S2 E2 Shit2TalkAbout What the OCD? with Brianna Calderon
Transcript was AI generated, if there are mistakes, please let me know! Thank you in advance! Jenn Junod
Hello. Hello, beautiful human. Welcome to shit. You don't want to talk about. This is a podcast where we turn shit. You don't want to talk about into shit to talk about. As a reminder, all of the views of our guests are their own. They do not necessarily represent those of the host, Jen Janna or of the podcast shit you do not want to talk about. Please support us on Patreon or paypal, help share the show and if not, you know, keep showing up loving us. It is all up to you. Stay tuned for a
dope episode of expanding your mind yet always make sure that you keep track of what you need and if anything is triggering, take a step back, skip this episode. If you're curious if this is going to be triggering or not, feel free to check the episode description. Much love. Hello, beautiful humans. Thank you for joining shit. You don't want to talk about today. We have Brianna on the show and please introduce yourself, Brianna and the shit you want to talk about today.
Brianna Calderon
Hey, y'all. My name is Brianna Calderon. I am a licensed mental health counselor in the state of New York. I'm from New York City, the Bronx in particular. I am also licensed now in New Jersey as a licensed professional counselor. And today I wanna talk about obsessive compulsive disorder and some of the things that I work with some of the diagnosis that I work with that I specialize in and why it's important to talk about it.
Jenn Junod
I dig it, I dig it and I feel like there's this term that's so overgeneralized of O CD. Like I'm so O CD about something or like the media, you're being so O CD and it's almost set as like an insult and you remind me again, what does O CD stand for?
Brianna Calderon
So O CD stands for obsessive compulsive disorder and going off of what you just said, said people do use it as an adjective and it's not, I mean, it doesn't even grammatically make sense like saying I'm so O CD because obsessive compulsive disorder is a noun. It is the whole disorder. You can say things like I can become obsessive over things. That's the adjective but saying I'm so O CD is not grammatically correct already.
And it is kind of like using something that is a debilitating mental illness. It's significantly impactful to people's lives as an adjective to describe some like quirk and there's nothing wrong with having quirks. We love quirks. But using a mental disorder to describe a quirk is not exactly the most appropriate thing to do?
Jenn Junod
Thank you for that clarification. How would you describe it to someone? Like, I, especially for those that if I've, like, never heard of the term before or have like a general knowledge because of media or meeting people in passing, how would you describe it to someone, to notice it in themselves or notice it in others? Is it something that's more noticeable from others as well?
Brianna Calderon
That's a good question. So sometimes you're gonna be able to see the behaviors themselves. So, compulsions, the acts, the act part of it is can be behavioral. And I think that's where people get the definition kind of confused is that if you see someone doing something that might seem obsessive or seem like they need to do it now it's goes into the adjective of, oh, so O CD, the thing is that what you would be obsessive about and do things in order to make yourself feel better about
those obsessions aren't things that you would like to do. So when people think about like the cleaning, right? I'm so O CD with cleaning when they use it as that adjective, cleaning can bring you happiness. It could be peace. It could be your positive coping mechanism where you're like, you know what, today, I would just feel really good if I just stayed in the house and scrubbed it down and, you know, finished it and I could move on with my day and go out and do whatever else I wanna do.
That's something that people like to do. You can use it as a peaceful kind of, you know, happy thing to do. But for people with obsessive compulsive disorder, it's not something that brings you joy. It's something that brings you distress. It's about distress and anxiety. So the first piece is that obsession. I describe it to people as everyone has intrusive thoughts.
That's what we, we think about. Every single person on this planet has had an intrusive thought in their lifetime, whether you want to admit it or not, they're just thoughts that you don't particularly like they just happen. Some people are able to let them go, right? Like if you're, if you're someone you love is sick, right? There might be the thought that I could lose this person and that would suck.
That would be absolutely earth shattering. But imagine that your mind is stuck on that for hours, days, weeks on a loop and you have this kind of itch and urge to fix that thought to try to make it better, but nothing makes it better. So what do you, do you ask that consistently? Maybe excessively ask that person that's sick. Do you think you're gonna be ok?
Reassure me that you're gonna be ok. Maybe you just get stuck on that loop of thinking, what if this person dies? What if something bad happens? These are just intrusive thoughts, thoughts that everybody has that are not pleasant, they're unwanted, but your mind gets stuck on them. It's like being on a hamster wheel almost like that.
Just kind of revolving. Always running on the same thought and not being able to fix it so much so that the trying to fix it. Those attempts to fix it bring you a lot of distress and anxiety and you just find yourself stuck on that loop. Always trying to fix something that feels like it can never be fixed.
Jenn Junod
I'm letting that one sink in. It's interesting because something that came to mind while you're describing this, especially like you use the example, if your loved one is, is sick is another one that comes to mind is in relationships like there can definitely be red flags. There can also be like, you know, I, I feel like there can be obsessive compulsive actions towards like if you think your partner is being unfaithful or something and on, on something like
that or your relative is sick or how do you find is this a hunch like this is something that's really serious? Or is this anxiety or is this or? And if there's an s in there too?
Jenn Junod, Brianna Calderon
or, and is this O CD, that's the thing is it could be all of it.
Brianna Calderon
O ce attacks. What's realistic, what's important to us, what we value it goes. It makes us think that we are going against our values. So we call O CD ego dystonic. That means that what you're worried about is against your values. When you're worried about your loved one getting sick and dying, it's not because you want them to get sick and die.
It's because the thought the feeling is experienced as intrusive, unwanted and distressful. But most of the time O CD is not attacking things that are completely unrealistic. Some of them are probable and most things are possible. All things are possible actually. So when we have these obsessions, it's because they're usually something that is close in our atmosphere and it's usually something that we are, we have some type of probability can happen, doesn't mean all of
that is true. There's a specific type of O CD that we call magical thinking where the obsession is something realistic or probable or likely or possible, all those things, but the compulsion itself is not related in a realistic way. So for example, I'm sure you've heard of the phrase step on a crack break your mother's back, right? So if I'm, if I have an obsession of me of something bad happening to my mom or me breaking my mom's back right now, I'm not gonna step on the sidewalk
cracks because my brain's telling me this saves your mom. This keeps your mom safe. But realistically, you know that the two have no connection. The obsession itself though is a valid worry. You're worried about causing harm to your mom or something bad happening to your mom. But the compulsion itself is not a realistic, it's not realistically gonna fix the problem even if it were a more connected behavior. So, obsessions are always things that are things that we care about.
They're things that we were about and they're not abnormal behaviors. I really wanna normalize some of these thoughts is that they're not totally abnormal or crazy or weird. They're just thoughts and they're worries that we have because we care about the content of them. And O CD takes that opportunity to kind of hijack our values and make us distrust ourselves interesting.
Jenn Junod
And as we're talking about anxiety side of it, my dog is having an anxiety attack outside the door. So give me just a second. Go ahead. Do I come in here? Yes. Yes. OK. The door is getting shut though. So you're stuck in here now. All right.
Jenn Junod, Brianna Calderon
Excuse me, ma'am earlier. Mine just busted through the door and I was like, I can hear her whining the entire time.
Jenn Junod
And I was like, dude, I got, I got it. We're recording. She doesn't care. She doesn't care if I'm live streaming, doing the podcast. She will interject. She is an old lady. I think that's really cool how you can distinguish the, I guess, not cool, but it's interesting that you can distinguish between like it being, did you call it magical O CD magical thinking.
Brianna Calderon
Yeah. So having that kind of like realistic worry, but the compulsion itself is just not connected in a realistic way.
Jenn Junod
It, so how did you get? I'm gonna take a step back. How did you get into wanting to go into the O CD field? I feel like it is a very, very niche field or is it like giant? And I just never knew about O CD very much, which is totally possible.
Brianna Calderon
I didn't know anything about O CD really until I started working for no CD, which is the company that I work for. I had gotten my license. I was, you know, freshly with a piece of paper that says I am legally able to provide therapeutic services in the state of New York as a mental health counselor and I was just looking for a change. So I came from a completely different, a still, you know, counseling background, but a completely different population.
I worked in the, in the developmental disabilities department in different community health centers, in New York, in New York City. And I was just looking for a change, looking for a different experience because I think it's good to be well rounded and good to dip your toes in different things. And I wanted really kind of like I wanted to work from home.
This was like in the middle of the pandemic that I made the switch and I wanted to try working from home because I was in a community where I wasn't really able to work from home, even in the height of the pandemic, it was a very short period of time. So I wanted to see what telehealth was all about being able to provide telehealth services to people all around the state without having, you know, to have them come to an office in New York City somewhere and spend time on the train or time in
the car, all that stuff. So I just looked on indeed, like most people, most millennials and gen Z gen X people do. I just, you know, went on indeed and found, got an interview with CD, became a therapist at O CD. And I gotta say they, the company provides excellent clinical training. We make sure that you are an expert in O CD by the time you are going out there and seeing people on telehealth on this telehealth platform.
So I just became an expert in O CD and I started seeing members and as you know, we really make sure that you are confident and able to see a member because your clinical skills are refined. So I just went with it and ever since then, I haven't looked back. I love treating O CD. I think it's the treatment that we do is effective. We see the change and there's a lot more people that meet this criteria than meets the eye.
So just being able to not just treat O CD but teach people how to treat O CD and teach, give people psychoeducation, the general population psychoeducation on what this disorder is, how it's been stigmatized, how it's been mischaracterized in the media and, you know, popular places that we see and just being able to give people the education about what to look for.
Jenn Junod
And thank you for that. I think, it is so overly stigmatized and I love how you talk about going into it. And I'm glad that you were able to get into telehealth. It's, that is something that I, I know that so many individuals in the health care in the health care system are still struggling with being overworked and underpaid. It's, it's, you know, those are all systemic issues that we can talk about one day. But I'll be back right now.
You, you talked about, you know, the psycho education and breaking the stigma. We, we talked about it about, you said the magical thinking, OK. When you're educating individuals on this, like, is there like a top five or top three or something that are the most seen disorders? And is there a way like if I were like, you know, I think I might be O CD, like how I go through and might look into this?
Brianna Calderon
Absolutely. So first thing is that we want follow us on, on Instagram. So first of all, follow the O CD platform on Instagram. And there are a bunch of therapists that work for an O CD that have our own counseling pages there. You can kind of get a semblance of what does it look like. Do I know someone that fits this mold? Do I fit this mold? Is this the way I think and just being able to educate yourself without having to fully pay for it or go through, you know, meeting someone and commit it
making that big commitment because it is a commitment, just go and educate yourself and see if maybe this is res resembling some of your experiences or maybe someone you know that you're looking to help. Second is we c we call the different types of O CD or the different themes of O CD subtypes or themes. Now, I'm always careful to go through what's like the most common or what kinda comes across my desk the most because we can call each subtype a separate subtype.
But a lot of times we see the convergence of subtypes. So I'll give you an overview of the type of subtypes that usually converge, right? So harm O CD, the fear that you might be responsible in some way for harm or just the worry that some harm may come to you or your loved ones, whether physical harm, emotional harm, mental harm, disasters, accidents, just general bad circumstances that is harm O CD.
Then we have things like contamination O CD. So this could be a fear of germs, whether it's just the fear of feeling dirty or the fear of spreading germs, the fear of getting people sick because you've spread germs. COVID. Kind of the fear of COVID comes into this category. But even if we look at those two categories, let's say I have a fear of spreading COVID, right?
My obsession is that I'm gonna get COVID, I'm gonna spread COVID. I am going to end up spreading COVID to someone who is immunocompromised and I am going to kill them because I went out there and was irresponsible and spread germs to people and now someone is gonna die because of me. Also. It's harm O CD. It's both. Exactly. It's both, it's not just the contamination, that's just one layer of it. The harm piece is another layer layer of it. It's not either or it's both in mesh together.
So when we look at subtypes, it's really good to categorize and kind of conceptualize what you're experiencing. But I don't want people to get hung up on saying I have HO CD, I have contamination O CD. I have health anxiety O CD because a lot of times there are pieces of them, layers of them that look like each other. So you have obsessive compulsive disorder and these are some of the themes that you worry about.
Jenn Junod
would that mean that like a hypochondriac could have like health O CD. And like the fear of that they are thinking they're sick when they're not really sick.
Brianna Calderon
Absolutely. A lot of people that I've, I've worked with in the past and continue to work with describe themselves when they first have an ini an initial assessment with me to ensure that they have obsessive compulsive disorder. A lot of people say, you know, I've always been kind of a hypochondriac and then we go through the criteria together and they answer their questions and in fact, they do meet criteria for obsessive compulsive disorder overall.
And their specific type of, of obsessions are fear of having a disease, fear of spreading a disease, a disease, just general health anxiety that results in compulsion, engaging in compulsions.
Jenn Junod
I keep trying to mute myself because the dog is whining. So for everybody listening, if there's a really long pause, it is because the dog's whining and I'm trying to mute myself during it now. OK. So that I thank you for answering a few of these. Like, what if ones A I know they're probably like super annoying. I also feel like it really help starting to put it into like visualizations that we may already be as you know, have seen or can associate it with.
Even though it's very difficult, I know just so much of the shit we talk about on this podcast is like, no, it doesn't fit into a box. I get that I do yet. I'm pretty sure. I mean, you're a therapist so you'll know better than me. But it, the feeling I get is that for us to learn a lot of times it's easier for us to associate with something we already know and then course correct or learn something new from there.
Brianna Calderon
Absolutely. That's, and that's kind of why it's pretty much why psychoeducation is ongoing because you can learn, there's a big learning curve when it comes to starting therapy, starting the, the type of treatment that we do for O CD, which we can get into later on. But the psycho education piece is really important because having O CD and knowing about it is a big learning curve, but it doesn't stop in that first kind of after we've diagnosed you with O CD session, because there's
always things that you're gonna be learning along the way that we have to process in session as well. And part of that is yes, categorizing your O CD and to these different parts going with that. And then as we go along with and we get new information like how they converge at different parts, then we continue with that information.
So psycho education isn't just a one session, two se session thing it's heavily focused on in a session or two. And then we just continue going with it because there's always something new to learn about yourself in therapy.
Jenn Junod
I agree with that. 100%. And that's, that's for any type of condition or just life life happens. And now, I know that this may be a bigger debate of, is it something that what happened to us because of trauma or is it something that we just happen to be born with or where does O CD come from?
Brianna Calderon
We never really can get that certainty. Which is ironic because O CD loves certainty. O CD wants you to chase that extra. But what if? But let's just try this just because there's nothing wrong with just stepping in the sidewalk cracks because it's gonna save your mom even if it has nothing to do with. It might as well. Right. So it's ironic that, that we really don't have a perfect answer of where O CD comes from.
Part of it is genetic predispositions. Sure. The other parts are experiences, other parts are traumatic, you know, relating to trauma that doesn't mean that PTSD causes O CD or vice versa. It just means that your diagnoses can influence each other. So I have worked with people who have traumatic experiences or meet the criteria for PTSD. And although it's not the only diagnosis they have, they also have O CD, there are parts of their trauma that influence their compulsive
behaviors. So I might not be treating the trauma, the PTSD specifically, but I will treat the elements of, of PTSD that overlap with O CD. And there's, you know, more evidence based treatments that we could do with PTSD that are really kind of aligned with what we do for O CD. It's just that each disorder really deserves its special attention.
Jenn Junod
I dig that and for the beautiful humans listening a way that I want to see if I understand this, explaining it back to you. PTSD is post traumatic stress disorder. And so for myself, I have bipolar type two PTSD, anxiety, depression dyslexia. I think that's it might be forgetting one and they all do overlap where like my my bipolar type two can also look like anxiety or depression by like a DH D when I'm hyper focused, could, you know, look like I am another way of being bipolar type two,
they really do all overlap. They show up with each other. A lot of mine is from traumatic experiences yet I think it's so important for anyone wondering to go get the help and go find out because I'm not hearing like how you talked about that. Even if you have PTSD, you might have O CD. But that doesn't mean that they caused each other. And also in the same fact, I took a lot of the trauma I went through and went very inward like it was all my fault and things like that.
And from my understanding is that is a lot to do with more of the PTSD instead of O CD. And that's why you go to a therapist. Y'all just like I really want to because I went to multiple therapists from moving and being able to see what it was and diagnosed and work on a specific part is so, so important because something that works for any anxiety.
OK. Anxiety is probably not. We're gonna go a DH D, something that might work for a DH D may not work for O CD. And we, I'm just realizing so OK, so obsessive compulsive disorder is O CD PTSD is post traumatic stress disorder. And then A DH D is why am I suddenly attention deficient hyperactivity disorder? All right. There we go. We got, there's so many acronyms in all the acronyms and it's definitely something where these definitely can overlap.
So I really appreciate you saying that yet. I know I'm wanting to name these out though because it is so, so, so important not just to self diagnose and it is also important that if you're not seeing progress in your therapy session to possibly get a second opinion or that type of thing. I say that because you, you set it up perfectly of like the type of work that you do for O CD.
And so sorry if you hear my dog, she sounds like a cow or something. I don't, I don't know. Oh, well, that's good. They think you're a cat, not a cow. Do go. You gotta be quiet. Ok. Well, I think what? Bam. Ok. Why? Every time I try to talk,
Jenn Junod, Brianna Calderon
excuse me, all of the dog interruptions out, make sure some of it makes it right.
Jenn Junod
Well, I'm just going to leave it in there because everybody knows about my, my doggo loves to interrupt. Go out there, go, go, I will leave the door cracked. You can come back in if you freak out enough. All right. So with, no CD and the type of work that you do, what would somebody do?
You mentioned that they go, you go through a form with them and kind of like, figure out is do they really have O CD? What, what is the treatment style like with you? What treatments are there out there? And what is the one that y'all do?
Brianna Calderon
So for O CD specifically, we do a treatment called P. It stands for exposure and response prevention and P is kind of born out of, I'm gonna throw another acronym at you guys. So please be patient with me, but I'll go through it. P was kind of born out of C BT Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is the kind of the most popular evidence-based therapy that most people hear about when, you know, even we go into grad school and, and become therapists to school, go to school to become
counselors. when people go to therapy themselves, you'll probably hear that your therapist does C BT it's evidence based, which means that it has a lot of scientific evidence, clinical backings. We've done experiments and research on it that this is effective for specific concerns. So, P exposure and response prevention, what we do for O CD is an evidence-based practice that is really the gold standard for O CD treatment.
It shows that it's really effective to decrease those obsessive compulsive symptoms in people in a shorter period of time. So we want to really be able to get people feeling better faster through the treatment that we do.
Jenn Junod
All right, I'm gonna have you unpack that one a little bit for me because like I understood the words you're saying now, did it actually sink in? Not as much? So, C BT is cognitive behavioral therapy and that one is like the most popular version of therapy.
Brianna Calderon
It's like the grandparent therapy of OK, different types of specialized therapies.
Jenn Junod
All right. And is that one like what's considered talk therapy or one version of talk therapy?
Brianna Calderon
It can definitely be implemented throughout psychotherapy and talk therapy. And you can do cognitive behavioral interventions in therapy based on what the person is saying is their concerns. And what we do here is like I said, it was born out of cognitive behavioral therapy. So it has the same foundation of it. We just execute it a little bit differently. And there are some, you know, stipulations that differ.
Jenn Junod
All right, I'm comparing it to something I know just to see if I can get it all put together. So I have done E MD R therapy. So that's eye movement desensitization, repetition. And so what I can explain that as is basically before doing a, a session like describing on a scale of 1 to 10, how much does this thing bother me? And then you do your the eye movement is with a light or a it could be on a screen of going back and forth while it's like while you're thinking through a that thought and
going deeper because that will actually rewire your the brain to realize. Oh, that's just a memory, not a traumatic memory. And I'm using that as reference because I'm like, OK, cool. I know eye movement, desensitization, repetition. You're doing something with your eyes. So what are you doing with cognitive?
Brianna Calderon
So I'll give you the foundation C BT cognitive behavioral therapy says thoughts, feelings and behaviors influence each other. So if I have a thought, it triggers me to feel whichever type of way and I behave in a way that manages monitors or controls those feelings, right? So if I have a, if I'm worried about a test, right? I feel anxiety and I'm going to do things that are gonna try to manage my anxiety, but they might not be the most healthiest behaviors, right?
So I may like stress, eat or where maybe I'm like binging or I may do something like, try to distract myself by doing something unproductive or anything that really tries to manage my anxiety because of that feared thing that's gonna happen. Cognitive behavioral therapy will work with those types and they're good, they're, it's a good evidence-based way to work with concerns overall, but it's also the foundation of, p so if we're still working from that thoughts, feelings,
behaviors framework, if I have an intrusive thought, it makes me feel anxious, distressed, nervous, worried, guilty, shameful, and I behave in a way that helps me rid myself of those feelings, those negative emotional state, those negative feelings. So if I have an obsession, I'm gonna have a feeling and I'm gonna do a compulsion, we do P to kind of undo that cycle.
So the goal is not to replace those behaviors, those compulsions with other behaviors because the compulsions are not bad behaviors and they're not out of the ordinary behaviors, they're just disproportionate, excessive and unnecessary. So, for example, if I have contamination O CD and I'm worried about germs, right? Spreading germs, maybe COVID, all those kinds of contaminants, I'm going to maybe excessively wash, maybe I will make sure that I take my shoes off at the
door and I will have, you know, a temper tantrum. If I see anyone shoes in my house, not outside of the door, maybe I take off all my clothes when I'm, when I'm at the door and I immediately get in the shower or I immediately change, but it doesn't bring me joy. It relieves me of some anxiety but the anxiety never really goes away. It relieves me of some distress in the moment, but it's not long term relief from the dis.
So those are my compulsions that I'm using in order to fix the worry about the germs. If we're doing, P, we are going to change those behaviors and help you deal with the distress of the possibility of being germy. Why? Because the behaviors that you're doing are not bad, it's not bad to wash your hands, it's not bad to change your clothes. If you've been, you know, in the middle of summer, out here in New York City, it's like 90 degrees and it's like 100 and 50% humidity.
So, yeah, I would understand why people want to take their clothes off when they get home before they sit on their couch. But we wanna use kind of reversing those behaviors, reducing, minimizing and eventually eliminating the need for those behaviors to help you manage the distress. A lot of times we think of, we have to rid ourselves of anxiety, we have to completely eliminate it from our lives to get rid of it.
Anxiety isn't always bad. It's just a human emotion. Like all the other human emotions, sometimes anxiety is, you know, it helps motivate us other times we work so hard to rid of it that we just make ourselves more anxious. So we are trying to teach interventions that help you learn how to manage your distress on your own in the effort to decrease it long term rather than and engaging in compulsions that only help you manage your distress for a short term.
And then it just, the anxiety comes right back. It's just a kind of perpetual state of doing my compu feeling, my obsession, doing my compulsion. I feel a little bit better, but then the anxiety comes back. It wasn't a long term solution to a long term problem.
Jenn Junod
Interesting. That's definitely interesting. And thank you for breaking that down. I think it makes it a lot easier to understand the differences but then also understand how e wait, wait CP. Is it E BT P?
Brianna Calderon
P? I love that. I love that because it w both of them. But yeah. P and C BT.
Jenn Junod
All right. All right. Now, a if I can see and you've talked about it a bit how this can be a huge struggle for someone and it, we talked about how a bit for them to get help and you know, you know, ways to look up your organization for being able to look into maybe different ways of realizing it themselves.
Now, not all of us always realize it ourselves and we could possibly also see that it's a possibility in someone else or it's a long term thing that someone we love is dealing with. How would you suggest that if we know someone that has it that we best support them?
Brianna Calderon
Number one you want to encourage and support. So you wanna set up a framework where you're not judging, you're not, it doesn't seem like you're attacking, but you're trying to educate this person or yourself on what this looks like just in the event that someone might feel like they align with these type of symptoms. So I would just send resources.
Really, really the power of sending educational resources is unfathomable. It doesn't mean that you have to push someone or force someone to go into therapy if they're not ready because it's a process. Everyone has to work at their own pace. Like I said, learning about O CD once you have, it is a learning curve. Figuring out that what you're experiencing has a name to it is its own journey.
So you really want to be, to be kind, gentle, educational, resourceful. So that if you are looking to help someone, you love or help someone you care about, you're presenting it in a way that hey, I have this piece of information. I know that you said you've been struggling for a while. I don't, you know, I'm not a therapist, but if you look at this, does any of this ring a bell for you?
Is this what you're experiencing because I wanna know how I can best support you and best help you. But I just don't know the names of how to kind of categorize what you're experiencing. So framing it as a supportive kind of educational piece so that the person can learn for themselves. Well, maybe this is what I, maybe this is exactly explaining what I've been experiencing or, you know what I, I kind of see that but not really, it's not particularly, you know, aligned with
everything that I've been, you know, going through and thinking and experiencing. But I see that resource that that person, you know, linked on whatever whatever resource you decide to send just so we can spread information because the reality is that we are still woefully stigmatized, not just O CD, but mental health in general.
It's hard to, it's important for people to get a diagnosis because it's important to know what's going on in your head. But we also want to be able to see the symptoms so we can treat the symptoms. So really sending educational resources and supporting people in that type of atmosphere is really important.
Jenn Junod
I love that. It's, it's definitely something that it can be hard to realize ourselves if we have something going on. especially when I feel like so many of us are just really good at masking meaning and by what I mean of masking and please tell me if this is matches with, you know, the, therapist way of pretending to be, you could say almost like atypical or normal, like, nothing's going on. But internally we're like a hot mess or a disaster.
Brianna Calderon
Yeah, you're blending and you're trying to blend in so that you don't seem strange or weird or out of control or not able to handle it or not reliable, not dependable. All the things that have when we seem like we're not OK, all those things get attached to us like they cannot perform, they cannot do things, right? Because if we're not, OK, that's how we can be perceived and that's how we can feel that we can be perceived.
But in the end, it really doesn't help us to, it doesn't benefit anyone to mask, it doesn't be any benefit anyone to just blend in and try to seem like a normal person when, especially when you know that I'm experiencing something that probably not alone in, but it's definitely not my norm and I know that I'm not working at, I'm not functioning at my optimal levels that I could be functioning at.
Jenn Junod
Would you, you, you mentioned that and something that came to mind was having to deal with this at work or with a colleague or a parent or a child. Like if you are aware that you have O CD and you're working through it, like what can our community around us do? Because the relationship to a child or to a colleague or, you know, a parent or a boss, they're all going to be slightly different with what we may need from them or what we can provide.
Brianna Calderon
Absolutely. So when it comes to O CD, we want to be able to, and, and this is a kind of fine line to walk because you don't have to go around wearing your diagnosis on your sleeve. You wanna be able to tell people if they can help you and support you people that you trust people that you know are going to support you and not judge you for it. So I don't encourage anyone.
If you don't feel comfortable with sharing your diagnosis, you don't have to do anything you don't want to. But if you have a good support circle, good colleagues, good family, good friends that can assist in treatment there, it never hurts to have extra hands. So for supporting people, you love with O CD, we have these things in O CD called accommodation and accommodations are just general ways that the people we care about our support circle supports us.
But on a surface level, unfortunately, that support is usually enabling in O CD. It's not something bad. I don't want, you know, loved ones out there to think that they're doing something bad. You are not doing something inherently bad. It's just that O CD really hijacks good opportunities. So what makes what is support into something that's not it makes it into enabling.
So for example, if I'm going back to contamination stuff, because that's kind of the, the one that people can conceptualize the easiest if I don't want to touch my doorknobs because I'm scared of all the germs and all the germs that I'm going to spread me myself. Then maybe I have someone open the door for me or maybe I have someone open the door for me with a paper towel so that no one touches germs.
Right? Makes logical sense. If I don't want germs, I'm gonna avoid them. It is a compulsion but it makes sense, logistical sense in, in the O CD world. However, although that person is trying to make you feel better, they're reinforcing the behavior, they're reinforcing the compulsion because they're saying, well, I know you're worried about this thing and although I don't think you need to be worried about it because I see it brings you so much distress, I'm gonna do it anyway.
So then the loved one or friend or whoever opens the door with a paper towel and make sure that no one has no one that's coming into the home or coming into the residence is, you know, coming in contact with germs, we've avoided germs. It doesn't help. You're not doing something wrong inherently wrong, but it's just reinforcing that there is something to be feared and that if they won't do their compulsion,
they have a third party to do the compulsion for them. And that only helps O CD, that only feeds and nourishes O CD. And we don't want to feed and nourish O CD, we want to starve it.
Jenn Junod
Ok. So in that same scenario, is there a way that we want to help starve it? I guess you could say of like, no, bro, you gotta open the door yourself. I'll wait.
Brianna Calderon
Absolutely. We want to be, and that's where the P exposure response prevention comes in. So the exposure piece is you go, you a person with O CD going about your business experiencing, becoming triggered in your everyday environments and allowing yourself to be triggered, allowing yourself to be exposed to the feared event. So just going into the door, right, maybe the first exposure we might do is not automatically you touching it because that might be really shocking and
too much in that, you know, those first initial sessions, but maybe you witness your loved one, open the door without the paper towel at first and you know, just allow them to do that and maybe you'll see them touch some things, but you won't insist on them washing their hands or decontaminating. We're just gonna sit through the distress of witnessing a person that we love becoming a contaminant and contaminating the rest of the environment. That's a good way to do an exposure
with your loved one who is not who is trying to not provide a common for you, but it does mean that we have to do things incrementally. We wanna start out low with things that are less distressful than the worst distress because we don't want to shock you into doing things that are uncomfortable. They're uncomfortable for a reason. So we do need to go step by step in order to help your brain acclimate and adapt to the distressful moment.
Jenn Junod
Interesting. There is so much that we've gone through today and I'm, I'm, I'm completely like, I, I do want to touch base on, on this one though as before we start wrapping up of it with exposure and I believe we talked about this on one of our pre calls, but of like how you compared it to the door. It totally makes sense when I think of anything that with composure therapy, for example, I think of if you're afraid of swimming, like forcing someone to jump in the pool, which that would be
very jarring and drastic and not what you were just talking about. So if like, how do you, how would you explain to someone that could be afraid of like water or bridge or something like that to be able to start working through that?
Brianna Calderon
So a good way is that and the way that we do this in exposure and response prevention is we build something called a hierarchy. So that means pretty much you, it's exactly what it sounds like you ranking your triggers or your fears from lowest to highest. So, in our treatment, we're never gonna start with the stuff that's like highest level 10 plus, right?
Because that is going to be that jolt. That's gonna be the thing that scares you off from therapy. You're not gonna build a good relationship with me or any therapist because I will have thrown you into an emotional coma by making you do first session after the assessment. The most scary thing that you could think of that is not good treatment.
So we gotta start at the bottom and that means we have to find a mechanism that says here is this thing that is distressful, but it's not the worst thing in the world. I don't like doing it. I'm not gonna fully avoid it. I definitely feel anxiety if I have to do it so we can start there versus something that is maybe like a 10 plus of fear on a, on a fear scale where you're like, no, I completely avoid that. I haven't done that thing in years and it's gonna take a lot of work to try to get up to that.
We need to essentially build an immunity along the way for you to feel like, OK, I've knocked down this obstacle. Now, I gotta jump to the next one and eventually we will knock down that obstacle and then we're gonna be knocking down all the obstacles before that one thing that I haven't done in years because I feel confident enough to actually face, even though I still feel anxiety and fear
Jenn Junod
that is a lot to process just in general. Like we like, I can see how media has definitely helped with making O CD an adjective and now trying to put it back into like, you know, the original diagnosis and learning about it and D stigmatizing it. We've definitely gone through a lot. Is there anything that you specifically wanted to cover that we haven't covered today?
Brianna Calderon
I think that on a on ending on a ins not inspirational but positive note, there is a therapist out there for you that fits if you feel like you've aligned or, or experience anything that we've talked about today. Definitely take a look at just do your research, exposure, response prevention, O CD. It's really hard to find, not that it's really hard, but you want to be able to find someone that fits with you and you want to be able to find the therapy that works for you because although
there are many different types of interventions and many different types of therapies, not every therapy is good for O CD and not every what works for O CD might not work for something else. What I do want to leave people with is and this is going to be a little bit of a jolt for people if you have O CD or if you think you have O CD and you want to get an assessment, no CD or any, any organization that specializes in O CD and does, P don't do talk therapy, please.
I have no problem with talk therapist. Talk therapy is important. Psychotherapy is important but talk therapy does not work for O CD. Not because it's bad, not because the therapist is not a good therapist. There are fine therapists out there that provide talk therapy, psychotherapy and the other non evidence based treatments that do make an impact, a positive impact on people's lives.
But talk therapy is just for O CD. It allows you to ruminate, it allows you to stay stuck on that thought loop. It allows you to talk through your worry, your concern, reinforcing the worry, the concern or the fear we wanna actually make behavioral changes. That's why, P is really, really effective for O CD because it encourages and breeds those active behavioral changes.
Talk therapy unfortunately is going to send you down a rabbit hole because all you're gonna do is talk about the thing you're worried about, why you're worried about it, why it's valid because it usually is valid and how you can't do anything to fix it because a lot of times what you're worried about is not just easily fixable by you as a singular person. So you wanna be able to get specialized O CD treatment again.
Talk therapy is awesome. It works for a lot of things. It just doesn't work for obsessive compulsive disorder because it's just gonna keep you on a thought loop. And the person giving you therapy is usually going to reassure you, which is just a third party compulsion. It's another accommodation.
Jenn Junod
Interesting. And I love that you brought that up. So that way somebody doesn't end up getting stuck in the loop because I, even, as you just said, like they could be great therapists, but they don't have a specialty to know, to send somebody to to this or so there's a lot to say there and I appreciate that. Do you have any words of wisdom for our audience?
Brianna Calderon
You deserve to get specialized treatment, whether it's for O CD or anything else, you deserve to see a therapist who knows specifically about the disorder that you are diagnosed with. I also want people to feel like they can access treatment recently. No CD was has, is now covered by Aetna. I'm pretty sure all over the country. So at a major insurance company, please, if you feel like you align with it, check your, your insurance company and check that you can have services
provided through no CD or through anyone that provides exposure response prevention. Start looking for a therapist that specializes in the actual concerns you have and take that step to get a proper diagnosis because we are also woefully misdiagnosed in this country. There are just, you know, many diagnoses that have, maybe someone has an exper has some elements of different type diagnoses, but we don't have a full, you know, a appropriate diagnosis.
So make sure that you see someone who is hearing your concerns, advocate for yourself more than anything. If your therapist does not vibe with you, make sure you find someone that does because you deserve it.
Jenn Junod
I love that. I love that. And how does the beautiful humans listening or watching get in touch with you or no CD?
Brianna Calderon
No. Follow O CD on Instagram, follow Jenna overbaugh who runs our O CD account on Instagram and fo you can follow me on Instagram as well. Sometimes I post some stuff from my counseling page. It's called 718 counseling at 718 counseling. And yeah, you can find me. Sometimes I make features on no C on the O CD, Instagram and I will be on different podcasts.
Jenn Junod, Brianna Calderon
So reach out to me, yay.
Jenn Junod
And that is definitely something I and to back it up of just another platform of just overall like mental health and figuring things out. I started hosting a Twitter Space on Wednesdays at 9 a.m. Pacific noon, Eastern 1600 UTC. I have to work on the, the global time frames and last but not least Brianna, what is something that you're grateful for?
Brianna Calderon
Oh, something that I'm grateful for the next couple of days is probably so silly. But the next, I live in New York City. The next couple of days are supposed to be pretty cool. So I'm thankful that as much as I love summer, summer is coming to an end and we'll get some nice fall weather because it's been hot as hell out here. You can see for my hair. The humidity has taken form. So I'm grateful for cool weather in the next couple of days.
Jenn Junod
I dig it. I'm going to ride that vibe and it's been hot here in Denver and I'm definitely looking forward to some cooler days. And yeah, because the heat, man, I know I'll be complaining about the cold when it gets here too, but at least for that I can put on more bundles.
Brianna Calderon
I like sweaters. See, I've got low standards when it comes to weather because I'm just thankful that the next couple of days aren't going to be 90 to 100 around here.
Jenn Junod
I love it. I love it. And thank you Brianna for joining today. We greatly appreciate it.
Brianna Calderon
Thanks, Jen. I'll see you soon. Bye bye.
