Stuck in a very specific thought loop?
Specialized OCD Treatment for Adults
Online in San Francisco & all of California,
Massachusetts, New York, and Florida
Obsessive-compulsive disorders wax and wane over our whole lives if we don’t treat them, but people usually wait to start treatment until it gets pretty epic.
You would think we would want to get better for the sake of enjoying our own lives! In reality, we wait until something forces the issue. Maybe you noticed an impact on your ability to have the career or relationships you want. Maybe your mood is the worst it’s ever been. Whatever it is, the silver lining is that instead of delaying treatment longer, you are more motivated to address your OCD now. And that does tend to lead to nice results over time, so your future self might ultimately just be happy you took action, independent of what got you started.
Welcome to the club!
I have been specializing in OCD and other obsessive-compulsive disorders for several years, but you could say I have a lifetime of experience. I have them too! Yay.
I (finally) tried the same treatment I now provide and got way better. From my experience on both sides of the therapy room, I know ERP can sound painful or weird, but then help a ton in a pretty short space of time. Obviously I can’t tell the future and guarantee the same results for you, but I can say that it tends to go quite well. I love helping people like me get better, so I can also say that if we work together, you will get my full effort and attention.
Therapy with me can be personal as well as practical. We can laugh, cry, and solve longstanding problems, and you can share any part of your life to whatever degree works for you. We will also set treatment goals specific to your condition and meet them, using the same gold-standard approach used by the big names in the OCD world, so you can get better and stay better.
Exposure & Response Prevention =
permanently changing your brain and learning how to chill out
People often assume ERP = fancy anxiety management techniques they will have to use for the rest of their lives. Other times, people believe ERP requires self-torture if they want to get better—“no pain, no gain.”
In reality, we can set up your brain to learn what it needs to learn through a short series of learning exercises. Think about it like a course of physical therapy, where the exercises and stretches are supposed to feel like a “good stretch” (not pure pain). You actually heal and get better, so the goal is not to do your fancy stretches and exercises forever—it’s to fix the problem and move on.
A final ERP fear I hear a lot: if you relax your standards, you’ll become reckless. In fact, ERP is about making your decisions logically, without compulsively trying to ensure 100% certainty about the things none of us can know. We can identify strategies for decision-making that are both responsible and also leave room for living your life.
What do you treat?
OCD
At any given point, about 90% of my clients have OCD, often along with other cool stuff on this page. It’s not easy, but those of us with OCD and these related conditions are also lucky there’s a treatment for us that works extremely well. We’re six decades into using ERP for OCD and a century into exposure therapy for anxiety, and it’s helped a wild number of people get better, myself included. Join the dark side!
OCD’s Relatives
Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD)? Illness anxiety? Body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) like compulsive skin picking (excoriation), hair pulling (trichotillomania), or nail-biting? Intense social anxiety? Panic attacks? Phobias? Guess what! ERP is still the treatment of choice, with tweaks here and there to fit each one, and a closely related treatment for BFRBs called HRT/ComB.
Misophonia
Sound sensitivity sucks. Having a name for it and more recognition in the fields of psychology and medicine? Slightly better! But seriously, we finally have techniques for reducing your exposure to irritating sounds and proactively approaching tough situations when you decide to stick them out. No cure yet, and no ERP for this one, just way more effective management.
Meet Reno the therapy bunny!
Therapy bunny is a stretch, but in any case, Reno says hello! He prefers to be a floor bunny, so he will mostly be not-seen and not-heard during our calls. From wherever he is on the floor, he wishes you a successful and rewarding therapy journey.
Schedule a free 20-minute phone consult
If you cry on the call, you won’t be the first
