Your Anxiety Toolkit - Practical Skills for Anxiety, Panic & Depression

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. Today we are going to be talking about a subject that I hope will resonate with a lot of you. We are going to be discussing the stages of grief because I really want to normalize the experience of grief and give you all permission to grieve what we are collectively going through right now. The stages of grief were first identified by psychiatrist and researcher, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. The first stage is denial. You may deny that the event happened, or deny your feelings, or you isolate away from people so that you don't have to talk about your feelings. The second stage is anger. You are grieving the loss of something and that makes you angry because it feels unfair. You may be angry about coronavirus or the loss of a loved one or maybe even your mental illness. The third stage is bargaining. You may do an analysis of the event and then start to go into a negotiation process in your mind. "If only I hadn't done this, it would have been better." The fourth stage is depression. In this stage, things feel really hard and you deeply grieve and have a deep sense of sorrow. The fifth stage is acceptance. In this stage, you come to an acceptance of the situation. You start to reintegrate into your life and begin to move on.  There is a final stage that has also been described called the making meaning stage. In this stage, you try and give your grief meaning by turning your pain into purpose.  These steps are here to help you acknowledge the normal experience of grief. So often people have these feelings and are not quite sure what it is, which can make the experience far worse. I want you to remember that these are normal processes that we go through during life. With life, there is loss. Your job is to be your own most compassionate, supportive friend as often as you can and as unconditionally as you can. I hope that you are finding some peace and joy in these very difficult days. If not, just keep reminding yourself that is a beautiful day to do a hard thing, and this is a very hard thing that we are all doing right now so please give yourself tons of grace. ERP School, BFRB School and Mindfulness School for OCD are open for purchase. Click here for more information. Additional exciting news! ERP School is now CEU approved which means that it is an accredited course for therapists and mental health professionals to take towards their continuing education credit hours. Please click here for more information.

  Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. Today on the podcast we have a wonderful interview with OCD and mental health advocate Mimi Cole. Mimi is currently working on her graduate degree in counseling and she is here to talk with us today about her lived experience with OCD, scrupulosity, and an eating disorder. Mimi so beautifully states that she wants to share her story in order to increase awareness, education and resources while decreasing the shame and misconceptions surrounding OCD. Mimi shares her OCD story, specifically her struggles with scrupulosity. She describes how her religion and her religious upbringing became intertwined with perfectionism and OCD. She shares a bit about her exposures for scrupulosity and what motivated her to begin ERP. Mimi also describes her experience with orthorexia and her obsessions surrounding clean eating and how she feels this became a link between OCD and an eating disorder. We discuss that intersection between body image, clean eating obsessions, restrictive food intake and how these are all connected to OCD. Mimi is currently exploring a research project on eating disorders as a coping mechanism for OCD. Towards the end of the interview, Mimi shares how she manages her OCD in recovery. She talks about self-compassion and accepting our common humanity as a few tools she uses to help. This interview is full of such great information particularly about scrupulosity, a theme of OCD that is not often discussed. I found it so uplifting and informative and I think you will as well. Mimi's instagram @the.lovelybecoming Mimi's website www.mimi-cole.com ERP School, BFRB School and Mindfulness School for OCD are open for purchase. Click here for more information. Additional exciting news! ERP School is now CEU approved which means that it is an accredited course for therapists and mental health professionals to take towards their continuing education credit hours. Please click here for more information.

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast. Today's episode comes out of a conversation I had with a client and I thought you all might need to hear this as well. Today we are going to be talking about guilt and this idea that feeling guilty doesn't mean you have done something wrong. I know that idea might feel strange. When we are feeling guilty, we usually assume that means we have done something wrong. Try thinking of guilt as an intersection. When the feeling arises you can chose to take the road that you have done something wrong or you can go in a different direction and try asking yourself "Is this real? Is there actually evidence that I have done something wrong? Is there a chance that my brain has made a mistake and set off the guilt alarm without there being a problem?" If you see that there is no evidence that you did something wrong, you can try practicing compassion and mindfulness and just allow those feelings of guilt to be there. If you recognize that yes you made a mistake then you can work to address the situation. A lot of us simply have a little glitch in the guilt system and our guilt gets fired off a bit too easily, too often, and at times where guilt isn't really that appropriate. Guilt is just an emotion and when it comes up it provides an opportunity for growth. Guilt can be painful and it can make us feel bad about ourselves, but remember that you have a choice when guilt shows up. You can choose that road of compassion and simply allow the emotion of guilt to be there. ERP School, BFRB School and Mindfulness School for OCD are open for purchase. Click here for more information. Additional exciting news! ERP School is now CEU approved which means that it is an accredited course for therapists and mental health professionals to take towards their continuing education credit hours. Please click here for more information.

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit. Today on the podcast, I am so excited to interview Dr. Jonathan Grayson, a psychologist who has been specializing in the treatment of OCD for more than 40 years. He is also the author of Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and founder of The Grayson LA Treatment Center for Anxiety and OCD. In this interview, Dr. Grayson discusses the power of embracing uncertainty in the treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In the beginning of our conversation, Dr. Grayson discusses how he explains OCD to his new clients. He shares that the core of OCD is trying to be absolutely certain and that the goal of treatment is to learn to live with that uncertainty in the same way that we live with all of the many uncertainties of life. We then go on to discuss the ways he helps motivate his clients to do ERP and to begin embracing that uncertainty. He has his clients fill out a form that asks certain questions including the one that he finds most critical "Why would I take this risk?" He also has his clients write down "What have you lost to OCD?" "How have you hurt the people you love because of OCD?" and "What do you hope to do with your life when you are free from OCD?" I found another question he asks his clients to be particularly helpful. When asking clients to begin embracing uncertainty and to take the risk that X may happen, he asks them to imagine how you will attempt to cope if the most terrible thing you can imagine actually happens. We also have a great discussion about mindfulness and compassion and how he uses both in his practice. This interview is full of so many fantastic insights. I learned so much myself and I hope that you will find it as enjoyable and informative. FreedomfromOCD.com- You can purchase Freedom from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as well as download Dr. Grayson's forms. The Grayson LA Treatment Center for Anxiety & OCD ERP School, BFRB School and Mindfulness School for OCD are open for purchase. Click here for more information. Additional exciting news! ERP School is now CEU approved which means that it is an accredited course for therapists and mental health professionals to take towards their continuing education credit hours. Please click here for more information.

I know it continues to be a really tough time for everyone. I am definitely not immune to those struggles. In taking time off, I came to a realization about why I was having such a hard time. It wasn't about COVID or anxiety or stress. I was struggling because I had been having a mental tantrum inside my own head 24/7. My mental tantrum sounded something like this "It's not fair. This should not be happening. I'm supposed to be healing. This isn't the way it should be. It's not fair." I had no idea I was even doing this. I was having an adult sized tantrum in my head that no one else could see. Now it is important to understand that all of these thoughts are valid. It is a tough time and people are suffering, but the way I was saying it was definitely not validating. I approached this by turning back to what has been the foundation of my recovery, something I learned about 15 years ago. It is rooted in the principles of Buddhism and that is 'in life there is suffering. It is not the suffering that causes the pain. It is the resistance to the suffering that causes you the pain.' So for me in this situation, my resistance or my mental tantrum was actually what was causing me the most pain. Recognizing this and having compassion for myself is so important here. And asking myself is there a way that I can take off my stomping shoes and stop resisting the fact that this is a hard time? We really do have a choice. Do we meet hard times with tantrums and resistance or do we meet those hard times with compassion, validation, consideration and respect? In these moments now when I still find myself throwing that mental tantrum, I simply note it and say "Ok I see what's happening and how am I going to deal with it? Am I going to keep throwing this tantrum or am I going to hold space for the fact that this tantrum is representing how hard things are and how much I am still struggling?" This has been such a huge lesson for me during COVID-19. I hope it is helpful for you as well as we are all still navigating these difficult and challenging times. ERP School, BFRB School and Mindfulness School for OCD are open for purchase. Click here for more information. Additional exciting news! ERP School is now CEU approved which means that it is an accredited course for therapists and mental health professionals to take towards their continuing education credit hours. Please click here for more information.

Today on Your Anxiety Toolkit, we are joined by Gelong Thubten, a Buddhist monk, meditation teacher and the author of A Monk's Guide to Happiness. He is here to discuss how mindfulness and meditation can help us understand the power of our own minds. This episode is not about religion, rather, it is a beautiful message of wisdom and compassion. In this beginning of this episode, Gelong Thubten spends some time discussing happiness and how this desire to be happy really drives everything we do in life. The search for happiness can get us caught in a loop where we ultimately end up feeling more and more dissatisfied. He points out that the goal is to learn that true happiness is already inside each one of us. He goes even further to say that we can actually learn to be happy. It is a skill that we can practice. He explains that meditation can help us learn to be kinder to ourselves by teaching us how to transform our relationship with our thoughts. We become an observer of our thoughts during meditation. This non-judgment of thoughts and letting our thoughts simply be, actually allows us to have compassion for the moment and compassion for ourselves. Gelong Thubten gives some suggestions on how to begin a practice of mindfulness and mediation if you are a beginner. He stresses that there is no perfect way to meditate and it truly is a practice that you must work on. You don't have to do it perfectly for it to be effective. He suggests getting some instruction on how to meditate whether that is a book or online resource or even an app on your phone. He also suggests starting in very short increments, such as, five minute sessions. You begin your meditation by focusing on your body and finding your breath. When your mind wanders, do not engage in self-criticism, simply come back to your breath. We learn in this episode that meditation is a time of total freedom. You simply are in the moment, without judgment. By practicing these moments of nonjudgmental acceptance throughout the day, you are learning compassion which eventually will become your natural state. Gelong Thubten explains that our bodies are not designed for anger and rage. When we are happy, generous, kind, and connecting with others, we feel good inside, we feel happy which suggests that is our natural state. In other words, who we are deep down before we get caught up in negative and toxic outside influences. Meditation, he explains, is about bringing us back to that natural state. A Monk's Guide to Happiness: Meditation in the 21st Century www.gelongthubten.com Instagram @Gelongthubten

Hello everyone!!! I am so grateful that I was able to take some time off, but I am so happy to be back and I am excited to talk to you today about a really important lesson that I have learned and that is this concept that self-respect is not optional. Let me share a little bit about what this means. So many times, especially during COVID, I have been faced with the question: am I going to be respectful or disrespectful to myself right now? We are all actually faced with this question everyday, multiple times per day. Your responsibility is to show yourself respect every moment of every single day. Why? Because you are a human being and you get to have respect simply for being human. It is not something you earn. It is unconditional. This can be really hard for a lot of us, but self-respect is not optional. You deserve self-respect no matter what simply for being you not because of something you have done. How do you go about showing yourself respect? First, start by setting boundaries. It is respectful to set kind, compassionate boundaries and to show up for yourself when someone crosses that boundary. Second, hold yourself accountable. In other words, do what you say you are going to do. If you say I am establishing boundaries then hold yourself to that. Third, listen to and honor your body. If your body is hungry the most respectful thing you can do is to feed it. If you are tired ask yourself what your body needs at that moment. Also acknowledge what you respect about yourself and even share that with those you love. You might say "I really respect how well I have handled this difficult time." I find it to be true that self-respect is really the first step towards self-compassion. Finally, do not apologize right away. Apologies are wonderful, but sometimes we move too quickly to apologize or find ourselves apologizing for every misstep. Sometimes it is better to take a step back and really have a conversation with the other person. It is more respectful to have that conversation about what happened and to understand the other person and have them understand you. The healing happens in the back and forth communication, in hearing each other's point of view. I want to leave you with the reminder that it's a beautiful day to do hard things and I hope you will let self-respect be one. ERP School is open for purchase! ERP School is jam packed with the same tools and information that Kimberley uses with her own clients to help them learn to manage their OCD. And now if you purchase ERP School between September 14-28, you will receive 2 FREE bonus materials that will be emailed directly to you! Please click here to purchase. Additional exciting news! ERP School is now CEU approved which means that it is an accredited course for therapists and mental health professionals to take towards their continuing education credit hours. Please click here for more information.

Hello everyone! We have some very EXCITING news today here at CBT School. We are so happy to announce that ERP School is being relaunched today, September 14, 2020! And we are so excited to say that it is now CEU approved!!!! This means that it is now an accredited course for therapists and mental health professionals to take towards their continuing education credit hours. This is so special to us because it has long been a mission of CBT School to educate as many clinicians as possible about OCD and Exposure and Response Prevention. ERP School is jam packed with the same tools and information that Kimberley uses with her own clients to help them learn to manage their OCD. And now if you purchase ERP School between September 14-28, you will receive 2 FREE bonus materials that will be emailed directly to you! You will receive a free checklist of the important things you need to know as you practice ERP and a free audio training from Kimberley about things that may be getting in the way of your recovery. You will receive unlimited access to both of these bonus materials if you purchase before September 28th. So please head on over to cbtschool.com where you can purchase both the regular ERP School as well as the ERP School for CEU 's. Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast will be back on September 25th! We have so many awesome topics to cover and some amazing guests lined up. We can't wait! See you all on the 25th!

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit. I wanted to take some time today to let you know that I am going to be taking a break. I am going to take a couple of months off to heal, to replenish, to restore and to rest. I want to share with you how I came to this decision about taking a break because I am wondering if you may be struggling with the same feelings. Over the past several months, I have found that I have not been slowing down enough to replenish. I haven't been listening to my body which has been saying to me "rest, please take some time." What has been so hard for me and may be hard for some of you as well, were the feelings I had that "I should be able to handle all of this and I'm weak if I can't." I was really judging myself for having those feelings. When I finally stopped and accepted that my body was trying to tell me something, I was able to recognize that now more than ever, my body, as wise as it always is, was telling me to slow down and take more time. So I want to ask you all to check-in with yourself and do a quick assessment to really connect with your needs. What your body is telling you? We are in such difficult times right now. There is so much uncertainty and anxiety which can take a tremendous toll on the body. Now more than ever it is so important to recognize the importance of taking care of ourselves. So what can we do to begin taking care of ourselves? We can take a deep breath. We can bring validation and recognition to all of our feelings and then we can give ourselves exactly what we need. If that means eating a brownie, or having a good cry or taking a break. I hope you will stop and honor your body and give it what it needs at this time. ERP School, BFRB School, and Mindfulness School for OCD are all now open for purchase. If you feel you would benefit, please go to cbtschool.com While Kimberley is taking a break, we are not going to leave you hanging. Each week for the next 10 weeks we will send you a new anxiety management tool to help you stare fear right in the eyes. This 10 week series is FREE and we cannot wait to have you join us! Click here to get started.

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit. Today on the podcast, we are so lucky to be able to talk with Dr. Dennis Tirch, the founder of The Center for Compassion Focused Therapy and the author of six amazing books including, The ACT Practitioner's Guide to the Science of Compassion and The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Overcoming Anxiety. Dr. Tirch is here to talk with us about learning to embody self-compassion. In the beginning of this interview, Dr. Tirch spends some time discussing the definition of self-compassion and why self-compassion is so important for our mental health, especially for those struggling with anxiety.  Dr. Tirch says that learning to embody self-compassion involves “grounding ourselves in a sense of emotional safeness, meaning and purpose.” By practicing self-compassion and mindfulness, Dr. Tirch says we can “gradually train the mind to rest in an awareness of compassion and care.” He so beautifully tells us that if people can learn to embody this self-compassion and feeling of being grounded then they will be able to “turn towards the things they fear and walk through them.”  By learning to embody self-compassion and learning to speak to yourself in a compassionate voice, Dr. Tirch says your empathy will grow and your ability to tolerate distress will grow as well. Dr. Tirch spends some time talking to us about his own personal self-compassion exercises and he shares how important breathing and meditation can be when learning to embody self-compassion. Finally, Dr. Tirch spends some time explaining the importance of “finding your aim.” When we ask ourselves “what is your aim?’ it helps us become more self-aware and able to find our purpose. This is an amazing interview so full of beauty and wisdom. I hope you all enjoy. The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Overcoming Anxiety The ACT Practitioner's Guide to the Science of Compassion Dr. Tirch's website www.mindfulnesscompassion.com Ep: 134: Giving and Receiving Meditation ERP School, BFRB School, and Mindfulness School for OCD are all now open for purchase. If you feel you would benefit, please go to cbtschool.com