Search Content

DEI can take up valuable time, as well as emotional and mental resources. This is particularly true for graduate students and trainees, who are simultaneously juggling research, clinical training, and personal transitions. Here are FIVE ways to ensure the important work you do, is also working for you.

My question to my fellow therapists who treat women with OCD is this: “How can we teach women to whole heartedly love themselves, when a mind that creates negative, intrusive, and terrifying thoughts is such a large part of us?”  

The ability to be ourselves with clients makes it so much easier to connect, to be real about how challenging treatment is, and enlist their help to ensure that whatever the exposure is, its something they can tolerate, trust in, and most importantly, begin to experience relief from their intrusive thoughts and the compulsions that may dominate their lives. 

A thought is not a message about what is going to happen. Thoughts have nothing to do with character, which is a reflection of how you lead your life and what you choose to do. Believing even some of these myths can be responsible for ordinary intrusive thoughts becoming stuck. 

Anticipatory anxiety involves worry about—and the urge to avoid—not only anxiety or panic, but also disgust, anger, shame, regret, humiliation, becoming overwhelmed, or any other unwanted emotion. We think of anticipatory anxiety as a third layer of fear.

So definitely submit to present. You do have something to offer either as primarily a therapist or a researcher or both. Do not doubt, just submit and see what happens. Conference submissions are not weighted based on presenters in the review process, so you have just as good a chance at acceptance as more senior submitters if you have an interesting and well written proposal.

Happy Holidays! I wanted to end the year by taking a moment to reflect on my tenure as ADAA president - which was served entirely during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the highlights of these two years has been all that we were able to accomplish together despite the chaos of the world.

I’m a psychologist who treats OCD and Anxiety Disorders. When my patients get to a point in treatment when they shrug their shoulders and say to me, “Yeah, I had an intrusive thought, but ‘Whatever”, I know we have hit a home run.

The current pandemic has unleashed unique stressors on our health care community. While many medical and mental health care workers have responded with resilience, our health care workforce is not immune to the trauma and suffering they face.