Anxiety and OCD Therapy NYC
Struggling with Anxiety or OCD can feel like a full time job.
Constantly on high alert of your surroundings, racing or intrusive thoughts and behaviors that are shrinking your life… but it feels impossible to stop
However, it does not need to be this way. You deserve to get back to an expansive life that does not feel controlled by anxiety.
Struggling with anxiety can feel like you’re trapped in your own mind.
An intrusive thought or disturbing image popping up unexpectedly
Declining activities you enjoy due to uncertainty of who will be there or other unknowns
Being overly hypervigilant just incase the worst case scenario in your mind happens
Fear that your thoughts indicate your values
but that is your anxiety talking because you are not your thoughts.
Anxiety does not need to rule your life and you should be so proud of yourself for taking the first step to seek treatment.
What is the difference between Anxiety and OCD?
OCD is part of the Obsessive-compulsive related disorders
Includes intrusive thoughts, images or obsessions that often cause high anxiety, worry or fear. These intrusive thoughts and obsessions are followed by a compulsion or repetitive behaviors to soothe the anxiety
Obsessions tend to follow certain themes (such as, someone with relationship OCD may have relationship obsessions)
Compulsions can be behaviors (such as excessive hand washing, repeated checking if the stove is off, reassurance seeking) or mental acts (such as rumination, mental counting, repeated words/phrases)
OCD
Anxiety disorders include generalized anxiety, social anxiety, specific phobias, panic disorder and more
Anxiety disorders do not follow the pattern of an obsession followed by a compulsion the same way OCD does
Some anxiety disorders are characterized by specific fears. Such as social anxiety (fear of social situations), specific phobias (intense fear of specific object/situation such as heights) or agoraphobia (fear of places/situations that may cause embarrassment or being trapped)
Generalized anxiety is characterized by more persistent worry about various situations
ANXIETY
Our approaches to Anxiety Therapy
Expoure & Response Prevention (ERP)
ERP is the frontline treatment for OCD. Together we will gently explore your current obsessions and compulsions. At your pace, we will incrementally and gently use exposures target the obsessions while intervening to decrease the compulsions. Overtime, this breaks the obsession and compulsion loop that keeps people feeling stuck.
Cognitive Behavioral Tools
We use a blend of strategies under the cognitive behavioral umbrella to tailor coping skills to your needs and goals. This may range from mindfulness skills, increasing value-aligned living, emotion regulation techniques and self-compassion practices. We believe in providing clients with concrete tools to support symptom relief and rewiring thought patterns overtime.
Internal Family Systems (IFS or also known as parts work)
IFS is an exploratory process to discover how your anxiety may have developed as a means of protection. Our brain often develops strategies to keep ourselves safe and when using IFS, we will compassionately explore the root causes of why your anxiety may have developed and how we can make those parts of you feel safer.