200. Why OCD Makes Every Thought Feel Important

0:00Welcome to OCD Whisperer Podcast. If you like these episodes and you find them useful, please remember to hit that subscribe button and the notification bell on. We talk about OCD, we talk about anxiety, we talk about mental health. And today with me guys, I have Andrea Glitcher's click and she's going to be talking about her own lived experience with OCD, we have trauma on the table, in front of CBT, so lots of things. I want to welcome you to the show and for anybody who doesn't know, you please tell us a little bit about yourself. Absolutely, thank you so much for having me. My name is Andrea. I am a licensed clinical social worker. I specialize in OCD, anxiety and complex PTSD in my practice. And I do prioritize working with women and queer and trans folks in my practice. I see people in person here in St. Louis, Missouri and then remotely in New York State. Hi, I'm Christina Arlova, host of the OCD Whisperer Podcast. As someone who lives with OCD, I understand the struggles firsthand. If you're here, you're not alone.

1:01Before we start, grab your free OCD survival kit at www.coreresults.com to help you take control. That's k-o-rresults.com. Now let's dive into today's episode. Amazing. Okay, so we're going to jump right in there. So since you're a clinician who also has lived experience with OCD, how does sitting across your own diagnosis change the way maybe they use your shop for clients who feel like nobody could possibly understand, you know, what's happening in their mind? It's honestly the coolest part of my job because my clients are like, you get it. They all know that I have OCD. They know a little bit, not any serious detail of my story, but they know enough to know that I have been there. I have been in the depths of the mind prison, just like they have. And so there's this moment where people are like, I didn't know that I needed this. I knew that you had OCD or maybe I knew you weren't OCD therapist,

2:03obviously, but I didn't know I needed to work with someone who has been like, I get it and says that and means it with their whole body and their whole brain. Yeah, right. It's pretty amazing when you actually do have that own internal experience. And really, it really is like that. I remember some of my early on clients used to say, gosh, it's like, you're in my head. How do you know? At the time I wasn't open about things. I'm like, oh, I'm just really good. I'm just, yeah, I just, I know I read up. I think I'm not. Yeah. But I think it really leads to your point. It's really a beautiful thing because you really, you know it from the inside out. It's, it just hits different. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. OK, so you talk about trauma in OCD. So I know that those things get entangled usually and most therapists, therapists can miss that. Yeah. And so like for a marginalized communities, especially, like how much of that gets labeled as OCD, but it's actually maybe like a rational response to living in a world that, you know, maybe wasn't built for you or there's a lot of actual real issues.

3:06Absolutely. I see a lot of my clients actually get never diagnosed with OCD who have it. Maybe they have OCD in response to trauma or even in response to living in white supremacist, heteropatriarchy. But actually what happens is a lot of my clients get labeled as, you know, non-compliant or crazy or too much when really they are dealing with all of the impacts of the trauma of living in the society that we're in. And then also whether it's related to trauma or not, have OCD never gotten that diagnosis. So that is where most of my clients are finding me is like, hey, I do these things or I have these thoughts. And I, it's, I think it's trauma. It might be something else. I think as we're seeing more people discuss OCD online, more and more of people of my clients are coming to me being like, I think I have OCD or reaching out to me or an OCD specialist because they're like, oh, this is, this might be this. So that's been a huge game changer for the visibility piece is OCD's having its moment.

4:06And I'm so glad that it is because we, it was about time when we needed that. 100% cannot agree with you more. I mean, yeah, when I first, like entered all this, this field and everything, it was barely anything. And half of like my, you know, CVs, subchised, I didn't even know that it was that. Like, I didn't think it was that. I just thought I'm having some major anxiety and people try to, you know, give you basic advice but you're like, okay, I'm trying all that but it's not really working. I'm working. Yeah, and that's the other thing too, Christina, is all my clients, oh, I've just always been anxious. And maybe they also do have generalized anxiety disorder but for the most part, they have OCD and they have been diagnosed with having older anxiety or they don't even maybe have anxiety. They just have OCD. Yeah, exactly. And I know like you said that, you know, it could be like induced by trauma. And I just want to kind of say something to that because I know people online and just in general can all kind of go a little too extreme in some directions like, oh, it's all because of trauma. It's not all because of trauma, but trauma definitely can get, you know,

5:08if you have that predisposition, it'll come out. Just like you can have some stressful events and suddenly there it is or like kids can get pans or pandas and boom, you have some severe OCD. So it's not like it's all because of trauma, but trauma definitely, if you have trauma and you have that propensity, it'll play a role. Yeah, it's really gasoline on the fire. You could say that OCD's gasoline, and trauma's gasoline, you know, the bet of course could get very mixed here, but yeah, it definitely makes it a lot worse. Absolutely. I have some clients who had OCD before, they experienced a trauma and then having a major trauma that OCD got worse. And then I have a lot of people who it was seriously like they describe it as a light switch, like they experienced the stressful event, the traumatic event, and then the OCD was immediate on set. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, I think it's wild the different ways that this can happen. Okay, you mentioned that you work with in front of ACBG, so I'm gonna put this out there.

6:10I know that I CBG still gets considered as kind of controversial in some circles. So why do you think so many therapists are threatened by the treatment that like centers on clients' reality, especially when reality includes sometimes systemic oppression or real life like actual issues because of, like we just said, you're marginalized or just not always considered in a certain way. Right, exactly. Yeah, I think, you know, I CBT is controversial for so many reasons. I've heard you discuss with amazing practitioners on your podcast about why. And I think when it comes to marginalized folks, there's a way in which exposure therapy alone can really end up being quite distressing or even invalidating of their reality. And so bringing in that I CBT perspective really expands the treatment to be a lot more affirming. I also really do believe that I CBT is a lot more trauma-informed. And I love European, I use it in my practice. It really helped me in my recovery from OCD.

7:10But I really feel like I CBT is this really gentle and effective approach that then you get to come in with the exposures if it's necessary. And so for a lot of marginalized folks who are highly traumatized, a more gentle and still very effective approach is gonna be a lot more regulating. It's gonna be less distressing for them in a good way. Not like you're avoiding distress, but just a lot more attuned to their nervous system. I saw something recently, I honestly don't know where, but there was something around like there's two different ways. It was a some study, but I don't know if it was fully published yet or not, but so don't quote me on this people. But something around that, some folks experience OCD much more viscerally, like a really physiological, just kind of fear response that European such a great fit for that. And that some E-T-S-O-C-D experience it much more cognitively, where they go more into the, yeah, but what of this and what of that and start to kind of mentally spiral

8:11and hence that's what we say is the doubt process and that they better candidates for inference-based CBT. And I was like, that's really fascinating because I started thinking about it and in my practice, like I have actually seen folks, I just never put that together before, but I have seen folks where it is much visceral. It's not very much, it's not very headier cognitive, it's a more visceral experience and they really do respond really well to European and then folks who are very cognitive, we do some, but sometimes it gets, yeah, something there, it just doesn't always hit. We talk about remination, we can talk about all the different justifications for remination, how you can practice not responding, but they still think a certain way, right? And that's exactly what we need to target by teaching them that whole line of thinking of how you're even arriving at these places, it is the problem in itself. Right. It needs to be a better fit. For sure, and I think I CVT because for me with my OCD,

9:13I have a very visceral response and I CVT feels like this comforting weighted blanket when I use my skills and it really like what maybe in my youth I would have used Xanax or something to call my body, I use my skills and I can feel my heart rate slow down, the shaking stops. So I think it can be effective in so many different ways, but that's a really interesting perspective and I'm excited for more about that. Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. And I think too, when you're saying, if you do ICBT, you might do ERP at the end or exposures, I think just one thing though, if you're really doing inference-based CVT and you really understand the thing you're doubting is obsessional, it's not like a normal everyday doubt. And once you can really get grasped that, that's the process and that whole entire process is completely faulty out the gate, then you learn to recognize it essentially and dismiss it. So then what are you really exposing yourself to? Exactly, there's, yeah, it's just reality, right?

10:17Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess you'd say you just get back to just your regular life and your regular life, like we still get upset and we still have stuff. It's not like, it's not like because I don't have a city, now everything's gonna be awesome. Yeah, exactly. We still have to sit with uncertainty in regular life, for sure, but not about everything, right? Yeah, yeah, interesting. Okay, so you also have a book, it's called Healing the Oppressed Body, which is an interesting and bold title, but what do you think healing actually looks like when the thing that traumatized you, like family or religion or society, is still present in your everyday? Yeah, it's a great question. So because I work with queer and trans folks and I'm a lesbian myself, we are constantly building our own reality, our own world. And so whether that means building family, spirituality, traditions, so healing can really look like rewriting life, whatever that means for you. So I am not in contact with my homophobic family,

11:17or I have a family of my own now, or I have made my body, my gender, my life, whatever it needs to be for me. And so healing in my opinion is really creating a life where you can thrive in your authenticity, which looks different for all different types of people. And so if you can really tap into, and I talk about this in the book, Compassion, Community and Freedom, which are the three elements of healing the oppressed body, these are different aspects of healing that allow people to feel connected to their authenticity to heal their inner parts, to build a life that is in alignment with their values and their identity. Yeah, tell me a little more about the body part. And I know you said early nervous system and I know right now online, it's well, just for a while, it's been like so popular, people keep talking about nervous system, nervous system. To the point where sometimes I'm like, okay, hold on a second. What are we really seeing? Just because we have some pop culture word, like gas lighting and we're just throwing it everywhere.

12:19It's like hold on a second. That's like, let's really talk about what it actually really means. So what do you really mean when you're saying this? Yeah, I mean the nervous system, I mean the brain, I mean the body, like you're where you live most of the time inside of yourself and so many people are so dissociated from their body because they've had to be. And when you have OCD, you know this well, right where you're like, I can't be here. This is too much. Yeah, you can have DPDR full on. Exactly, exactly. So when I talk about the body in the book, I do talk about the nervous system and I do present it in an actual scientifically informed way versus yeah, the sort of like pseudoscience or pop culture stuff that we talk about. And so healing your nervous system is really helping your body be able to come back to safety and what I like to call a safe enough protocol because a lot of us are not actually safe in the world or we are safe sometimes, but we're not safe other times. Women, friends, folks, people of color, there's so many bodies that are not safe in the world.

13:21And so how do you come back to feeling safe here and regulating your nervous system? It isn't about feeling safe, it's about feeling safe enough. How safe can I get myself to feel in this moment? And so that heals your body and heals your nervous system. And then also when you think about the brain, the brain is so impacted by trauma by OCD too, obviously. But we can literally change the pathways in our brain, we can heal parts of the brain that have been really impacted by trauma through a lot of different modalities, but also just sort of healing opportunities that I talk about in the book. So I'm really clear to say therapy is not the only way to heal. We're all doing lots of healing all of the time in our lives. Yeah. And that therapy is great, but it certainly does not need to be the only place that we heal our nervous system and our brain and our connection with ourselves. Yeah. So like are you kind of saying partially, it's like learning how to be comfortable, safe within your own self? Mm-hmm. And where you don't feel like you have to keep escaping,

14:24if you will, and you can really be like, sit in your own being and be in it and operate from there. Right. And that looks like something different for everyone, whether that's getting, you know, becoming estranged from, if you remember, getting tattooed, breaking up with your partner who doesn't embrace who you really are or is cruel to you, switching career pathways, moving, just getting to know yourself on a deeper level, working with your inner child. It can look like so many different things to be able to, like you said, just sit and be in your own body. Yeah. Totally. I think it's such a journey and I super-connect with what you're saying because there was a good while in my life, I could not, I really could not be here. I was escaping and sometimes like getting lost in substances or going out or just always busy and just anything but here, being here, being in the body just felt so uncomfortable and anxiety-producing. It was like, no, everything my being was going no.

15:25And it really took a little while to, like you're saying, to finally, like, come back home, if you will, and kind of like, okay, let's slow down and be in slowing down, it felt weird and dangerous and uncomfortable. And, absolutely. Yeah, and to your point, I think so many of us with OCD self-medicate in a lot of ways with substances. This is a huge theme in my practice. It's like this moment with a client where you can say, like, oh, you've been self-medicated. Like you're not, you know, you're drinking too much, sure, but like, let's look at this as you're trying to find a medicine for a diagnosis that has been missed for decades or for pain that is, you know, hasn't been tended to. So, yep, exactly. Well, okay, so let's ask you then, because you carry your own clients' pain and your own lived experience in every session, right? Like that, I mean, you bring everything in it. So what do you think clinicians who have lived experience to know about OCD and trauma? That may be, you know, something like an attack but will really never teach you.

16:25I think what it feels like in your body, to your point, everything we've been saying about, like, it's so hard to be here, or even that physiological response to the OCD, when I say to clients, like, I know what the mind prism feels like, you can't put that in a textbook, right? Like, to know what it's like to be trapped in your own mind for every waking minute of the day. And then I also think that the relief, so when clients do start to get better and they feel that, like, oh, it's quiet up here. Oh, I'm not thinking constantly or I'm not, you know, doing my rituals or I can just sort of, like, walk through my house, like the sheer and utter relief and freedom of that. You can't bottle that for you can't put it in the textbook. I agree, you know, this is interesting because this makes me just think this is something from a long time ago, but there's this conversation I have with somebody, and we kind of get into it a little bit about, like, well, you know, do you have to have, you know, you're like a lived experience of something to understand the thing, right? Why is it not also as, you know, as equivalent of,

17:26maybe I don't have the thing, but I understand it or I have something kind of, maybe in the vein, you know, what's better, what's not. I don't know, do you have any opinions on that? You know, it's really interesting because the therapist that I worked with for my OCD recovery, she didn't have OCD and she was amazing. So I want to say that obviously it can happen, and then I also know plenty of clinicians who specialize in more, I don't want to say niche because I think OCD really isn't, but that specialize in anything that maybe they haven't been through. And sometimes that distance and that perspective can actually allow them to not over-identify with the client, which is probably a good thing for some people. But I think for the most part that we do kind of get drawn to things that we've been through ourselves, every time I go through something really hard in my life, I kind of feel like, well, I unlocked a new niche in my practice. It was something I can offer on my website and say that I understand. So I think you have to have been through something to be a good therapist. And I think that I do stand by that something.

18:29It is not really the exact thing of your clients, but something hard. Honestly, that's actually, yeah, when you're saying that's actually where I landed as well. I'm like, you know, it doesn't have to be the exact thing, but I think as a human, if you've gone through something that was challenging, that pushed you, that forced you, that really, you know, you had to really go through in some way, whatever that is. I think that really is the thing that generally kind of translates, right? Because if you really have had nothing at all, like at all, like, okay, and I'm not knocking it, I'm not saying you're not going to be a great person. I'm just saying, like, I don't know, just what would, like, I think I would prefer somebody that's, you know, lived through some stuff. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think most of our clients feel the same way, for sure. Yeah, totally. Well, before we end this, is there anything, like when you think about the clients you work with, and everything that you've seen so far day in, day out,

19:29you know, what's something you would tell folks listening today in terms of, you know, people always say things like don't give up hope, but is there anything else that you'd kind of want to impart there from the experiences you've had, especially with the specific population you've worked with with women, with trans, with, you know, LGBTQ, plus community? Absolutely. This is a little bit more logistical, so that's just kind of how I am. But if you work with someone who says they're an OCD therapist and you're not doing a really specific treatment and you're just kind of talking about it, there is more available out there for you. And that's the first thing. Yeah. And then the second thing is if you are really stuck, medication is wildly helpful for so many people and actually greases the wheels of therapy for a lot of people, which is how I talk about it to my clients. But I'm never saying that you have to, or it's the only way, but if you're feeling stuck, you may have maxed out your own brain and your brain might need chemicals and it literally just doesn't have.

20:30And so there's nothing wrong with greasing the wheels. Yeah, totally. I love that. Those are both really great things, 100%. Yeah, I think to your point too, definitely I've heard that, right? Like if you're talking, you might want to reconsider that. Exactly. I was speaking with someone in my life who was asking for some advice. And I said, so is your therapist talking with you about, you know, I CVT or doing exposures? And he was like, oh, no, we're still just getting to know each other. And that it had been months and he was in crisis with his OCD. And so I really was like, oh, okay. So let's just take a look on, you know, the I CVT directory or the OCD, International OCD foundation. And let's see if you can find you someone who might know a little bit more than just getting to know each other. Yeah. I'm on something I need to know each other is why it's so long in OCD world. Exactly. I'm like, oh no, we're doing skills for session. Like you don't have to suffer for one more minute, right? Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. And so if people would like to find you, how can they find you? Absolutely. So my website is AndreaGlick.com. I'm on Instagram, AppSomaticWitch.

21:32And then you can find my book, Healing Me Across Body, wherever you like to buy your books, hopefully at a local bookstore. Thanks for coming again. Thank you, Christina. Thanks for listening to the OCD Whisperer podcast. Remember, Freedom from OCD is a journey and you're not alone. Visit www.coreresults.com to explore subhelp masterclasses like Sneaky Rituals, Both Jenna Oberbao, or ICBT masterclass with Christina and Abe. Don't forget to grab your OCD CBT journal track or planner while you're there. If you found this episode helpful, please subscribe, share, and leave a five-star review to help others find the podcast. Together, we can make a difference. Keep going and I'll see you in the next episode.