The Center for OCD and Anxiety, LLC

It’s the official start of summer, and a time to move towards our best selves (kind of like every other day!). #memorialdayweekend #memorialday #startofsummer #startsomethingnewforyou

Instead of holding ourselves back and sticking to what we know, we have the ability to create a vision for our future and pursue it. This doesn’t mean we live without trial or tribulation, but it does mean we can move through them with acceptance and our eyes on what’s ahead!

Taking a brief hiatus for a few days. Keep on living the adventure! #adventurecalls #youdoyou

So often, OCD and anxiety want you to have a foolproof plan before taking action. This means a lot of time is spent thinking and planning, and planning and thinking. Little actual doing occurs because there’s always room to make adjustments here, tweak the plan there or catastrophize the end and have to start all over. When you get out of the thinking space, and into the doing one most often you realize you prepared for things that never happened, and missed a lot of the joy that comes from lived experiences. #ocd #obsessivecompulsivedisorder #anxiety #anxietydisorders #gad #generalizedanxietydisorder #stopthinkingstartdoing #overthinkingdoesnthelp

Sometimes a bit of silliness goes a long way to create the space YOU need to hear OCD differentlythat OCD thought/anxiety worry disguised as an aria, a rock ballad or a Muppet often provides the space between the thought and yourself to hear it & respond differently. #changehowyouhearthethought #act #defusethethought #acceptance #acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy #actforerp #erp #exrp #exposureresponseprevention

Give yourself permission to be strong today for all your tomorrow’s. #anxiety #anxietyawareness #anxietyquote #strongtoday #strongtodayforabettertomorrow

When the feeling (sadness, disgust, depression, anxiety, fear...) is the trigger more than the specific intrusive thought, it gets much easier to move on: whenever that uncomfortable feeling presents, start engaging in exposure practice. Odds are good that you’ll spend less time trying to sort out meaningless thoughts because you will have already used exposure to prove you can tolerate the feeling and the thought! #feelingsastriggers #exrp #erp #exposure #exposuretherapy #habituation #habituatetomyfear

We tend to think in black and whiteunless completely confident, the urge to ritualize will present. The goal of ERP is to realize that there’s a maybe spot between that doesn’t require complete confidence or that you complete a ritual to be able to complete a decision making task. #erp #maybemaybenot #decisionsdecisions #decisionmaking #decisionmakingocd #acceptingthegray #blackandwhitedecisions

Anxiety has a way of shading what you see, of distorting the view, of leaving everything not as it was and not as it is. #anxiety #anxietyawareness #anxietymakesyoudoweirdthings #anxietymisreadsthesituation

OCD always solves problems by ritualizing. It thinks the ritual is the solution every time the uncomfortable thought and feeling present. It never notices other possible thoughts, feelings, or conclusions. Practice a bit of intentional grounding when the intrusive thoughts and feelings comesee if there’s an answer beyond the ritual(and celebrate the fact that you just cracked the pattern with a small delay exposure!) #intentionalgrounding #aggressivemindfulness #ocd #obsessivecompulsivedisorder #ritualsdontsolveproblems #exposuressolveproblems #realizethereality

People talk a lot about having pure o or obsessional thinking. Often this means that they have mental rituals rather than physical ones: instead of washing hands to get rid of an uncomfortable feeling, they work to figure out the feeling. These mental rituals are no more successful than physical ones are at solving discomfort. Just because the ritual isn’t physical doesn’t mean it’s not a ritual! #ocd #obsessivecompulsivedisorder #mentalrituals #pureo #pureocd #thinkingaboutfeelings #figuringitout #erp #exrp #exposuretherapy #exposurewithresponseprevention

If you fear the waves, the natural inclination is to run from them (assuming you haven’t frozen or decided to try and fight them). Instead of running, experiment with embracing the fear and riding the waves instead. #embraceyourfear #fightflightfreeze #challengeyourself

On a rainy-ish, snowy-ish Monday morning when you might be wanting to stay in bed...remember these words. Heck, bring them out any day of the week to remind yourself that your life is what you make of it! Get up, get going and start celebrating! #thoughtsonamondaymorning #yourlifeyourway #celebrateyourself #celebrateyourlife #youcandothis #youcandohardthings #itsagreatdaytohaveagreatday

Happy holidays! New and different this year, as everything has been;). Just remember that change isn’t always badit can be exciting and fun!

OCD is much more than an adjective. It’s also not just worries about cleanliness and handwashing compulsions. It can be aggressive intrusive thoughts, a need for things to be just right, a need to know, magical thinking, scrupulosity, relationship worries, worries about specific illnesses, intrusive harm thoughts...and whatever rituals OCD comes up with to solve these uncomfortable thoughts. The rituals that OCD comes up with don’t need to be logicala counting ritual might undo a harm thought or a repeating ritual might ameliorate the anxious thought that you’ve contracted a deadly disease. #ocd #obssessivecompulsivedisorder #intrusivethoughts #rituals #compulsions #ocdthemes #rocd #relationshipocd #harmocd #pureocd #pureo #obsessivethoughts #ritualsdontworkforlong

When OCD or anxiety is in charge, the world is a scary place full only of risk and possible danger. The reality is that the world is full of lots of excitement and happiness and change. These three things don’t come without risks or possible danger, but shifting the focus to do a cost benefit analysis of the possible outcomes often opens things up in surprising ways. Life doesn’t usually go as OCD says it willget out there and start living!! #theworldisbigandiwanttoseeit #ocdlies #changeisscary #changeisgood #feardoesntdefineyou

Election anxiety continues to spreaduse exposure practice to help ride the wave of uncertainty and practice the self care you need until there’s a final tally of votes. Some fun ideas to manage emotions: guessing the news from trending memes, listening to one late night host of your choosing only so you get the info with a dose of humor, asking a trusted friend/family member to be your watchdog so you’re not constantly looking for updates... #election2020 #electionanxiety #election #electionselfcare #electionselfcareplan #electionselfcaretips #everyvotecounts

Tomorrow is Election Day. No matter you’re politics, we encourage you to vote if you’re able! For those of you having election anxiety this year, know that the end is in sight. Give yourself some flexibility to make it through! #election2020 #vote2020 #vote #electionanxiety #flexiblegoals #theendisinsight

Monday morning is a fresh start to the work week but instead of changing it all up at once, start with small refreshes to your day! Opposite exposures are great but not usually sustainable long termpick a smaller exposure you can do consistently all week to give you your time back from OCD and you can scale up next week! #mondaymotivation #smallchangesbigresults #smallchangesbigimpact #slowandsteadywinstherace #betheturtlenotthehare

Happy Halloween, Pittsburgh (& everywhere else)we hope today is filled with fun sorts of safe scares rather than the intrusive thoughts ones we’ve been talking about the past few days! #halloween #halloween2020 #pumpkins #ghosts #bats #witches #spiders #funscares

OCD is great at getting distressing images and thoughts into your head...and keeping it there. Maybe it says you can’t get the image out of your head because you like it. Or it says you want to engage in the behavior the image represents. Or that you didn’t have the right feeling associated with the thought/image. And then it stays stuck there longer because you begin to question yourself. The reality may be much more simplethe image in this post makes you feel uncom...fortable. Period. We can feel discomfort and move onthe act of figuring it out only highlights the discomfort and maintains it. It’s a great move to accept that an image can create distress and then to move on! #actforocd #moveonfromunhelpfulthoughts #movepnfromunhelpfulimages #ocd #erp #exposuretherapy #exposureresponseprevention #obssessivecompulsivedisorder #intrusivethoughts #intrusiveimages #figuringitoutisaritual See more

It feels terrible when OCD harm thoughts take over. OCD keeps the worries present because it’s dictating the script, assigning meaning and value to things in such a way that it feels impossible to know for sure what’s really going on. Instead of getting trapped with thoughts of the zombie apocalypse and how you won’t make it (what OCD wants you to think!), switch the script to something a bit more humorous like Shaun of the Dead’s version of the same events! #switchthescriptonocd #ocd #intrusivethoughts #hocd #harmocd #usehumortocombatocd

We tend to spend our time looking for the evidence that supports our worry or anxiety, to the exclusion of noticing anything else. The goal is to realize we can frame things in new ways and walk away with a different understanding of our difficulties. **Also, we at COA are deliberately posting this TODAY since we’re planning a few creepy, spooky themed posts in honor of Halloween between now and Saturday! #chooseyourownadventure #eyeswideopen #reframe #challenge #lookforalternatives #noblindeyetoanxiety

Which one are you? It’s always interesting to realize that not everyone gets anxious about the same stuffand it helps make OCD feel a bit more relatable to those who assume it’s all cleaning or all perfectionism. Not all OCD is the same! (We found this image online, but are pretty sure it was several degrees away from it’s original sourceso thanks to whoever put it out there!) #differentocdthemes #notthesame #anxiety #ocd #differentresponse #differentreality

It sounds counter intuitive to be anxious on purpose, but it really does resolve the issue fastthere’s no way your body and brain can remain in the fear response during direct planned exposures, but you can stay in fear via avoidance! #erp #exrp #exposuretherapy #exposuretherapyworks #exposuresdiminishanxiety #anxietytreatment #faceyourfears #liveyourbestlife

Did your alarm not go off? Did you get stuck in traffic? Did everything just seem to be off this morning? We can choose to get lost in all that goes wrong or reframe the day and look for the successes! #changeyourmindset #changeyouroutlook #notalwaysrainbowsandunicorns #butalwayssomesunshine #reframeyourthoughts #attendtowhatwentwell

After a post a day for #ocd week, we took a bit of time off for some self care! It’s important to remember that both self care and self improvement are hard work, but not towards the same outcome. Self care isn’t about achieving or doing moreit’s about recognizing the need for a break and taking it which is often hard to do in a fast paced life. Self improvement is about a personal growth process, about climbing to your next step and experiencing the challenges that go along with this. #selfcare #selfimprovement #timeoutforyourself #selfcareisntselfish #selfimprovementisntselfish #noteasy #hardstuff #therapistsofinstagram #counselorsofinstagram #socialworkersofinstagram