.g., trauma, pandemics, checking the accuracy of completed tasks).The role of “extinction bursts” in exposure-based work.Relapse prevention and normalizing setbacks.Understanding when to approach versus step back from a feared stimulus.Managing dysfunctional beliefs about worry.Feedback or comments?  Email us at: oicbtpodcast@gmail.comAmanda Petrik-Gardner, LCPC specializes in the treatment of Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders. Amanda is the creator of the OCD Exposure Coloring Books and The Compulsive Reassurance Workbook, now available on Amazon. Amanda is on the board for OCD Kansas, an affiliate of the IOCDF (International OCD Foundation) and the president of the Kansas Counseling Association. She has completed the Behavioral Therapy Training Institute through the IOCDF and the Professional Training Institute through the TLC Foundation for BFRBs. Amanda currently provides Teletherapy to the states of Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, Michigan, Maine, Arizona and Florida.https://www.amandalcpc.com

Macy has trichotillomania and uses her own struggles with the disorder to propel her research on the topic. She also teaches psychology and uses her platform to educate students on the realities of body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs).Read Macy's research here: https://digital.library.txst.edu/items/b0072932-ecdd-4dc8-b689-a160c79251ce— This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware and use code LALLYLOVE for 10% off sitewide! Did you know HabitAware also offers virtual peer coaching? This one-to-one peer-based program will coach you through shifting mindset, practicing healthy strategies and creating your personal roadmap to recovery. To work with me, Ellen or Aneela, head over to habitaware.com/coaching today.—Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Trich Talks.Begin your journey to self-acceptance with trichotillomania by enrolling in my course, Sharing Our Stories. Sharing Our Stories does a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. You can learn more at barbaralally.com

It is not uncommon for kids with anxiety or OCD to also have issues with picking their skin or pulling their hair. These behaviors are classified as BFRBs, body-focused, repetitive behaviors. Although BFRBs are a common comorbid condition to anxiety and OCD, it is a separate disorder with its own set of therapy approaches. In this week's AT Parenting Survival Podcast, we celebrate BFRB week by having one of my favorite people on, Aneela Idnani from Habitaware. Aneela has struggled with trichotillomania her whole life. She took her pain and turned it into purpose; helping other people with BFRBs. She created a bracelet that helps people with BFRBs become more aware of when they are doing those behaviors. She also built a beautiful community filled with free support groups for kids and teens as well as services to support parents.Resources:HabitawareFree BFRB kid support group Free BFRB teen support groupParent Huddle SeriesThe BFRB Change CollectiveBFRB ChangemakersPickingme.orgThe TLC Foundation***This podcast episode is sponsored by NOCD. NOCD provides online OCD therapy in the US, UK, Australia and Canada. To schedule your free 15 minute consultation to see if NOCD is a right fit for you and your child, go to: https://go.treatmyocd.com/at_parentingThis podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be used to replace the guidance of a qualified professional.

Madison @Madison_lathrop has lived with dermatillomania (skin picking) and trichotillomania (hair pulling) since childhood. During the last three years, Madison has gone through tremendous growth within herself as well as her body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs). She took two huge steps in her journey by shaving her head as well as attending therapy. If you're thinking of going to a therapist, Madison's advice is this: just do it.—This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware and use code LALLYLOVE for 10% off sitewide!Did you know HabitAware also offers virtual peer coaching? This one-to-one peer-based program will coach you through shifting mindset, practicing healthy strategies and creating your personal roadmap to recovery. To work with me, Ellen or Aneela, head over to habitaware.com/coaching today.—Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Trich Talks.Begin your journey to self-acceptance with trichotillomania by enrolling in my course, Sharing Our Stories. Sharing Our Stories does a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. You can learn more at barbaralally.com

Jess @jessloufawcett lives with trichotillomania, dermatillomania, as well as autism. Although she still pulls and picks, her relationship with her body-focussed repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) has changed for the better. Jess's advice for those outside of the BFRB community: if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. — This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware and use code LALLYLOVE for 10% off sitewide! Did you know HabitAware also offers virtual peer coaching? This one-to-one peer-based program will coach you through shifting mindset, practicing healthy strategies and creating your personal roadmap to recovery. To work with me, Ellen or Aneela, head over to habitaware.com/coaching today.—Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Trich Talks.Begin your journey to self-acceptance with trichotillomania by enrolling in my course, Sharing Our Stories. Sharing Our Stories does a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. You can learn more at barbaralally.com

Gessie Perez @triumphanttrichster has had trichotillomania since age 11. Once living in shame and secrecy, she has since become a proud advocate and "Triumphant Trichster." Gessie is the author of two books about trichotillomania and the founder of Trichster Sisters, a program in which she sends care packages to young girls with trichotillomania and acts as a mentor. Gessie serves as the Programs Director for The Lyder Foundation for BFRBs, a non-profit dedicated to supporting BFRBs in communities of color. She is also a peer coach with HabitAware, facilitating their kid and teen hangouts. In her professional life, Gessie works as a care provider for kids with developmental disabilities. To learn more about Gessie you can visit her website triumphanttrichster.com— This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware and use code LALLYLOVE for 10% off sitewide! Did you know HabitAware also offers virtual peer coaching? This one-to-one peer-based program will coach you through shifting mindset, practicing healthy strategies and creating your personal roadmap to recovery. To work with me, Ellen or Aneela, head over to habitaware.com/coaching today.—Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Trich Talks.Begin your journey to self-acceptance with trichotillomania by enrolling in my course, Sharing Our Stories. Sharing Our Stories does a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. You can learn more at barbaralally.com

Lauren McKeaney is an advocate, writer, speaker and filmmaker. She's the founder and CEO of the Picking Me Foundation, the only nonprofit in the world dedicated to raising awareness and inspiring acceptance about dermatillomania and other body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs). Both people with eczema and those with BFRBs are often thinking about and touching their skin. We talk to Lauren about the similarities and differences between the two conditions and some of the things these two communities can learn from one another. What did you think of this episode? Consider writing us a review! National Eczema Association (NEA) NEA is the driving force for an eczema community fueled by knowledge, strengthened through collective action and propelled by the promise for a better future. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://nationaleczema.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Contact us: podcast@nationaleczema.org.

My guest this week is Dr. Marla Deibler, a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating anxiety. We discussed her excellent new book, The BFRB Recovery Workbook (affiliate link). Check out the publisher's website where you can download many free worksheets and resources. Topics we discussed included: When a body-focused repetitive behavior becomes a diagnosable disorder Common physical consequences of BFRBs Behaviors associated with the hair-pulling of trichotillomania, a type of BFRB The buildup of hair in the digestive system (trichobezoar) from ingesting hair What makes BFRBs so hard to stop The rewarding feeling that often accompanies BFRBs Fixing something with a BFRB that doesn't feel quite right Why willpower alone is usually not enough to stop BFRBs Ambivalence in the process of change: wanting to change and not wanting to change The importance of a functional analysis to understand what drives behaviors Wanting to jump to fixing a problematic behavior before understanding it The importance of awareness for treatment Practicing incompatible responses to interrupt the habit of BFRBs The relation of BFRBs to OCD and other types of compulsive behaviors The important role of acceptance and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) The problems of using punishment to shape behavior Marla W. Deibler, PsyD, ABPP, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Board-Certified in Behavioral and Cognitive Psychology, and Founder/Executive Director of The Center for Emotional Health of Greater Philadelphia. Marla serves on the Faculty of the Behavior Therapy Training Institute (BTTI) of the International OCD Foundation. She serves as President of the Board of Directors of OCD NJ, the NJ affiliate of the IOCDF, Consultant for the New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome, Visiting Clinical Supervisor at the Rutgers University Psychological Services Clinic, and Executive Council member of the ACBS OCD SIG. She is co-author of The BFRB Recovery Workbook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Effective Recovery from Hair Pulling, Skin Picking, Nail Biting, and Other Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Find Marla online at her website.

9 Ways to Stop Picking Your Skin This Summer As summer approaches and the weather gets hotter, many of us are eager to wear shorter sleeves and enjoy the sun. However, this often leads to increased skin exposure and, unfortunately, a greater temptation to pick at our skin. In today's article, we'll explore nine strategies to help you stop picking your skin this summer. These tips have been helpful to many of my clients, and I hope they will be just as beneficial for you. Understanding Skin Picking Before we dive into the strategies, it's important to understand what skin picking is. Clinically known as dermatillomania, skin picking is a type of body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB). People with this condition may pick at their skin, arms, lips, scalp, nails, and even more sensitive areas like the pubic region. It's similar to trichotillomania, which involves hair pulling. It's crucial to note that skin picking and hair pulling are not forms of self-harm. People who pick their skin are not trying to hurt themselves or seek attention. They often do it because they are either understimulated (bored) or overstimulated (anxious or overwhelmed). Understanding this can provide insight into the strategies we'll discuss. Strategy #1: Awareness Logs Awareness logs are a powerful tool in any stage of recovery. By logging every time you have the urge to pick, noting how much you picked, where, and for how long, you gain a better understanding of how this condition impacts your life. Many people find that having to document their behavior reduces the frequency of picking. Awareness logs are a key component of habit reversal training, a cognitive-behavioral therapy technique specifically designed for BFRBs. For more information about BFRB School, our online course for skin picking and hair pulling, CLICK HERE Strategy #2: Keep Your Hands Busy Engaging in a competing response can help divert your urge to pick. Competing responses might include using fidget toys, holding a stone, or playing with soothing textures. You can find many affordable fidgets online or at dollar stores. Create a basket of tactile items that you can use to keep your hands busy. Place these items around your house, in your car, and at work to ensure they are easily accessible when you need them. Strategy #3: Create a Skincare Routine A good skincare routine can help prevent irritation and dryness that might tempt you to pick. However, it's important not to overdo it, as too much attention to your skin can also trigger picking. Consult with your doctor to develop a routine that keeps your skin healthy without exacerbating your condition. Strategy #4: Use Physical Barriers Using physical barriers (called habit blockers) like gloves, band-aids, or long sleeves can prevent you from touching and picking at your skin. Some people find that keeping their nails short or wearing fake nails can reduce the tactile satisfaction of picking. Identify what works best for you and use these barriers consistently. Strategy #5: Self-Compassion Practicing self-compassion is vital. Beating yourself up for picking only increases negative emotions like shame and guilt, which can lead to more picking. Instead, practice radical acceptance and reduce self-criticism. This approach can help you feel more motivated and improve your overall well-being. Strategy #6: Manage Stress and Anxiety Managing stress and anxiety is crucial, as many people pick their skin to cope with these feelings. Cognitive-behavioral skills can help address faulty cognitions and behaviors that exacerbate stress. Consider taking an online course, like Overcoming Anxiety and Panic, to learn effective stress management techniques. Strategy #7: Establish a Support System Having a support system can make a significant difference. Whether it's family, friends, or online support groups like those at BFRB.org, having people to check in with can help you feel less alone and more accountable. Some people find it helpful to text or call a support person when they feel the urge to pick. Strategy #8: Stay Hydrated and Healthy Good nutrition and hydration can impact your skin's health. Speak with your doctor about how to maintain healthy skin through diet and hydration. Additionally, consider looking into over-the-counter medications like N-acetylcysteine, which has been shown to help with skin picking. Always consult with your doctor before starting any new supplement. Strategy #9: Set Realistic Goals and Track Progress Set achievable goals and track your progress. Instead of aiming to completely stop picking, focus on gradually reducing the behavior by a small percentage each week. Tracking your progress helps you see improvement and identify what strategies are working. Remember, small steps lead to significant changes. Conclusion These nine strategies can help you stop picking your skin this summer. Whether you use awareness logs, keep your hands busy with fidgets, or establish a support system, each step you take brings you closer to managing this behavior. Remember to practice self-compassion and set realistic goals. If you need additional support, consider enrolling in courses like BFRB School or Overcoming Anxiety and Panic. Transcript Today we're going to cover nine strategies to stop picking your skin this summer. It's getting hotter. You want to start wearing shorter sleeves or have your skin exposed to the sun more often, which means you're more likely to start picking at your skin. Let's talk about nine strategies that you can use right away. Hopefully, you find them as helpful as my clients have. Welcome back. I am so excited to talk with you about nine strategies and skills that you can use to stop picking your skin this summer. But before we do that, let's just first do a little deep dive into what skin picking is. Clinically, we call it “dermatillomania,” and it's a kind of body-focused repetitive behavior. Often, people with skin picking will pick out their skin, their arms, their lips, their scalp, and their nails. There's really no limit to where someone can pick their skin. Some people even pick pubic areas under their arms or around their genitals. There is, as I said, no off-topic area that people will pick. It's completely normal for people to pick in one or all of these areas. It's similar to a condition called trichotillomania, which is hair pulling. Again, hair pulling is another type of body-focused repetitive behavior, and people may pick at any area where there is skin on their body. It is important for us to first highlight that skin picking and hair pulling are not self-harm. People who pick their skin aren't trying to hurt themselves. They're also not trying to just get attention. They do not want to be damaging their skin or giving their skin abrasions and such. It's just a part of a condition, and we have a little bit of insight as to why they're doing it. Often, people with skin picking, or dermatillomania, are skin picking either because they're understimulated, they're bored, or we know they may be overstimulated. Maybe they're very anxious, they're feeling hyper-reactive to feeling overwhelmed with either emotions, stimulation, or thoughts. We do know that people who engage in this skin-picking behavior are more likely to pick either when they're overstimulated or understimulated. That's something to think about, and there is a clue there into some of the strategies that we're going to use today. Let's get to it. Let's start talking about some of the strategies that you can use to stop picking your skin this summer. Strategy #1: Awareness Logs Awareness logs can be so helpful at any stage of recovery. An awareness log is either a piece of paper or a document on your computer or on your phone, where you log every time you have the urge to pick your skin, how much you picked your skin, where you picked your skin, and how long you engaged in skin picking. What this does is, number one, it helps us really understand to what degree this condition is impacting your life. Secondly, people often report that when they have to document it, they're less likely to engage in the behavior because nobody wants to have to spend all their time logging it as something they don't want to deal with. Awareness logs can be a very helpful skill for us in understanding our own condition and our own symptoms, and in addition, they can help us with motivation to slowly reduce this behavior. Awareness logs are something we use in a very well-known and researched way of using cognitive behavioral therapy, and the type of therapy is called habit reversal training. It's the specific modality that we use for skin picking and hair pulling, and it is a key component of that cognitive and awareness work. Strategy #2: Keep Your Hands Busy Now again, when we're using habit reversal training, we engage in something called a competing response. A competing response is a behavior that competes with the feeling of picking our skin. Now, a competing response might be fiddles or fidget toys. It could be holding a stone or maybe stroking a feather. It could be playing with other fidgets that we have. The cool news is that you can get so many fidgets online these days for a really low price, or you could easily go to your dollar store and look around for textures that feel beautiful to you, feel soothing to you, or help you with either the understimulation or overstimulation. What we want to look for here is, what are the specific tactile experiences that you can use to keep your hands busy? We actually have an online course called BFRB School, which is a specific course for people with hair pulling and skin picking, using skills like habit reversal training and cognitive behavioral therapy. We talk all about the core importance of using competing responses. I often tell my patients and my students to always have a bucket or a basket in the house of different tactile experiences, different tactile things that you can play with objects, so that at that moment, if you've identified in your awareness log that you're feeling bored, you can engage in something that stimulates your creativity, stimulates your awareness. However, if you're the opposite and you're feeling overstimulated, you might dig into the basket and find something that's quite soothing. Maybe it's more like a silly putty, a gel, or something else that's more soothing for you. These competing responses are going to be so important for you in getting very clear on what you need at that moment and having it readily available. I often say to my patients and my students, don't just have it in one area of the house because, in that moment, you're still going to want to just pick your skin. What we prefer to do is to have little pieces over the house, in your car, or in your office so that they're easily accessible. Some people have it on their key rings, some people have it in their purses—whatever works for you. Again, that awareness log will help us identify specifically where you are when you're having these urges to pick your skin. And then we can put in competing responses to compete with the skin-picking behavior. Strategy #3: Create a Skincare Routine That Helps You This is a little bit of a fine line, though, because we don't want to engage in a skin routine that has you putting too much attention on your skin because, again, too much attention on your skin is going to mean that you're more likely to pick your skin. However, we also want to make sure that we are not ignoring your skin, letting it get really dry, especially in the summer. Maybe you've had a sunburn or such, and you've got some wind chafing or something. Again, if you have any irritation on your skin that isn't taken care of with a skin routine, you are more likely to pick at that skin, especially if there's already an open wound or a scab. If you already have an open wound that you've scratched or maybe you bumped into something and you've got a little scab there, we want to make sure that we're engaging in a really healthy skin routine to help that heal and repair so that you're less likely to go and pick that. I would encourage you to speak with your medical professional about skincare and what would be best for you. Maybe you have a skin condition. Very commonly, people with skin picking do. Speak with your doctor about a skincare routine that will help your skin picking but not be so extensive that it actually makes it worse. I would trust that your doctor will be able to help you in that area. Strategy #4: Use Physical Barriers Again, going back to the gold standard treatment for skin picking, which is habit reversal training, we use what we call a habit blocker. This is something that blocks you from the habit of picking, and this can involve anything that stops you from being able to touch your skin. A lot of patients and students I have had have used things like gloves or band-aids to cover an area that they're likely to pick. Maybe in the summer, they may wear longer sleeves even though it's very hot because that actually stops them from getting to the area that they feel an urge to pick. You may also want to keep your nails really thin or cover your nails. Some people keep nails on, like actual fake nails, as a barrier to being able to touch the skin. Maybe it doesn't give them that same tactile feeling of picking when their nails are medium-length. What we want to do here is identify for yourself the specific barriers that are helpful. The thing to remember here about skin picking is that everyone is different. Not one strategy that I've used for one client is going to be the strategy we use for another client. It's going to be very much dependent on those awareness logs that you logged out of in that first strategy. Getting clear on specifically what are the triggers that cause you to pick your skin and what specific behaviors and habit blockers are helpful to reduce the skin picking that you feel the urge to engage in. Strategy #5: Self-Compassion We have to engage in not beating yourself up, not judging yourself, not punishing yourself if, in fact, you have picked or recently picked despite all of these strategies. Beating yourself up actually does not motivate you to stop picking. In fact, it usually brings up more emotions such as shame, guilt, sadness, anger, and humiliation. Those emotions can send us into overstimulation, making us want to pick again. Again, we want to engage in a practice of self-compassion. We want to engage in a sense of radical acceptance of ourselves, whether we pick or not. This is so important because we want to reduce our suffering, not make our suffering higher. We do find that people who practice self-compassion tend to have higher levels of motivation, decreased levels of procrastination. They tend to feel better about themselves and have higher self-esteem. They're more likely to get out there and do the things that they love. Every moment that you're engaging in in your life is a moment you're less likely to be picking. It's very, very important that you practice a self-compassion routine, even if it's once a day. Anything is better than nothing to reduce that self-criticism where you can. Strategy #6: Manage Stress and Anxiety  I cannot stress this enough. It is so important when it comes to skin picking that we manage our stress. Again, a lot of people pick their skin because it is a way in which they can manage their stress. A lot of people with skin picking say once they start picking, they can exit out of reality and go into a trance-like mode where everything disappears and they feel relaxed and in the zone, and it takes away all of the stress. We can now understand why there is actually an urge and a pull towards picking and pulling, because who really wants to stay in stress and anxiety? Of course, it makes total sense. The more we can manage our stress using strategies, skills, and other tools like cognitive behavioral therapy, the less likely we are to use skin picking as a coping strategy. When it comes to managing stress, again, the most important thing we're going to do here is what we call cognitive behavioral skills. It's going to be taking a lot of our cognitions that might be faulty, leading us to have more anxiety, and also looking at our behaviors and the things that we do that may be actually exacerbating the stress and anxiety that we experience. If you're someone who struggles with anxiety and stress, I strongly encourage you to check out our online course called Overcoming Anxiety and Panic. We go through all of these steps. You can do it from home, and it may help you to get an idea of what might be some of the things that are triggering your stress response, triggering your anxiety response so that you can manage that, so that then you can move on to manage your skin picking as well. Strategy #7: Establish a Support System We want to have a community of people who can support us as we go through these steps. It's not an easy thing to overcome skin picking, so I really want to encourage you to find a support system, whether that be family or friends, or you can go to BFRB.org. They have a whole array of online support groups that you might be interested in looking at to get support, so you feel like you're not alone and that you have the support that you need. Another option here is to also look for accountability bodies. Somebody who mightn't even have skin picking. They might be a loved one, a friend, a parent, or a sibling—someone who you can check in with when your urge is really high. A lot of my students have said that it's been very helpful when they have the urge to text somebody and say, “I have a strong urge. I'm texting you to let you know.” They may have already set up a plan on what to do. Maybe they jump on a phone call together, they might text each other throughout it to help the person ride that wave of the urge. Or maybe that person might encourage them to say, “Hey, you told me to remind you of this one thing if you have this urge.” Really, the importance of a support group can help you, or a support person can help you not only with feeling less alone, not only with beating yourself up, but also with putting these strategies into action, especially if you let them know about the strategies. Strategy #8: Stay Hydrated and Healthy Now again, I'm going to encourage you to speak with your medical doctor about this, but I just wanted to mention because I try to look at you as a holistic, full person, someone who's not just your skin picking, but also, we want to have a look at things like your health. Take a look at your nutrition. Take a look at your hydration levels. Again, these things can impact our skin. If, let's say, you're having a lot of nutrition that's causing a lot of breakouts and you're someone who's prone to skin picking, those two things together could become a disaster. You want to speak with your doctor or a professional in that area about specific nutrition, things you may want to avoid eating, and how hydrated you need to stay to keep your skin healthy, to reduce the chances of you wanting to pick and pull. A lot of patients I see, and a lot of students that have come through BFRB School, our online course for skin picking, have reported having skin conditions, acne, or certain things that have impacted how much their skin is irritated, how many pimples they're having. Now, I'm not assuming that nutrition and hydration are the solution to all of that, but I would encourage you to speak with a doctor and just inquire about what you could do to make sure we're addressing those skin conditions. Another thing to know here, and this is like an inside scoop, is that there are specific over-the-counter medications you can get that have been proven to help with skin picking. I'll leave a link in the show notes for you to take a look, but there is a vitamin that's called N-acetylcysteine. It is an over-the-counter medication that has very few side effects and has been shown to help people with skin picking. Now again, I'm not a doctor. I would strongly encourage you to speak with your doctor about that, but again, I'm trying to give you as many resources today as we can to help you get to the goal that you want. These are all things that you can take a look at and speak to your doctor about. Strategy #9: Set Realistic Goals and Make Sure You Track Your Progress  We want to set realistic goals. I always tell my patients at the beginning of treatment that the goal isn't to completely stop skin picking, even though most people are coming for that goal. Because what I have found is, when you set that huge goal, it sets you up to fail. It makes you feel so bad if you slip. It makes you feel so much pressure. It's such a scarier experience than if you say, “Hey, I'm just going to reduce this by 3 to 5 percent each week,” or month or day, whatever is right for you. We want to set realistic goals—goals that can help keep you motivated and goals that make you feel like they're achievable. We also want to track progress. One of the most important parts of treatment, once we've done that first awareness log—and we do this in BFRB School, I do it with my patients as well—is that once we're off and running, we then track how well we're doing. How well did you use your tools? What tools didn't work? How long did you pick for? Where were you? What went wrong? We are not doing this to beat you up or to scrutinize you; we are doing it from a place of experimenting, gathering information to know specifically what's getting in the way of your recovery and what your progress looks like. Some people may say, “I'm not making any progress,” but when we actually look at their logs, we're starting to see progress in these small ways. Remember, small steps lead to medium-sized steps. Medium-sized steps lead to huge changes. The last strategy is probably the most important. I could have spent a whole podcast episode talking about that. It's about setting realistic goals and tracking your progress. Again, if you are struggling with this and you want to take BFRBSchool.com, head on over to CBTSchool.com. You'll get access to it there. It will take you through all of these steps. We also have modules on self-compassion, mindfulness, and healthy lifestyles that can really help you with this recovery as well. I'd strongly encourage you to consider that as a hopeful strategy as well. All right, guys, thank you so much. These have been the nine strategies to help you stop skin-picking this summer. I hope you found it helpful, and I'll see you next week.

Amanda Petrik-Gardner, LPC, author of The Compulsive Reassurance Seeking Workbook, joins us to discuss compulsive reassurance seeking. Amanda is an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB) specialist, licensed in multiple states. She is a member of the International OCD Foundation, the TLC Foundation for BFRBs, and the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Amanda serves on the board of OCD Kansas, a state affiliate of the International OCD Foundation, and is author of An OCD Exposure Coloring Book. She is from Topeka, KS.  Visit our website at www.newharbinger.com and use coupon code 'Podcast25' to receive 25% off your entire order.  Buy the Book:  New Harbinger - https://bit.ly/3W8JOjS  Amazon - https://a.co/d/hVzCM6v  Barnes & Noble - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/1143733054  Bookshop.org - https://bit.ly/3xRyhel  If you have ideas for future episodes, thoughts, or questions, we'd love to hear from you! Send us an email at podcast@newharbinger.com 

Stacy K. Nakell is a licensed clinical social worker, certified group psychotherapist, certified clinical trauma practitioner, and author. She has spent the past fifteen years in private practice in Austin, TX, providing individual and group psychotherapy to clients struggling with body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs).  In this episode of the Practice of Therapy Podcast, Stacy advocates for recognizing body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) as distinct from OCD due to their unique characteristics. Frustrated with the sole focus on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) by the Trichotillomania Learning Center, she turned to psychodynamic therapy to explore the root causes of her own behaviors, leading her to write "Treatment for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors." Her book promotes an integrative psychodynamic approach that combines body awareness and cognitive and behavioral elements and emphasizes the therapeutic relationship. Through a case study, Stacy illustrates how therapy can help patients process trauma and develop self-compassion. She suggests BFRBs often arise in individuals with physiological sensitivity and nervous system dysregulation, worsened by family stress and internalized emotions. Stacy calls for a trauma-informed approach to uncover and address underlying emotions for more effective and lasting treatment. Resources Mentioned In This Episode:  Read the full show notes here The Practice of Therapy Collaborative Use the promo code "GORDON" to get 2 months of Therapy Notes free Treatment for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors Stacy's Website Start Consulting with Gordon The PsychCraft Network The Practice of Therapy Community Instagram Mental Health Templates Mental Health Wear

Join your host, Nicole Morris, LMFT and Mental Health Correspondent, as she welcomes a diverse panel of sensory practitioners discussing the intricate connections between sensory processing and mental health relevant to our OCD and OC-Related Disorder (OCRD) warriors. We will hear from the specialized scopes of Occupational Therapy (OT), lived Autistic experience, Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs) and Tics, Tourette's Syndrome, and Just Right and Tourettic OCD. So join me and my fantastic panel of Briana Pollard, OTD, Amber Young, Lisa Conway, Ph.D., and Max Maisel, Ph.D., as we build a foundation for understanding sensory regulation and more!

Is there a technological solution for skin picking and hair pulling?Today's Guests:Aneela Idnani:Cofounder & President of HabitAware, Aneela Idnani transformed her struggle with hair pulling into the innovative Keen2 smart bracelet. Recognized in "40 under 40," her work has earned accolades from TIME Magazine and substantial support from national health institutes.Ellen Crupi:Director at HabitAware, Ellen Crupi leverages over seven years in trichotillomania recovery to foster mental health improvements. She is trained in Yale University's SPACE program and actively advocates for BFRB awareness, enhancing lives through education and technology.In this episode:Learn how Keen2 bracelet manages skin picking, hair pulling.Discover tech's role in personal behavioral change.Understand importance of awareness in overcoming mental health challenges.Check out the bracelet with the link below!https://partners.habitaware.com/208.html@habitaware on all socialsConnect with JamieAre you a high-achieving woman with ADHD looking for a coach? Event planner looking for a wildly captivating speaker? Go to outsmartadhd.co to get in touch!

Christina @beachmamablog is a mom blogger who shares about her mental health to help shed light on topics that are often ignored. Christina began her body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB) journey by developing trichotemnomania (the hair-cutting disorder) which ultimately led her to trichotillomania (the hair-pulling disorder). Although her BFRBs once caused her immense shame, Christina has been able to shed the shame and share her story with the world. Christina wants everyone but especially other mothers to know that there is a community out there that is ready to support you and she is part of it!—This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. What better way to start 2024 than by bringing awareness to your BFRB. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware and use code LALLYLOVE for 10% off the replacement training bundle.Did you know HabitAware also offers virtual peer coaching? This one-to-one peer-based program will coach you through shifting mindset, practicing healthy strategies and creating your personal roadmap to recovery. To work with me, Ellen or Aneela, head over to habitaware.com/coaching today.—Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Trich Talks.Did you know that I offer a trichotillomania online course?My course is called Sharing Our Stories. In it we do a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. You can learn more at barbaralally.com

Narelle @wholesomehumankind @narellearmstrong is 28 years old and has had trichotillomania as well as other body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) throughout her life. Narelle lives in Australia and works as a paramedic. Although she has a significant history of various mental health conditions, Narelle has committed herself to development over the past year. With all of her hard work, she finds herself feeling genuinely happy and content with where her life is heading.—This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. What better way to start 2024 than by bringing awareness to your BFRB. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware and use code LALLYLOVE for 10% off the replacement training bundle.Did you know HabitAware also offers virtual peer coaching? This one-to-one peer-based program will coach you through shifting mindset, practicing healthy strategies and creating your personal roadmap to recovery. To work with me, Ellen or Aneela, head over to habitaware.com/coaching today.—Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Trich Talks.Did you know that I offer a trichotillomania online course?My course is called Sharing Our Stories. In it we do a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. You can learn more at barbaralally.com

Courtney Holbrook is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who specializes in treating OCD, PTSD, BFRBs, and Tics. She utilizes evidence-based treatments such as Exposure & Response Prevention (ERP), Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PET), Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), HRT and the ComB model, and Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention for Tics (CBIT). Her decision to specialize in this field is due to her family's history of anxiety and undiagnosed OCD. She also struggled with various forms of OCD and hopes to help her patients in learning the ropes of OCD recovery just as she did.   In this episode we talk about:  ◾️ Defining OCD ◾️ Finding the right treatment for you ◾️ Understanding how OCD correlates to other mental illnesses Find Courtney here: treatmyocd.com/therapists/203327/courtney.holbrook Find Zach here: zachwesterbeck.com @zach_westerbeck This podcast is made possible by NOCD. NOCD offers effective, affordable, and convenient OCD therapy. NOCD therapists are trained in Exposure Response Prevention, or ERP, therapy, the gold standard treatment for OCD. With NOCD, you can do virtual, live face-to-face video sessions with one of their licensed, specialty-trained therapists, and they accept most major insurance plans. If your insurance isn't covered, mention discount code ZACH100 for a special $100 rate for the next two months. To find out more about NOCD, visit zachwesterbeck.com/virtual-ocd-therapy/ to book a free 15-minute call. Zach Westerbeck is not a licensed medical professional. Zach Westerbeck is not trained in diagnosing psychological or medical conditions. Zach Westerbeck is not a substitute for medical care or medical advice. If you require assistance with any mental health or medical issue, please contact your health care provider for any medical care or medical advice. Zach Westerbeck makes no guarantees of any kind that the information or services provided by Zach Westerbeck will improve the client's situation. This podcast should not be considered medical advice. Please seek professional assistance from a licensed professional. Zach Westerbeck (https://zachwesterbeck.com/virtual-ocd-therapy/) Virtual OCD Therapy - Zach Westerbeck I've partnered with NOCD to bring you effective, affordable and convenient OCD therapy.

Research shows that somewhere between 2 and 6% of the population struggles with BFRBs at a clinical level, which can include behaviors like hair-pulling, skin-picking, and nail-biting (among others). What differentiates BFRBs from other self-grooming behaviors, though, is the unintentional harm they cause to the body and the lack of successful efforts to stop them. To gain a better understanding of these difficult-to-control behaviors that can have detrimental effects on mental and emotional well-being, Michael interviewed clinical psychologists Marla Deibler and Renae Reinardy. If you're looking to recover from body-focused repetitive behavior, Marla and Renae, who coauthored The BFRB Recovery Workbook, are here to provide up-to-date behavioral science and evidence-based tools specifically tailored to meet your individual needs and help you transform your life for the better! Listen and Learn:  What are body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs)?  The stigma and dismissive attitude surrounding BFRBs How prevalent are BFRBs?   WTF: What is the function of BFRBs? The importance of viewing change as a process rather than a final outcome  Techniques for experiencing shame, emotional avoidance, and response prevention How to deal with inevitable setbacks Resources:  Order your copy of The BFRB Recovery Workbook: https://a.co/d/5pFMEGM Marla's Links: Website: https://thecenterforemotionalhealth.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecenterforemotionalhealth Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ceh_philadelphia/ "X": https://twitter.com/DoctorDeibler LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marla-deibler-psyd-abpp-a220851a/ BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/doctordeibler.bsky.social Renae's Links: Lakeside Center for Behavioral Change: https://lakesidecenter.org  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/r.reinspi Courage Critters: https://couragecritters.com Related Episodes:  167. Get Curious and Change Unhealthy Habits with Judson Brewer 188. Unwinding Anxiety with Judson Brewer 4. Habits: The Science of Behavior Change (Part 1) 5. From Awareness to Action: Behavior Change (Part 2) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robyn Stern is a licensed clinical worker who works mainly with patients suffering from Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). As someone who also suffers from the disorder, she uses her experiences together with her professional clinical training to create a safe space for people who want to understand their condition more thoroughly and intimately. With over a decade in her practice, she has adapted to using a research-based treatment in approaching each individual client. She uses a variety of modalities, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Exposure Response prevention (ERP), Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) in treating BDD, OCD, BFRBs, and anxiety disorders. In this episode we talk about:  ◾️ Robyn's personal background with BDD, depression, and anxiety ◾️ Understanding BDD, its effects, and symptoms ◾️ What to do when you feel that you might have BDD Find Robyn here: rlsterntherapy.com Find Zach here : zachwesterbeck.com @zach_westerbeck This podcast is made possible by NOCD. NOCD offers effective, affordable, and convenient OCD therapy. NOCD therapists are trained in Exposure Response Prevention, or ERP, therapy, the gold standard treatment for OCD. With NOCD, you can do virtual, live face-to-face video sessions with one of their licensed, specialty-trained therapists, and they accept most major insurance plans. If your insurance isn't covered, mention discount code ZACH100 for a special $100 rate for the next two months. To find out more about NOCD, visit zachwesterbeck.com/virtual-ocd-therapy/ to book a free 15-minute call. Zach Westerbeck (https://zachwesterbeck.com/virtual-ocd-therapy/) Virtual OCD Therapy - Zach Westerbeck I've partnered with NOCD to bring you effective, affordable and convenient OCD therapy.

Tash Wilson from @bfrb.uk.ireland is a BFRB advocate, support group leader, and much more! Tash lives with multiple BFRBs and dedicates her time to spreading awareness and supporting others in the community. At first, perfectionism was ruling her world but after much introspection, Tash realized that the real cure is kindness. You can find Tash at @bfrb.uk.ireland on Instagram and https://www.bfrbukireland.com/ – This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. If you follow me on social media you have seen me with my Keen2 in lilac. I love it and I love that it is a tool created for BFRBs by someone who has a BFRB. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware– Did you know that I offer a trichotillomania online course?My course is called Sharing Our Stories. In it we do a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. We also complete empowering activities, and have a biweekly support group so that you can meet others in the community.As a gift to you, please use promo code TrichTalks25 to receive 25% off the 5 session package. You can access this promotion at barbaralally.com. Thank you and I can't wait to start your journey to self-love and self-acceptance.

PART 2 of Chaille & Karen's episode focuses on Body-Focused Process Addictions (BFPAs)!Chaille DeFaria is a Master Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation and a facilitator of Dr. Brene Brown's research. She is also the co-founder of The BFPA Resource Center with Karen. When Chaille exposed her secret of living with a BFRB and started to own the parts of herself that wanted to be seen as perfect the wall around her crumbled to the ground. That choice was a gift. The opposite of shame is worthiness. Belonging doesn't require us to change who we are, it requires us to be who we are. To learn more or work with Chaille please visit her website https://www.chailledefaria.com/Karen Pickett is a licensed psychotherapist in California (LMFT40735) and Ohio (F.1700012) and the co-founder of The BFPA Resource Center. She is an expert in the treatment of anxiety disorders and body-focused process addictions (BFPAs), including Panic Disorder, Health Anxiety, Social Anxiety, Agoraphobia, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Skin Picking Disorder and Trichotillomania. Previously, Karen was the Clinical Director of the OCD Center of Los Angeles and Faculty in Counseling Psychology at the University of Santa Monica. To learn more or work with Karen please visit her website https://karenpickett.com/–This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. If you follow me on social media you have seen me with my Keen2 in lilac. I love it and I love that it is a tool created for BFRBs by someone who has a BFRB. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware–Did you know that I offer a trichotillomania online course?My course is called Sharing Our Stories. In it we do a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. We also complete empowering activities, and have a biweekly support group so that you can meet others in the community.As a gift to you, please use promo code TrichTalks25 to receive 25% off the 5 session package. You can access this promotion at barbaralally.com. Thank you and I can't wait to start your journey to self-love and self-acceptance.

Trich Talks: Season 4 is starting with a double guest episode for the first time ever! Chaille DeFaria is a Master Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation and a facilitator of Dr. Brene Brown's research. She is also the co-founder of The BFPA Resource Center with Karen. When Chaille exposed her secret of living with a BFRB and started to own the parts of herself that wanted to be seen as perfect the wall around her crumbled to the ground. That choice was a gift. The opposite of shame is worthiness. Belonging doesn't require us to change who we are, it requires us to be who we are. To learn more or work with Chaille please visit her website https://www.chailledefaria.com/ Karen Pickett is a licensed psychotherapist in California (LMFT40735) and Ohio (F.1700012) and the co-founder of The BFPA Resource Center. She is an expert in the treatment of anxiety disorders and body-focused process addictions (BFPAs), including Panic Disorder, Health Anxiety, Social Anxiety, Agoraphobia, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Skin Picking Disorder and Trichotillomania. Previously, Karen was the Clinical Director of the OCD Center of Los Angeles and Faculty in Counseling Psychology at the University of Santa Monica. To learn more or work with Karen please visit her website https://karenpickett.com/ Listen to Chaille and Karen's experiences and expertise in part 1 of their 2 part episode.– This episode is brought to you by HabitAware. If you follow me on social media you have seen me with my Keen2 in lilac. I love it and I love that it is a tool created for BFRBs by someone who has a BFRB. My Keen2 brings awareness to my trichotillomania by giving my wrist a gentle hug or vibration when I'm doing the scanning behavior. Bring awareness into your life by visiting barbaralally.com/habitaware– Did you know that I offer a trichotillomania online course?My course is called Sharing Our Stories. In it we do a deep dive into your relationship with trichotillomania by using my guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, as our workbook. We also complete empowering activities, and have a biweekly support group so that you can meet others in the community.As a gift to you, please use promo code TrichTalks25 to receive 25% off the 5 session package. You can access this promotion at barbaralally.com. Thank you and I can't wait to start your journey to self-love and self-acceptance.

Emily Kircher-Morris is joined by Barbara Lally, a certified professional coach and author who focuses on Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs). Barbara shares her personal story of living with trichotillomania, a chronic hair-pulling disorder, and discusses the stigma and misunderstandings surrounding BFRBs. She also offers advice for those struggling with BFRBs and their loved ones. There's a lot to learn in episode 202. If you're a teacher and not yet a member of the Neurodiversity University Educator Hub, we'll be opening up registration in January. It will only be open for a limited time, so make sure you're notified when it happens. Sign up here. Barbara Lally is a teacher-turned certified professional coach, author, and body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB) advocate. When she was 10 years old she developed trichotillomania, the chronic hair-pulling disorder which led to intense feelings of guilt, shame, and self-loathing. Nineteen years after her diagnosis, Barbara released her memoir, The Trichster Diaries, detailing her life with the disorder and her journey to self-love and self-acceptance. By sharing her story, Barbara's life changed. She released a guided journal, My Trichster Diaries, and hosts a podcast where she interviews others with BFRBs called Trich Talks. Barbara realized she was meant to spread awareness of BFRBs and help others toward self-love and self-acceptance, so she left her teaching job after seven years and decided to go back to school to become a certified professional coach. BACKGROUND READING Website Instagram Tiktok

Luce @calmstrips is a mother of 5, a horror movie lover, a BFRB/mental health advocate, and a Shark Tank star, among other things. Her life completely changed when she met Michael and became a member of the Calm Strips team. What first started as packing up orders to help a friend, quickly turned into a full-time career. Through this process Luce learned about BFRBs and that she actually had a few of them.More about Calm Strips:Calm Strips are reusable textured sensory stickers designed to help regulate restless energy and increase focus. They provide a cool and convenient way to manage sensory needs; whether you're simply touching, scratching, or tracing the textured surface, or utilizing one of our interactive grounding/breathing designs.Luce and Michael from Calm Strips were featured on Shark Tank! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJpOvKFpdX8

      In this episode, I talk with Suzanne Mouton-Odum, PhD and Ruth Goldfinger Golomb about their recent book with Charles S Mansueto.  These authors have done some of most important work in developing effective treatment for BFRBs. We discuss   the key elements  ComB model for the treatment of hair pulling and skin picking. Since sensory issues are often very important in the treatment of BFRB, we also talk about Suzanne Mouton-Odum and Ruth Golomb other books on sensory dysregulation. Helping Your Child with Sensory Regulation: Skill to Manage the Emotional and Behavioral Components of Your Child's Sensory Processing Challenges by Suzanne Mouton-Odum and Ruth Goldfinger Golomb Psychological Interventions for Children with Sensory Dysregulation by Ruth Goldfinger Golomb and Suzanne Mouton-Odum   Ruth Goldfinger Golomb, LCPC can be found at http://www.behaviortherapycenter.com/new-page-2 Suzanne Mouton-Odum, PhD can be found at https://psychologyhoustonpc.com/.

If you want to know how to be uncomfortable without making it worse, you're in the right place. Today, we're talking all about being uncomfortable and learning how to be uncomfortable in the most skillful, compassionate, respectful, and effective way. This applies to any type of discomfort, whether it be your thoughts, your feelings, any physical sensations, or the pain that you're feeling. Anything that you're experiencing as discomfort, we're here to talk about it today. Let's do it.  Welcome back, everybody. For those of you who are new, welcome. My name is Kimberley Quinlan. I'm a marriage and family therapist in the state of California. I'm an anxiety specialist, and I love to talk about being uncomfortable. It's true, I don't like being uncomfortable, but I love to talk about being uncomfortable, and I love talking about skillful ways to manage that.  WHAT IS DISCOMFORT, REALLY?  Now, before we get started, let's first talk about what we mean by being uncomfortable. There are different forms of discomfort. One may be feelings or emotions that you're having—shame, guilt, anxiety, sadness, anger. Whatever it is that you experience as a feeling can be interpreted and experienced as uncomfortable.  Another one is sensations. Physical sensations of anxiety, physical sensations of shame, and physical sensations of physical pain. I myself have a chronic illness. Physical sensations can be a great deal of discomfort for us as human beings. We're also talking about that as well.  We're also talking about intrusive thoughts, because thoughts can be uncomfortable too. We can have some pretty horrific, scary, mean, and demanding thoughts, and these thoughts can create a lot of discomfort within us.  What we want to do here is we want to first acknowledge that discomfort is a normal, natural part of life. It truly is. I know on social media, and I know in life, on TV, and in movies, it's painted that there are a certain amount of things you can do, and if you were to attain those, well, then you would have a lot less discomfort. But as someone who is a therapist who has treated the widest range of people, I've learned that even when they reach fame, a lot of money, or a degree of success, we can see that they have some improved wellness. They do have some decrease in discomfort, but over time, they're still going to have uncomfortable thoughts. Sometimes having those things creates more uncomfortable thoughts. They're still going to have physical pain, and they're still going to have emotions that cause them pain, particularly when they're not skillful.  What I've really learned as a human being as well is we can have a list of all the things that we think we need in these circumstances to be happy. But if our thoughts and our feelings and our reactions to them aren't skillful, compassionate, wise, and respectful, we often create more suffering, and we're right back where we started.  Now, I don't want it to be all doom and gloom, because the truth is, I'm bringing you some solutions here today—things that you can apply right away and put into practice, hopefully, as soon as you've listened to this podcast. Let's get to it.  WHAT MAKES DISCOMFORT WORSE?  First, I'm wondering whether we can first discuss what it means to make it worse because a lot of you go, “What? Make it worse? Are you telling me I'm to blame?” And that's not what I'm doing here. But I do think that we can do some kind of inquiry, nonjudgmental inquiry into how we respond to our suffering.  LIFE IS 50/50 Think of it this way: I am a huge proponent of some Buddhist philosophy here, which is that suffering is a part of life. Discomfort is a part of life. I believe that life is 50/50. There is 50% wonderful, but you're still going to have 50% hard. Sometimes that percentage will be different, but I think it creates a lot of acceptance when we can come to the fact that there's going to be good seasons, but there's also going to be some really hard seasons in our lives. It doesn't have to be that it's 50/50 all the time. Sometimes you might be in a really wonderful season. Maybe you're in a really tough season right now. I'm guessing that's the case because you're listening to this episode. I recently went through a really tough season, which inspired me to make this episode for you. But in life, there is suffering. But what we know about that is how we respond to that suffering can actually determine whether we create more and more suffering.  WE RESIST IT One way that we make it worse is, when we are experiencing discomfort, we resist it. We try to get rid of it. We clench up around it. We try to push it away. What often happens there is, what you resist persists. That's a common saying we use in psychotherapy. Another thing to consider here is, the more you try to push it down, the more it's going to bubble up anyway, but in ways that make you feel completely out of control, completely lost in this experience, and maybe overwhelmed with this experience. Another thing is, the more you resist it, the more you're feeding your brain a story that it's important and scary, which often means that it's going to send out more anxiety hormones when you have that situation come up again. That's one way we make it worse.  WE JUDGE IT  Another way we make it worse is, we judge it. When we have discomfort, we judge it by going, “This is wrong. This is bad. You're a bad person for having this discomfort. What's wrong with you for having this discomfort? It shouldn't be here.”  WE THROW “TANTRUMS”  I've done a whole episode about this, and this is something that is my toxic trait, which is I go into this emotional tantrum in my head where I'm like, “This is bad. This is wrong. It shouldn't be happening. It shouldn't be this way. It should be this other way. It's not fair. I can't believe it's this way.” I totally can catch myself going down a rabbit hole of judging the situation, the circumstance, and myself and my discomfort, which only creates more discomfort for myself.  WE RUMINATE Another way we make things worse is rumination, which is similar to what I was just talking about. But rumination is, we try and solve things, we loop on them. Again, it could be a looping on, “Why is this happening? It shouldn't be happening,” like I just explained. Or maybe it's trying to figure it out. Often, we ruminate on things that actually don't have a solution in the long run anyway.  Maybe you have chronic pain. Let's say you do, and you're ruminating, “What could it be? Why is it there?” I mean, the truth is, we don't usually have a medical degree. Our rumination, it might feel productive, but we don't actually have the details to know the answer.  Let's say something went wrong at work and you made a big mistake, and we ruminate about what we did, how bad it was, and how humiliating it was. But in that situation, we're trying to solve something that's already happened that we have no control over anymore.  For people who have anxiety, maybe they're trying to ruminate, trying to solve whether bad things will happen in the future, but we all know we can't solve what's going to happen in the future. That's a dead end. That's a dead-end road, and it again creates more suffering on our part. WE PUNISH OURSELVES  The next piece here is, we punish ourselves. We punish ourselves for having discomfort. We might withhold pleasure. We might treat ourselves poorly. We might not show up in ways that really honor our mental health and our self-care because we've made a mistake, we are going through a hard time, or we're having this uncomfortable experience. These things, while in the moment they feel warranted and they feel productive and effective, they're actually not. All they're doing is adding to the suffering you're already experiencing.  For those of you who say, “Yeah, no, but I deserve to suffer more,” that's actually not true either. We have to really catch that because punishing someone with this sort of very corporal punishment kind of method—or we need to beat you up—actually, we've got so much research to show it doesn't make you better. It doesn't prevent uncomfortable things from happening. It doesn't make it so that you don't make a mistake. You're a human being. We're all struggling. We're all doing the best we can, and we're not going to do it perfectly.  HOW TO BE UNCOMFORTABLE, EFFECTIVELY & COMPASSIONATELY What can you do differently? Let's now talk about how we can be uncomfortable in an effective, productive,  compassionate, and respectful way. For me, one of the first things that helps me is to really double down on my mindfulness practice. Sometimes the best thing you can do with mindfulness is to become aware that you're engaging in these behaviors, to catch them, and to label them when you are. It might be as simple as labeling it as “I'm in resistance.” You might just say ‘resistance' or ‘rumination.' You're bringing to your mind and you're bringing to your attention that you're engaging in something that you've identified as not helpful. That in and of itself can be so helpful. Now, for those of you who are new to me, I have two episodes that I've done on this type of situation in the past. Number one was Episode 188, where I talked about how to tolerate uncomfortable sensations specifically. The other one is Episode 113, which is where we talk about specifically how to manage intrusive thoughts. You can go on there after you've listened to this, but stay with me here because I'm going to give you a little step-by-step process.  MINDFULESS Number one, with mindfulness, we're going to identify and become aware that we're in resistance, that we're ruminating, that we're beating ourselves up, and we're also going to practice non-judgment as best as we can. Think of this like a muscle in your brain. You're going to practice strengthening that muscle. But once we are aware of it and once we've acknowledged that we're judging, we're then going to be aware of or bring our attention to where we are in resistance to allowing it to be there because that's ultimately a part of our work.  Discomfort rises and falls so much faster when you do nothing about it. What I want to offer you is, the solution, in some way, can be quite simple, which is to do nothing about the discomfort except love it. Be careful and gentle with yourself. Do nothing at all about trying to make it go away. Do nothing at all about punishing yourself.  NON-JUDGMENT The non-judgment piece is where we allow it to be there without making a meaning about it. Here's an example. You've had an intrusive thought that was really, really scary, and you wish you didn't have it. You actually are concerned about it. It alarmed you. What you can do is, in that moment, acknowledge that thoughts are thoughts. They're not facts. They don't mean anything. They're just sentences that our brains come up with. What we often do is, when we have it, we think, “What does that mean about me? Why am I having this thought? Why am I having this sensation? Why am I having this anxiety? Why am I having this anger? Why am I having this shame? Why am I anxious in this social situation? Why is this hard?” NOT OVER-IDENTIFYING What we want to come back to is not making meaning of it, not over-identifying with it and just acknowledging that this is a normal part of human life. This is a normal part of being a human. We all have intrusive thoughts. We all have strong emotions, some more than others. But if you're someone who has strong emotions more than you maybe think others are, there's a couple of things I want you to remember. Number one, we actually don't know how other people are doing, so you can't actually say that they're not having these emotions. Maybe they are.  Often, people will say to me, “You always seem so calm.” I'm like, “Oh, you have no idea.” Like, yeah, I am calm in many situations, but it doesn't mean I don't have anxiety about certain things or big, big, big emotions about certain things. You just don't see it. You don't see it on the camera; you don't see it in the podcast. You don't see it in my daily life. It's at home in my mind when I'm experiencing it as I'm regulating. But we want to work at not over-identifying with “What does it mean about me” and that “I'm bad for having these experiences.” One thing you must take away, and I say it quite often, is there is no thought, feeling, sensation, urge, or image that makes you bad. The meditation vault, which we just launched, is an online vault, a collection of meditations for people with sticky thoughts, intrusive thoughts, anxiety, and so forth. They're very, very specific in almost every single one. I work at getting them to not overidentify with the experience they're having.  Oh, you're having an intrusive thought. Let's not make meaning of what that means about you.  Oh, you're having shame. Your shame is telling you that you're bad. Let's not agree with it. Let's acknowledge that it is a thought and a feeling, but it's not a fact about you.  You've made a mistake; you failed. Okay, we can acknowledge that, but that doesn't make you a failure. We want to catch over-identifying with what our discomfort is experiencing and how we're experiencing that discomfort. The over-identification, the labeling, and the making meaning often is what contribute to us feeling double the discomfort.  MAKE SPACE FOR THE DISCOMFORT The next thing you want to do is make space for the discomfort. My clients roll their eyes because they know I'm going to say it. I'm going to say, “Why can't we make some space for this emotion,” or “Would you be willing to make some space for this emotion as it rises and falls?” If we make space for it to be here while we go about our day, while you interact with your child or your loved one, or your client, or your employer or your employee—if we can just make space for it to be there, nonjudgmentally, it tends to be less loud.  BE WILLING TO BE UNCOMFORTABLE The whole point of the work that I do here with my patients and with you is to nurture a sense of you having any emotion, any feeling, or any discomfort in a safe way, in a way where you make space for it. I often will say, we want to work towards you being able to have any thought, feeling, sensation, urge, or image so that you know that there's nothing you can't handle. If you're really willing to feel it all, if you're really willing and have practiced giving yourself permission to feel all the discomfort, there's very little that can be painful for you. There's very little that can stump you. There's very little that can hold you back.  Often, when people ask me, “How do you do what you do? You spend all day with clients who are suffering, and you're in the suffering with them. And then you get online and do these videos, or you do social media. How do you do all that?” The only reason, there's nothing special about me, truly. The only thing about me is I'm willing to feel a lot of discomfort. I really am. The more I practice having it, the more I feel empowered that I can handle anything.  Confidence to do things isn't something you just learn and have; you get it by feeling feelings. Having them willingly and making space for them—truly, this is the work. If there's really anything I've learned, it's that—we have to be better at making space and feeling our feelings and having the discomfort and saying, “Great, this is a wonderful opportunity for me to practice being uncomfortable.” If something gets thrown out of whack this week for you, I urge you to say, “Okay, good. This is another great opportunity for me to practice being uncomfortable. Where do I notice my resistance to being uncomfortable? Where do I notice the judgment? Where do I notice that I overidentify with it? Where do I notice that I'm punishing myself for it?” Okay, good. Now that we know, we're aware, and we're non-judgmental, let's use this as an opportunity to be able to feel any experience that comes up. Things get a whole lot less scary if you've already practiced feeling your feelings.  FEEL YOUR FEELINGS I actually did a whole podcast on that as well. It's Episode 65, where I talk about how your feelings are meant for feelings. That's another resource if you want to jump into that kind of topic as well. But then once you've done all that—we've done this zooming in and now we zoom out—then you move on with your day. You don't just sit there and feel your feelings and sit on the couch and stare at the floor going, “I'm feeling my feelings. I'm feeling my feelings. Here they are.” That's fine if that's what you feel right about. But ideally, you would take the feelings with you and go mow the lawn or do the things you love or do the things that you need to get done today, your chores or whatever that might be.  But take this practice with you, because if you can get good at feeling discomfort, then you can marry that skill. It's a skill. It's not something that you were born with; it's something that you can learn to do. But once you get good at that, then you can marry it with, “Now I'm going to go live my life while I use that skill.” And then you 10x your life, truly, 10x your ability. You're still going to be uncomfortable. You're still going to have hard days. You're still going to have some discomfort, but your experience of it will not be one of, “Oh no, geez, I hope it goes away. I hope it's not strong today. I hope it doesn't stay all day because it really messes me up.” It won't be like that. You'll be like, “It doesn't matter. I know it's here, and I'm going to be here with it, and I'm going to make space for it. I'm going to be kind. I'm going to be non-judgmental about it. But it can come. I've done it as much.” One thing I did learn, and I'll use this as an example, is I used to have the most excruciating sleep anxiety. I used to worry about not sleeping. Because if I didn't sleep, I'd have massive anxiety. The next day, I'd be teary. I just couldn't function well. As I got pregnant and went to have my first child, I was so worried about how my mental health would go.  Don't get me wrong; not having sleep did impact my mental health for sure. But getting less sleep and having to get up and take care of a baby, and then having to get up and go to work once I'm done with maternity leave, and learning that I can actually get through a day, using my skills, seeing my patients, and managing my emotions, a lot of my sleep anxiety went away because all I could think of was that I've done worse. I've literally gone a night where I slept for 25 minutes and I still was able to cope. Even if I can't fall asleep tonight, I know I can handle it. That empowerment is gold. That change in perspective. That attitude shift about discomfort is a game changer.  Now, of course, you know what I'm going to say. This has to be done with an immense degree of compassion. This has to be done in small, baby steps. I'm not here to tell you to throw yourself into 10 out of 10 discomfort, but if you have to, I still trust and believe wholeheartedly that you can still handle it. I always say to my patients, no one has ever died from discomfort itself. It won't kill you. It's just going to be really hard. We can practice holding ourselves kindly as best as we can as we ride that wave. That's the work.  A RECAP: BRING ON THE DISCOMFORT To recap, what makes it worse? Discomfort and uncomfortability get worse when we do anything to try and make it go away. We won't resist it with this urgency to get it go away. But the solution is acceptance, willingness, non-judgment, compassion, making space for it, and then engaging with your life. Again, I'll say it again. The solution is accepting the discomfort. Willingness is the willingness to be uncomfortable. The non-judgment of being uncomfortable. It's neither good nor bad; it's neutral. It is still uncomfortable, but it doesn't mean you are bad or it's bad. We're going to be self-compassionate as we feel this uncomfortable feeling. And then we're going to keep making space and moving back into our lives, doing maybe baby steps at a time. Even if you do this for 10 seconds, I applaud you. Let's celebrate you. If you do it for 30 seconds and you're able to do that multiple times a day, you are on the right track. If you can be uncomfortable for three minutes at a time, you're basically winning at life. I want to encourage you, this is huge.  Sometimes, when things are really hard at the Quinlan household and I want to scream, yell, or totally do something that I know I will regret, stopping and saying, “Okay, this is discomfort. Can you stay with it? Can you make space for this for three minutes or 30 seconds,” has given me an opportunity to not say things I don't mean, to not react in ways that will end up causing me more suffering that keep me in line with my values. This ability to be uncomfortable has saved me from making some big mistakes in my life. Not all of them. I've still made mistakes, of course, but relationally, huge mistakes I could have made had I not slowed down and made a little space for the fact that I'm angry. “Okay, I'm going to make space for this anger,” or that I'm hurt, or that I'm really anxious. There's been times where I've wanted to run away from my anxiety, but my ability to, for 30 seconds at a time or 10 minutes at a time, make space for the anxiety, not judge it, allow it, and bring it on has meant that I've been able to face some really scary things, and that's what I want for you. That's how you're uncomfortable. Is it easy? No way is not easy. Is it doable? Absolutely. I want to remind you, this is a practice in which you can grow. Before you know it, there will be these moments of empowerment that will shock you, and you can't believe that you've made these changes out of nowhere. I fully and wholeheartedly believe that. I've heard it from so many patients and so many students. A lot of you have also shared how helpful it's been. That is why I say it's a beautiful day to do hard things, because when we do hard things in a very skilled way, they actually make us feel really empowered, and we have a sense of “I can handle things now.” All right. It's a beautiful day to do hard things. Again, please go to CBT School if you're interested in any of our online courses. They talk about all these kinds of things. We have courses for OCD, anxiety, depression, BFRBs, meditation, mindfulness, time management—the whole deal. My hope is that this type of message can be taken in any area of your life, and hopefully, it makes it so much better.  Have a great day. 

Join your host, Nicole Morris, LMFT and Mental Health Correspondent, as she welcomes Ruth Golomb, M.Ed., LCPC, BFRB and OCD Specialist, to our family table for Part I of our 2nd Annual OCD-Related Disorder (OCRD) Series! Ruth is an accomplished author, practitioner, and she serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the TLC Foundation for Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors. And today we're talking all about what BFRB's are, approaches to treatment, and how they impact the fam and loved ones of OCRD warriors. So join the conversation! Because not only is there a lot of helpful learning, but there's lots of HOPE too.

If you are wondering if you have (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) GAD vs. OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and how to tell the difference, this episode is going to be exactly what you need.  My name is Kimberley Quinlan. I'm a cognitive behavioral therapist. I specialize in all anxiety disorders, and I help people overcome their anxiety in the kindest way possible. Now, I have treated generalized anxiety disorder and OCD for over 15 years, and I want to share with you that it is true—there is a massive overlap between OCD and GAD. They do look very similar. So I'm going to break it down and address the GAD and OCD overlap. Let's go. GAD versus OCD. You might know this, but in the world of anxiety disorders, this is actually a very controversial topic right now. I've been to conferences and master classes where clinicians will very much disagree on how we differentiate between the two. In fact, some people believe that they are so similar that they should be labeled as the same thing. We don't all agree, and the reason for that, as I said, is that they do look similar. They do follow a very similar cycle.  My hope is that in order to understand what GAD is and what OCD is, we need to actually go through the diagnostic criteria. And that's what we're going to do for you today so that you too can understand the difference between GAD and OCD and determine for yourself what you think will help move you in the right direction. Let's talk about it.  GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER SYMPTOMS As I mentioned, in order to get a GAD diagnosis, you do have to have a specific set of symptoms, and we're going to go through them.  Number one, if you have GAD, the first symptom you need to have is anxiety and worry, and that's usually focused on everyday events like work, school, relationships, money, and so on. Now, the frequency of GAD needs to occur more days than not for at least six months. The person needs to find it difficult to control this worry and anxiety, and it focuses on areas that are not consistent with other mental health struggles.  What we mean by that is, let's say the focus was on being judged by other people. Well, that's better understood as social anxiety. Or if the focus of your worry was on your health, then we would actually be better diagnosing you or understanding your symptoms as health anxiety. If it was focused on a specific thing, like planes, needles, or vomit, we would better understand that as a specific phobia. In order to have the diagnosis of GAD, it needs to not be under the umbrella of a different diagnosis. Other things that we would rule out when we're thinking about GAD are things like panic disorder, body image, or even a previous trauma.  Now, the fifth symptom is it needs to cause distress and impairment. That's very, very important here because, again, we're talking about a disorder. What that means is a lack of order, no order. So what we want to see here is that it's highly impacting their daily lives, highly impacting their ability to function.  And then the sixth criteria is it has to be ruled out that these symptoms could be from a medical condition or substance abuse. An example of that might be even me with POTS. I have postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. A lot of the symptoms of POTS can actually look a little bit like generalized anxiety.  The seventh criteria are the specific symptoms, and this is important to recognize because this might be true of a lot of different situations, symptoms, diagnoses, medical and mental. You need to have symptoms such as restlessness or being on edge. You need to be either easily fatigued, have difficulty concentrating, or have what we call a blank mind. You might have irritability, you might have muscle tension, and you could also have sleep disturbances.  That is the breakdown for GAD. As I said, it's very easy to mix it up with other mental health disorders, such as OCD, because they can look very, very similar.  OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER SYMPTOMS Let's talk about OCD now. What is OCD? Now, in order to understand what OCD is, we need to again address the specific criteria to get a diagnosis of OCD. The symptoms of OCD include the presence of obsessions and compulsions or one. Sometimes, again, you might have obsessions without the compulsions, but usually, at the onset of the disorder, you will have both. You'll also have intrusive, unwanted, repetitive thoughts, feelings, sensations, urges, or images, and these cause a very high degree of distress and anxiety, as we mentioned with GAD. The individual with OCD will often attempt to avoid or suppress these thoughts, feelings, sensations, or urges, and they will try to neutralize them using what we call compulsions.  Now there are five different types of compulsionS. A lot of you who have followed Your Anxiety Toolkit will know about these compulsions. We've talked about them. We actually go over them extensively in our online course for OCD called ERP School. If you're interested to learn more about that, you can go to CBTSchool.com. We have a whole array of courses there to help you work through this and get help if you don't have access to treatment of your own.  We do have five different types of compulsions. The first one is avoidance. The second one is mental compulsions. The third one is reassurance-seeking, whether it be from Google or a loved one. The fourth one is physical compulsions, like checking or jumping over cracks or washing your hands, just to give a few examples. The last one is self-punishment. So there are five types of compulsions.  Now, these compulsions are not connected in a realistic way and the way that they're designed to neutralize or prevent. They're usually clearly excessive behaviors done repetitively and done usually from a place of not wanting to do them, but more that the person with OCD feels like they have to do them to reduce or remove their obsessions.  Now, obsessions or compulsions are time-consuming. The frequency here is that they need to take up more than one hour per day or cause a significant degree of distress and impairment in their social, occupational, or other areas of functioning in their lives. The next criteria is that the obsessive-compulsive symptoms are not attributable to physiological symptoms, substance abuse, or a medical condition. Similar to GAD, again, we want to always check for medical and substance abuse issues before we go ahead and get a diagnosis of either GAD or OCD.  And then, last of all, the disturbance is not better explained by another mental health condition. Again, if the worry or the obsession is around needles, like we talked about before, or being judged by somebody else or health conditions—if that were the case, we would give them a different diagnosis. Now, this is also true for trauma. Again, I want to make sure we understand that. Often, this same cycle will play out in different anxiety disorders—PTSD, BFRBs, phobias, health anxiety, BDD (body dysmorphic disorder). Once we have ruled those out, we can then move forward and acknowledge that this might be OCD or it might be GAD.  OCD VS GAD  Now that we've gone through all that, we can actually slow down a little and really take a look and talk about OCD versus GAD and how to tell the difference. Let's break it down.  Both GAD and OCD have intrusive thoughts or what we call obsessions. A repetitive thought. Now, both have the presence of rumination compulsions and reassurance-seeking compulsions. That is true for both conditions.  DIFFERENTIATING GAD FROM OCD OCD tends to be more on irrational topics and subjects, whereas GAD tends to be more focused on daily stresses and rational actual events in the person's life, but not always. Again, sometimes the person with GAD may engage in a lot of catastrophic thinking or irrational thinking that can actually make this disproportionate to their daily life stresses.  ARE YOUR FEARS INTRUSIVE AND REPETITIVE?  Questions that you might want to ask yourself when you're considering how to tell the difference between GAD and OCD are questions like, are your worries related to a daily stressor, or are your fears intrusive and repetitive?  People with OCD tend to identify that their thoughts are very intrusive, that they can't stop them, they're relentless, they're repeating themselves over and over, whereas people with GAD tend to find that these are more preoccupations with problems in their lives, and they're trying to solve them.  ARE MY FEARS REALISTIC OR ARE THEY IRRATIONAL/DISTORTED?  Another question to ask is, are my fears realistic or are they irrational and distorted? That question too can help us differentiate whether your symptoms are more related to OCD or GAD. GENETICS AND GAD VS OCD Another question to ask is, does anyone in your family have GAD or OCD? We know that these conditions are very, very genetic. If you've got someone with OCD in your family, it might actually help us to determine, is this something that's going on for you? Are you better understood as having symptoms of OCD than you are GAD?  GAD TESTS & OCD TESTS Another question or thing you might want to do is, you can take a GAD test or an OCD test. We have specific diagnostic tests that can help determine these. I strongly encourage, if you're still having a hard time differentiating after you've listened to this episode, please do go and speak to a mental health professional who can help you determine and do those tests so that you can really be clear on what you've got and help you get the correct treatment. CAN YOU HAVE BOTH OCD AND GAD?  Let's answer some questions about this topic that commonly come up, which hopefully will help you get even more clarity on this topic. One of the most common questions we get asked in this area is, can you have OCD and GAD? Often, some of you are looking at these criteria going like, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.” And the truth here is, yes, commonly, people do have OCD and GAD. There is a very strong GAD-OCD overlap here. So it could be that you have both.  TREATMENT FOR OCD & GAD The good news here, if that is the case, is that the treatment for GAD and the treatment for OCD are very, very similar. In fact, again, like I said, it's very controversial. Some clinicians say it doesn't even matter. We don't have to differentiate between OCD and GAD because the treatment is going to be so, so similar.  We're going to use a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure and response prevention. We call cognitive behavioral therapy CBT, and we call exposure and response prevention ERP for short. Those treatments are focused on reducing those safety behaviors or compulsions, such as rumination, avoidance, reassurance-seeking, physical compulsions, and self-punishment, and also encourage you to identify your fears and learn to face them as much as you can. Learn to navigate those fears by experiencing them, tolerating them, being kind to yourself as you ride the wave of distress, and practice mastering your ability to be uncomfortable. That's a huge piece of this. Also, master your ability to be uncertain, because in both conditions, they often require you to spend a lot of time trying to seek certainty, to get clarity, to solve the fear, and to prevent the fear. And we actually instead work at reducing that by increasing our willingness to be uncertain.  We also have an online course called Overcoming Anxiety and Panic, and we go through the same steps with that. They're two separate courses because we want to make sure the person feels very understood and feels like they have a really good plan. Again, if you're interested in that, you can go to CBTSchool.com. We have two courses for specific diagnoses, and that will help you make a plan for yourself. They are there specifically for people who do not have access to or do not have the means to access mental health services. These are self-led, on-demand courses. You can take them as many times as you want to put a plan together for you.  WHAT ABOUT OTHER ANXIETY DISORDERS VS OCD?  Let's get back to the questions. What about other anxiety disorders vs OCD? Well, what we've talked about already—hopefully, we'll clear that up—is the real way to determine what your specific problem or struggle is, what is the focus of your intrusive, repetitive thoughts? Again, if it's on your body and your body image, we would look at an anxiety disorder, an eating disorder, or maybe even BDD. If the focus is on your health, we're going to look towards health anxiety or hypochondria. If your fear is around being judged, we're going to look towards social anxiety. If your fear is in response to an actual trauma you've been through, we're going to look at PTSD and other trauma symptoms that you might be having. It's important to identify the core fear, and that can actually help determine what specific struggle and diagnosis you have.  CAN GAD LEAD TO OCD? Another important question that people ask is, can GAD lead to OCD? We don't actually have a lot of research on this, so it's important that we recognize that yes, they can overlap, that yes, you can have GAD, and then you can proceed into having OCD. But I wouldn't actually say that GAD leads to it or causes it. Usually, again, we don't really have a lot of clarity on what causes OCD, but we do know that there is a genetic component and an environmental component that are contributing to having OCD. Lastly, what's the difference between having OCD and general anxiety or just anxiety in and of itself? Often, again, we're going to look at that core fear. Now the thing to remember here is, everybody has anxiety. Everybody experiences anxiety. It is a normal part of being a human. But if that anxiety is starting to impact the functioning and quality of your life, if it's starting to take up a lot of time, if it's starting to stop you from being able to do the things you want to do, that's usually when anxiety becomes what we call an anxiety disorder. When that happens, I'm going to urge you to seek help. There are treatments, there are solutions, and there are practices that can help you overcome this anxiety and get you back to living the life you want to live. You don't have to live a life where we just accept anxiety at this rapid rate without getting help, skills, and tools to help you move forward. The whole reason I created Your Anxiety Toolkit is because there are tools that can help you navigate anxiety in the most effective, wise, and kind way. So my hope here is that today, as we've learned to differentiate the difference between GAD and OCD and even other anxiety disorders, you can then go to get resources to help you overcome those specific struggles and challenges.  Again, if you're interested, please go to CBTSchool.com. We are also here on Your Anxiety Toolkit, where we have over 350 free episodes to help you navigate these conditions. It is an honor and pleasure to help you with these struggles in your life, and I'm so grateful to be able to do that. I hope that's been helpful. Have a wonderful, wonderful day, and I'll talk to you soon.

Dr. Laura Chackes, Psy. D. explains what therapists need to understand about treating Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRB's). The most common BFRB's being Trichotillomania, aka hair pulling, and Excoriation, aka skin picking.Laura Chackes, founder and owner of The Center for Mindfulness & CBT in St. Louis, is a licensed psychologist who specializes in the treatment of children, adolescents, and adults with OCD and body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs). Dr. Chackes is a leading expert in the treatment of BFRBs such as skin picking and hair pulling. She has been running treatment groups for children, adolescents, and adults in St. Louis for over 10 years, and teaches courses online to adults with BFRBs, as well as to train therapists how to treat these disorders. Her mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy approach has led hundreds of BFRB sufferers to long-term symptom relief.Dr. Chackes is also a fierce advocate working to spread awareness of BFRBs in order to reduce the shame and isolation that comes from the public's lack of knowledge of these disorders. Her Facebook group, Overcoming Skin Picking and Hair Pulling: Help for BFRBs, has connected over 4000 BFRB sufferers, parents, and therapists to learn more about how they can best support one another.OFFERS & HELPFUL LINKS:Dr. Laura Chackes Online Training for Therapists Jennifer Agee coaching pageDestination Continuing Education Facebook communityCounseling Community Instagram

In this episode, I'm joined by Brianna Calderon, a licensed mental health counselor, to talk about imposter syndrome, misconceptions about therapy, and hustle culture. We discuss.. - the definition of imposter syndrome and how it presents for therapists - the journey from grad school, to becoming a therapist, and steps taken to obtain a license - misconceptions of therapy and realistic expectations for therapy - apprehensions therapists have to setting career and work boundaries and how that can affect our mental health Brianna Calderon is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor based in New York and provides services in the states of New York, New Jersey, and New Hampshire. As a native New Yorker, Brianna completed her undergraduate and graduate studies within the SUNY system and has been providing therapy services for the last decade. She is trained in the evidence based practices used to treat OCD, anxiety, BFRBs (tics, skin picking, hair pulling), Hoarding, and PTSD. Brianna is experienced in delivering therapeutic services across diverse populations and places an emphasis on cultural competency to better guide clients towards living a healthier life. Brianna has appeared on several podcasts discussing her specialties such as OCD and the stigmas and misconceptions around the diagnosis. Brianna currently works at Thriving Center of Psychology, a group practice in New York and is working on growing her social media following to share educational information about her specialty areas and to help decrease the stigma and misinformation out there about therapy and mental health. In her spare time Brianna loves to decompress and practice self care by reading, wandering around NYC, cuddling and playing with her dog, and catching up on reality TV.  To follow Brianna's work on Instagram, check her out at: https://www.instagram.com/718counseling Head to my website at ⁠⁠⁠www.jennaoverbaughlpc.com⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for my free e-mail newsletter, grab your free "Imagine Your Recovered Life" PDF, and download your free “5 Must Know Strategies for Managing Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts” video + access expertly crafted masterclasses just for you.  Course and more coming soon! Remember: this podcast is for informational purposes only and may not be the best fit for you and your personal situation. It shall not be construed as mental health or medical advice. The information and education provided here is not intended or implied to supplement or replace professional advice of your own professional mental health or medical treatment, advice, and/or diagnosis. Always check with your own physician or medical or mental health professional before trying or implementing any information read here. Copyright 2023 Jenna Overbaugh, LLC

Join your host, Nicole Morris, LMFT and Mental Health Correspondent, for another chat around the water cooler! This week, Nicole is talking about BFRBs in the summertime! If you aren't familiar with Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs), consider this a special invitation to learn more! Because Nicole's guess is that the OCD Family Community runs into this OCD-Related Disorder more often than folks realize! So join the conversation! It's a brief, yet broad overview to bring awareness, resources and support to our BFRB and OCD Family community!

Episode 112 sees The ADHD Adults discuss nail-biting, hair pulling, skin picking (AKA body-focused repetitive behaviours) and ADHD.  As usual, Alex the Psycho.......education Monkey provides the dull 'evidence' on the subject, all three  ADHD adults give their personal reflections on the theme and provide 'top tips' on the topic.  'What has James lost, forgotten or mislaid this week?" returns with Alex annoyingly in the lead, and Alex reads the usual 'definitely real' correspondence.  James gets confused by being asked how he is, Alex puts bleach in his eyes and Mrs ADHD ruins yet another “joke”...Support the showWritten by Alex Conner and James BrownProduced by James Brown and Afatscientist Ltd.Social media contacts: @theadhdadultsMusic by Sessionz

In this episode, we interview Dr Lisa Conway, a Chicago based clinical psychologist with a private practice called Exposure Therapy Chicago. Dr Conway graduated with her PhD from the University of Wyoming in 2010 and then completed a two-year NIMH postdoctoral fellowship in Traumatic Stress at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center in Charleston, SC. She worked as an Assistant Professor in the Clinical Psychology Department at Northern Illinois University before entering full-time clinical work. She opened Exposure Therapy Chicago in 2020 with a focus on providing evidence-based practices for anxiety, OCD, BFRBs and trauma to more adults in need of this care. As a member of PSYPACT, she can currently work with clients in 36 states. Dr Conway is board-certified in Behavioral and Cognitive Psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology, and serves on the board of OCD Midwest. She is also a member of the TLC Foundation, International OCD Foundation and Association for Contextual and Behavioral Science. She is also an active member of her therapy community, and participates in, and hosts, multiple consultation groups with local, national and international colleagues. We ask all the hard hitting questions (like what are body focused repetitive behaviors and are they normal) and do a deep dive into all things related to anxiety, BFRBs and everything you'd ever want to know about treatment for these issues. For more information about Dr. Conway, check out her website at www.exposuretherapychicago.com. We will be posting more information on the therapy topics we discussed in our Instagram stories so give us a follow over there at @therapy_podcast_.

Angela Hartlin is the founder of Skin Picking Support, a community that provides resources for those with excoriation disorder and other Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviours (BFRBs). This week Angela joins the guys during BFRB Awareness Week to take them on a journey of recovery, awareness, and advocacy surrounding BFRBs while touching on Angela's personal experience with skin picking. Join the post-episode conversation over on Discord! https://discord.gg/expeUDN