You’re here because you’re emotionally and physically exhausted from constantly worrying.

You might even have another tab open right now where you recently typed, “is this anxiety or a heart attack?” into Google.

Intrusive thoughts about bad things happening have taken over your day-to-day. It’s hard to sleep, hard to focus at work, and the people around you have run out of ways to reassure you (and even when they try, it’s not working).

My sincere message of hope for you is this –
You CAN feel better with the right support.

I’m not going to sugarcoat this—if you’ve been in therapy for years for anxiety or OCD and are still struggling, it’s not because you’re beyond help. It’s because you haven’t gotten the right kind of help yet.

Chances are, you’ve spent a lot of time learning breathing techniques and evaluating the “evidence for” and “evidence against” a thought. You’ve probably focused on exercise, meditation, and all the things you’re supposed to do.

And to be clear, those things are important for managing stress and taking care of your well-being. These are strategies that have a place in some types of mental health treatment.

However…

When it comes to clinical anxiety and OCD, these coping strategies will only get you so far.

Here’s an analogy: imagine every time you got into a swimming pool, you started to flounder. You panic, and instinctively grab the nearest floatie or life raft. You survive—but it’s exhausting. Every single time, it’s crisis mode. Is that wrong? Not necessarily. But is it sustainable? Not really.

Wouldn’t it be better to just learn how to swim?

That’s exactly how I view treatment for anxiety and OCD.

If every time a fear or intrusive thought shows up, you have to urgently cope with it—using deep breathing, distraction, or reassurance—you’re staying afloat, but you’re not addressing the root issue that is causing you to go under each and every time.

The real goal? Learn how to swim.

How do we do this?

“Learning to swim,” in this case, means breaking the anxiety cycle before it spirals in the first place.

It starts with understanding how anxiety and OCD actually work.

Everyone has intrusive thoughts. It’s part of being human. But people without clinical anxiety or OCD can usually brush those thoughts aside and do not view them as dangerous or urgent.

If you’re struggling with anxiety or OCD, your brain misinterprets those same thoughts as threats. You respond with compulsions, which are temporary strategies like avoiding, Googling, checking, or asking for reassurance. These behaviors may bring short-term relief, but they keep you stuck in the cycle.

Each time you respond this way, you’re teaching your brain: “That was the only reason I stayed safe. Do it again next time.”

That’s the floatie.

Just like grabbing a floatation device in deep water, it might keep you afloat for a moment, but it doesn’t teach you how to swim, and it keeps you locked in survival mode.

Our goal is to help you respond to anxiety and intrusive thoughts differently—to stop the cycle before it begins.

Swimming, in this context, means noticing the thought without attaching meaning, answering “what if” questions, or trying to figure it out. You allow the thought to pass, like a wave, without reacting.

Because the thoughts themselves aren’t the problem—it’s the response that fuels the disorder.

Here’s the thing: anxiety and OCD can’t function without your participation.

You can’t control what pops into your head, but you can control how you respond. You can choose not to Google symptoms, re-read texts, review conversations, or seek reassurance. Those are the moments when you either reach for the floatie, or learn to swim.

Recovery doesn’t mean you never feel anxious again. It means a thought arises (as it does for all of us) and you don’t treat it like an emergency. You notice it, let it be, and keep living your life.

That shift teaches your brain: “This isn’t a crisis. I can handle this. If something truly needs my attention, I’ll deal with it then.”

Just because you’ve felt this way for as long as you can remember doesn’t mean you have to keep feeling this way.

Learning to effectively manage anxiety and OCD is absolutely possible, and I can help you get there.

Before we begin treatment, it helps to understand a few key things: what tends to cause anxiety, the different types of anxiety and OCD, and the evidence-based treatments that truly work.

Where did my anxiety or OCD come from in the first place?

While there are many unique reasons that could cause people to experience anxiety or OCD, a few theories of contributing factors are outlined below:

Genetic predisposition. Research shows that there is a genetic predisposition for anxiety and OCD. Anxiety and OCD tend to run through the family tree.

Biochemical factors. Anxiety and OCD are thought to be linked to biochemical factors, including serotonin imbalances that affect brain circuits involved in regulating thoughts and emotions.

Trauma or stressful life events. Traumatic events can heighten anxiety or trigger underlying OCD. There are times where it is appropriate for you to work with both a trauma therapist trained in evidenced-based treatment for PTSD and an OCD therapist concurrently.

Postpartum onset. Some parents develop OCD for the first time after childbirth due to hormonal shifts, emotional stress, and overwhelming responsibility.

Medical Conditions. PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcus) and PANS (Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome) are believed to cause sudden-onset OCD and tics in children due to immune responses affecting the brain. Even with a medical root, therapy is still often needed to address compulsions.

To learn more about PANDAS/PANS, click here.

Anxiety and OCD: Understanding Overlap & Differences

While Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) are classified as separate conditions in the DSM-5, they share quite a few overlapping features—especially when it comes to excessive worry, intrusive thoughts, and avoidance behaviors.

Some people experience symptoms of both, which can make getting a clear diagnosis more complicated. That’s why it’s so important to understand both the differences and the shared patterns between anxiety and OCD. When these conditions are mistaken for one another, treatment can end up missing the mark.

It’s surprisingly common for people with OCD to be misdiagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. In fact, the average delay in getting an accurate OCD diagnosis is around 17 years. A lot of what’s taught in graduate programs tends to focus on the basics of CBT, such as thought-challenging and cognitive reframing. These tools can be helpful in some cases, but for OCD, they do not get to the root of the problem and can actually make things worse. This is why working with a specialist who deeply understands both is important.

OCD and anxiety don’t respond to logic alone. That’s why therapy needs to go deeper. We need to explore core fears, obsessions, compulsions (both mental and physical), the anxiety cycle, avoidance behaviors, intrusive thoughts, and non-engagement strategies. Concepts such as habituation, inhibitory learning, and extinction bursts also play a key role in effective treatment. At first, these ideas can feel overwhelming, but in my work with families, they become part of every conversation. My goal is to help clients learn to be their own therapists outside of our sessions, equipped with a solid working knowledge of how OCD functions and what truly helps reduce symptoms..

When OCD is misdiagnosed or overlooked, it can lead to unnecessary suffering and delay access to the kind of treatment that actually works. Many of my clients have come in thinking they’ve been dealing with “just anxiety,” only to discover that OCD has been at the root of their distress all along.

This is why I always start with a thorough assessment to make sure we’re seeing the full picture and choosing the treatment approach that will actually help. Working with a provider who understands the nuances of both anxiety and OCD can make all the difference when it comes to long-term recovery.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder Symptoms & Treatment

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) involves chronic worry about many areas of life. It often leads to sleep issues, muscle tension, fatigue, and persistent mental loops. People with GAD tend to worry a lot about a lot of things.

How Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Helps:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy teaches you to:

Learn about the anxiety cycle and identify your own unique triggers and response patterns in this cycle

Shift attention from imagined catastrophes to what your senses are actually telling you—learning to distinguish between “signals” and “noise” (a concept from Dr. Reid Wilson)

Accept uncertainty as part of living a full, brave life, rather than something to solve or escape

Much of our distress doesn’t come from what’s actually happening—but from the stories we tell ourselves about what might happen. CBT helps you bring mindful awareness to these mental narratives and explore different, more balanced versions of the story.

That said, while CBT can be incredibly helpful for many people with anxiety, it’s not always enough—especially when compulsive behaviors, whether mental or physical, are part of the picture. In those cases, a more targeted approach (a specialized branch of CBT called Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy) can be the key to real, lasting change.

Exposure & Response Prevention Therapy: Rewiring the Brain

ERP is a structured therapy that involves gradually facing feared situations and reducing avoidance without relying on avoidance or safety behaviors. It’s considered the gold standard for OCD and is also highly effective for anxiety.

Through ERP, you’ll learn to:

Gradually face feared situations without engaging in compulsions

Reduce avoidance behaviors that are shrinking your life (making you late to school; missing out on events and travel; and impacting your relationships)

Build tolerance for uncertainty—and with it, self-trust

Retrain your brain to recognize false alarms for what they are: just that—false alarms

As you repeatedly face your fears and change how you respond to them, your brain begins to learn that these situations aren’t actually dangerous.

ERP helps rewire your brain in two important ways:

Habituation – where repeated exposure helps reduce the intensity of fear by increasing your tolerance to that feared situation

Inhibitory learning – where you learn that the feared outcomes usually don’t happen

When you commit to the principles of ERP as a way of life, you begin to live in alignment with what truly matters to you instead of what you fear most. This approach builds genuine confidence and freedom from the inside out.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Not Just About Cleanliness

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) involves unwanted, intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors or mental actions (compulsions) performed to reduce distress, feelings of disgust, or to prevent something bad from happening. While most people experience intrusive thoughts or engage in compulsive behaviors from time to time, a diagnosis of OCD is different in a few key ways.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), OCD is diagnosed when:

Obsessions and/or compulsions are time-consuming (taking more than one hour per day)

They cause significant distress,

And they interfere with important areas of functioning, such as work, school, or relationships.

OCD can be a debilitating condition that affects not only the individual but also the entire family system. The intensity of distress and the level of impairment are often what set OCD apart from more common experiences of anxiety.

Types of Intrusive Thoughts Seen in OCD

“What if that speed bump was me hitting a person?”

“What if I drop my baby down the stairs?”

“What if I don’t really love my partner?”

“What if I’m secretly a bad person?”

“What if I am a pedophile?”

“What if I throw up?”

“What if I have a heart condition and don’t know it?”

“What if I lose control and stab someone in my family while I’m unloading the dishwasher?”

These thoughts are egodystonic, which means that they feel deeply wrong, disturbing, and out of sync with your true values. It’s important to know that everyone has strange, unwanted thoughts from time to time; the difference in OCD is that the brain gets stuck on them.

Common Compulsions:

Rechecking or excessive cleaning

Asking for reassurance

Googling symptoms

Mentally reviewing situations or conversations

Silently repeating phrases or prayers

Taking your temperature to make sure you’re not sick

“Feelings checking” (do I actually feel that way? Did I like that thought?)

While compulsions may bring temporary relief, they reinforce the belief that the thoughts are dangerous, which keeps the anxiety cycle alive.

Tying it All Together in Anxiety & OCD Treatment with Exposure & Response Prevention Therapy

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the gold-standard, evidence-based treatment for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Backed by decades of research, ERP is the most widely recommended first-line treatment for OCD—especially in children, where it currently remains the only evidence-based approach supported by clinical guidelines.

For adults, while ERP continues to be highly effective, Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT) has also emerged as a promising standalone treatment. I-CBT takes a different angle than traditional ERP by focusing on the reasoning process that leads to doubt and obsession, rather than focusing primarily on exposure to feared situations. It can be particularly helpful for individuals who find ERP overwhelming or ineffective on its own.

Other therapeutic approaches, like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), may be used in combination with ERP to support values-based living and psychological flexibility. However, traditional talk therapy and other types of therapy are not recommend for OCD.

ERP is an active, hands-on treatment that includes in-session learning, thoughtfully designed exposure work, involvement of family (especially when reassurance-seeking or accommodation is present), and meaningful practice between sessions. It’s not about “just talking”—it’s about learning new ways to respond to fear, uncertainty, and discomfort.

We keep momentum going. We don’t sit around wishing things were better—we take purposeful action to make things better. And through it all, I’m in your corner-not just as someone who treats OCD, but as someone who’s lived it.

Life on the Other Side of Fear

Here’s something truly hopeful: anxiety and OCD are highly treatable. Whether you’re a parent navigating care for your teen, a mom facing the challenges of postpartum OCD, or someone trying to support your kids while managing your own mental health, you’re not alone, and help is available.

Over the past 14 years, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing countless stories of resilience and recovery. I’m continually inspired by the strength people uncover when they commit to healing — even when they first arrive feeling unsure that change is possible.

Recovery is so possible for you and your family.

If you’re ready to face your fears with courage and consistency, I’ll be beside you through every step in this process.