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Blog post
08.17.2023
BDD, Surgeons, and Surgery: Considerations and Questions to Ask
Surgery can be lifesaving. Surgery is often needed and can, for many conditions and situations, be a game changer. But more often than not, a surgical procedure for someone with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) will not help. It could potentially relieve the person of their symptoms for a short amount of time but it cannot treat or cure the underlying disorder.
Blog post
05.10.2022
How I Learned to Stop Avoiding Life
This blog was originally posted on Ten Percent Happier on April 22, 2022 and is reprinted here with permission
Blog post
09.19.2023
How Do I Love Myself When I’m at War with My Mind?
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?”
Blog post
07.27.2023
Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Eating Disorders: Overlapping Presentations, Differing Treatments.
There can be confusion when differentiating between body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and eating disorders (EDs). They both involve pre-occupying appearance-related thoughts and repetitive behaviours, but are treated differently.
Blog post
12.06.2022
Exposures for OCD: Getting Creative
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.
Blog post
10.13.2022
What Are the Pandemic Side Effects on Those with BDD and OCD?
The pandemic set a new era into motion. When the world went into lockdown in 2020, people learned to fear the outside and any social interaction, becoming extremely fearful of contracting the deadly virus.
Blog post
10.06.2022
Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) and Men: What to Know and How it Differs
Body Dysmorphic Disorder is an unhealthy preoccupation with not just the look, shape, or feel of one’s body or a specific part, but the shame one experiences in the appearance of their body, or a certain aspect of it, really hits the mark. BDD is a chronic condition that can be debilitating and can disrupt various aspects of the person’s day-to-day life for years.
Blog post
06.04.2022
Busting Myths that Keep Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts Stuck
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.
Blog post
06.03.2022
Anticipatory Anxiety: Bleeding Before You Are Cut
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.
Blog post
02.01.2022
Managing COVID-19 Fears as Mental Health Professionals
Many mental health professionals are now conducting patient visits virtually. I am one of the only psychologists left in my building who has stayed behind to continue in-person work while abiding by COVID protocols. Since our practice specializes in refractory OCD spectrum disorders and anxiety disorders a lot of the work done at our outpatient clinic requires in-vivo exposures, which cannot be replicated on Zoom.
Blog post
10.28.2021
It's Not Just OCD About Physical Appearance: Understanding Body Dysmorphic Disorder
In BDD, people are tormented by obsessive thoughts associated with a part or parts of their physical appearance being flawed in some way, yet these flaws tend not to be noticeable to anyone but themselves.
Blog post
10.12.2021
The Power of Saying, “Whatever"
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.