Ep. 162: OCD and Scrupulosity w/ Mimi Cole


 

OCD and Scrupulosity with Mimi Cole

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.

Ep. 144: Can Nutrition Impact Mental Health? (with Heather Lillico)


nutrition can impact mental health Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast Kimberley Quinlan

Welcome back to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit. Today we have Heather Lillico on the podcast.  Heather is a registered holistic nutritionist, yoga instructor, as well as a delightful human being. Today she is going to discuss how nutrition can impact mental health.

Heather shares a little bit about her own mental health journey and how that led her to explore the connection between nutrition and mental wellness.

Heather discusses what it means to be a holistic nutritionist. She explains that she focuses a great deal on the whole person, not only how nutrition can impact mental health, but also how a person’s sleep patterns and exercise can as well. 

Heather shares some really helpful and fascinating information about how nutrition can impact mental health along with some slights changes you can make in your day to day life to improve your mental health. She takes some time explaining the role that a variety of different nutrients play in our mental well being. Heather does a beautiful job explaining to us how we can be a little more intentional with what we put in our mouths and on our forks. She gives some really simple ways that we can incorporate different nutrients and foods into our daily life. Heather also takes some time to explain the connection between our gut health and our mental health.  

I am so excited to share this episode with you at this time. Food keeps us nourished. Food is also a huge source of pleasure. Meal time is when we can join as a family and communicate and have a connection. It’s a huge piece of our mental health right now so I thought this was a really, really great time to have this conversation with Heather and talk about all things food! 

Heather’s website www.heatherlillico.com

Heather’s Instagram @heather_lil

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

Please join the IOCDF for a live Townhall discussion on COVID-19 & OCD Saturday April 11 at 2 PM EST. There will be a live Q&A session. Please click here for more information.

Did you know that we were listed in the top 10 OCD podcasts to follow in 2020? https://blog.feedspot.com/ocd_podcasts/

Ep. 114: Let’s Talk About Our Bodies (Health At Every Size with Emily Cooper)


Health At Every Size HAES Eating Disorder Intuitive Eating Body Positivity Diet Culture Body Neutrality Privilege Therapy Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast Kimberley Quinlan

Welcome to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast.  We are talking all about our bodies and addressing a very important topic called Health At Every Size in this episode.   Today, I am honored to talk to Emily Cooper, a therapist who specializes and is so knowledgeable about health at every size, body positivity, body neutrality, and privilege.

In this episode, we talk about whether there is a “right type of body” or a “wrong type of body” and how society and diet culture impact us and how we see our bodies. Emily Cooper addressed why Health At Every Size is an important concept that improves self-respect and self-love. Health At Every Size (HAES) is an inclusive movement that supports people of all sizes, weights, and body types in addressing health directly by adopting healthy behaviors.  Health At Every Size does not focus on weight as the sole indicator of health.  Being thinner does not necessarily make a person healthier or happier.  A “healthy body” aligns with more than one body type and across a wide range of weights.

During this episode, Emily Cooper also addresses how our perception of our body can impact our everyday lives, specifically related to work environments, social environments, relationships, intimacy and life in general. 

In her discussion about Health At Every Size,  Emily Cooper also addressed the concept of thin privilege and diet culture and how they impact our relationship with our body and other peoples’ bodies.   

The goal of this podcast episode is to introduce you to the idea that you can start to respect your body today, no matter what size or shape.  Emily beautifully shared that her hope is to give us permission to not like our bodies but still learn to live our lives, not using weight or size to indicate your worth or ability to do the things you want to do.  

For more information on Emily, visit:

Instagram: @heyemilycooper 

Blog: http://www.heyemilycooper.com/

Book References:

Body Respect by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aprhamor

Intuitive Eating by Linda Bacon

Ep. 113: How To Manage Intrusive Thoughts


How To Manage Intrusive Thoughts Obsessive Compulsive Disorder OCD Depression ERP Mindfulness Therapy Your Anxiety Toolkit Podast Kimberley Quinlan

Welcome to Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast.   Today we are talking about a concept that I get asked about so often.  Today we are talking all about how to manage intrusive thoughts.  So often I am asked by clients and the CBT School community questions like, “What is an intrusive thought?” and, “How do I manage intrusive thoughts from becoming mental compulsions?” and, “Why is it so hard to manage intrusive thoughts?”

These are all such good questions and I can totally resonate with why it is such a difficult and confusing topic.  In today’s episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit, I talk about why thought suppression doesn’t work and why distraction is a tool that only works for a short period of time.  In this episode, we review the practice of mindfulness in an attempt to manage intrusive thoughts and create an environment in your brain where fear and uncertainty doesn’t run the show.  

A wonderful follower sent me the below question:

“I have heard you talk about distraction and thought suppression. Does that mean I need to just focus on my thoughts and stay in my own head? While keeping myself busy with my job and other activities keeps me engaged and gets me out of my own head, does this count as a distraction? Also when you say distraction is bad, is it in the context of OCD or in general? I’m a bit confused, can you please provide some clarity on this.”

This is such a common question that I get asked and I wanted to take this time to address a concept called “Occupation,” which is the practice of allowing thoughts WHILE you go about your day.  Occupation is a practice of taking intrusive thoughts with you while you do the things you value in life.  This is a very important concept and can help us to define how we manage intrusive thoughts and how we can reduce engaging in compulsive behaviors and mental compulsions.  

I hope this episode helps give you additional tools to help manage intrusive thoughts and mental compulsions.  

Ep. 91: Intuitive Eating with Evelyn Tribole


Evelyn Tribole Intuitive Eating Body Image Diet Culture Eating Disorder Obsession Anxiety Food Fear Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast Kimberley Quinlan

Welcome to another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit podcast.  This week’s podcast episode is very dear to my heart.  My intention with this podcast is to give you all some direction with food and body, specifically if you struggle with immense fear around food.  This week’s episode has the most amazing guest, Evelyn Tribole, the author of Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works.  

In this week’s interview, we break down some of the barriers between fear and food.  Evelyn does a great job at identifying why there is so much fear surrounding food, addressing societal, cultural and familial rules around food.  We discussed how, for many, food creates anxiety for us personally, or how our anxiety manifests a bad relationship with food.  

Evelyn Tribole discusses : 

  • What is Intuitive Eating? 
  • Why is Intuitive Eating so important?
  • What is diet culture and why is it such an important concept to understand? 
  • What happens when you don’t Intuitively Eat? 

Evelyn also answers some questions given specifically by the CBT School family.  Here are a few questions she addressed:

  • How can I introduce myself to Intuitive Eating? 
  • What are the steps of Intuitive Eating? 
  • How do I avoid the extremes of eating? I am either eating “too unhealthy and too healthy as a compulsion.”
  • How do I address Emotional Eating or “bad” eating because of a hard day? 
  • How do I attempt Intuitive Eating if I HAVE to lose weight because of health reasons? 
  • How do I manage the fear of gaining more weight? 
  • How do you make all foods neutral whilst also finding joy in food? 
  • How do I not get trapped in diet culture? 
  • How long does it take to get a good handle of Intuitive Eating? 
  • How do I begin to desire and have the persistence to intuitively eat while having an Eating Disorder?
  • Due to mood changes, how can I eat when I don’t want to? 
  • What is the best way to stick with Intuitive Eating?
  • What is the best way to approach Nutrition for Anxiety Disorder
  • How does Anxiety impact hunger cues. etc.? 
  • How do I address Avoidant and Restrictive Food Intake Disorder? 

For more information on Evelyn Tribole, visit: https://www.evelyntribole.com/

Do you want to get weekly free content from us, right to your inbox?  SIGN UP HERE FOR OUR NEW WEEKLY NEWSLETTER! The weekly newsletter includes free mental health tips and tools, information about upcoming events with Kimberley. and free coupons for CBT School products.  

Episode # 12: Let’s Talk about your Brain and Anxiety


Let’s talk about your Brain and Anxiety

When your physical symptoms of anxiety are high, you may feel like nothing works.   You may have moments when you feel like you can’t come back to your rational brain.  When we are all wound up on anxiety, fear can run the show.   You know what I am talking about, right?

Despite there being some great tools out there, but one of the most difficult parts of having severe anxiety or panic is the comprehending what IS real danger and what IS NOT.

Last month we talked about R.A.I.N, which is an acronym that helps us use some of the most important mindfulness tools.   There is also non-judgment, acceptance, willingness, bringing our attention to the present moment.   These are all wonderful tools.

For me personally, if I can understand the mechanism behind what is happening, I can handle it better. That is why understanding what was happening in my brain was SO helpful.

Today we are going to delve deeper into understanding our brain and what happens when we experience high anxiety.

The problem with the anxious brain is that it often sets of an alarm, making us feel like our lives are at risk, danger is ahead, when really there is no danger at all.   This is a mistake our brain makes, particularly when we have an anxiety disorder like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety or Specific Phobias.

Sometimes just understanding a little bit about what our brain is doing can help us with awareness and then allow us to implement the tools better.

A Simple way to Understand YOUR Brain and Anxiety

Anxiety Brain OCD Fear Eating Disorder CBT Mindfulness Therapy Depression

I want you to think of the brain like a house.

This house is a two-story house, with a stairway that leads us to from upstairs to downstairs, or vice versa.

Dan Siegel and Tina Payne wrote a wonderful book called, The Whole Brain Child that coined this concept, but I have shifted them a little to specifically address the management of anxiety.

**Please note that scientifically, this is not perfect. It would take hours for me to explain the intricacies of the brain and all the areas that provide different functions. For the purpose of getting a basic understanding, we will use this simple metaphor.

The Upstairs of the brain is where we do most of our Executive Functioning. What this means is, in the upstairs brain lives the “Thinkers”.

Functions of the upstairs brain allows us to

  1. Regulate our body (speed up or slow down)
  2. Tune in to someone else or something else.
  3. Balance our Emotions and use Empathy and compassion
  4. Have response flexibility (slows down the time between impulses or urges and an action). Basically, this means that we don’t respond based on pure emotion.
  5. Calm our fear: There are inhibitory peptides called gabba that tame our fear and help us interpret the stimuli in a rational, appropriate way. This occurs in the Prefrontal Cortex at the front of the brain.

For kids, I love Hazel Harrison’s idea of giving each of these functions a character name. Hazel Harrison is a blogger for Mindful.org, if you are interested.   You can be super creative with this process and make it silly and fun.

In our upstairs brain lives:

  • Creative Cassidy
  • Problem Solving Pete
  • Patty the Planner
  • Reasonable Renee
  • Calming Catarina
  • Kind Kelly
  • Flexible Felix

The downstairs area of the house lives the Basic functions.   While these might not seem as sophisticated as the upstairs of the brain, the downstairs helps us to stay alive.

Downstairs brain controls

  1. Bodily mechanisms that are automatic (Breathing, Digestions and Blinking). It is really quite incredible that our whole body can function without us needing to do anything at all.
  2. Fight, flight and freeze mechanisms. This is the most important, for today‘s discussion. The downstairs is the Emotional hub of the brain.  We need to be thankful for this part of our brain, as it keeps us safe from real danger. This downstairs area of the brain is what keeps us from touching the hot plate on the stove or not walking out onto a busy highway.

For the kids (and for use Adult Kids!), our downstairs brain is the home of:

  • Fearful Frannie
  • Panicky Pete (Fight flight or freeze)
  • Sad Sandra
  • Furious Frank
  • Bossy Benjamin

In the downstairs brain lives the Amygdala, which interprets the current stimuli, past memories about such stimuli and the general environment to determine if there is danger or not.

If there is danger, the Amygdala sends out a message to the body to prepare for flight, fight or freeze. This message may cause a bunch of bodily sensations that will prepare you for survival. Your heart rate might go up, which is your body preparing to be able to run a long distance in a short amount of time. This message may cause you to have stomach issues such as diarrhea or vomiting, which is your body’s way of emptying its contents, again, so you can be lighter and get away from such danger.

Using the metaphor of the house representing the brain, the stairway of the house helps the upstairs and the downstairs communicate together. The upstairs and the downstairs work together to think and feel in a way that is regulated and reasonable.

If there is a real danger, let’s say there is an earthquake, the downstairs brain (specifically Fearful Frannie and Panicky Pete) take over to make sure they can send all the messages necessary to keep the body safe. An example of this is, if there was in fact an huge earthquake, the upstairs “Problem Solving Pete” would not stop to pick up the stray shoes that have been left in the middle of the lounge room in case someone trips. Or, “Reasonable Renee” would not signal for us to stop to say goodbye to the people we are standing with before we ran for safety. Our downstairs brain works very hard so it can get us to the safest place in the fastest possible time. Once the danger has gone, we go back to using a more balanced distribution of the upper and lower brain.

What happens when we have an Anxiety Disorder?

In some cases, as mentioned above, our brains interpret that there is danger and sends out these messages when there is, in fact, little or no danger at all. This is VERY common in anxiety disorders. We could say that our downstairs made a mistake and set off the alarms, signaling to the whole body that is must prepare for fight or flight.

When I am using the metaphor of the two-story house, I often call this “lockdown”. Sometimes, just as our brains do where there is a REAL danger, when our brains mistakenly set off the alarm bells, it “locks down” the downstairs brain and won’t allow us to access our upstairs brain in a reasonable way. Problem Solving Pete and Rational Renee have no way of communicating with Panicky Patty and this keeps us from questioning if this danger is, in fact, a danger.

There is great benefit from knowing this information and being able to notice and observe when your brain is sending you into “lockdown”. Just understanding and observing this can allow us to reset. In fact, identifying that we are in lockdown and that our downstairs brain is being activated instantaneously opens up the stairway a little and allows reasonable Renee to begin doing her work. It is Reasonable Renee who allows us to say “OK, I am in lockdown right now”.    Isn’t that SO cool?!

Dan Siegel uses the quote, “you have to name it to tame it” and I cannot agree more when it comes to anxiety. When you (or your little ones) can name what is happening in their brain, it helps them to feel in control and then are able to tame their heightened sense of danger.

Now, don’t get me wrong, knowing this information will not make anxiety go away completely. But, the more we can identify when our downstairs is in lockdown mode, the more likely we are to use our mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tools.

Another tool is to practice using you upstairs brain when you aren’t in automatic lockdown. By exposing yourself to the very things that set off the downstairs brain in to lockdown (when there is, in fact, no danger at all), you can re-train your brain to reassess the danger appropriately.   You will use your upstairs brain to regulate your downstairs brain when it wants to send you into lockdown.

It is important to know that the upstairs part of the brain isn’t fully built until sometime in a child 20’s. This doesn’t mean that this tool isn’t helpful to those who are children or adolescents. In fact, it is even more important for those who are younger. Understanding your brain can help develop the use of the upstairs brain and can benefit then in many, many ways. The goal is to have an upstairs and downstairs brain that communicate and work together.

Discussing Anxiety and the Brain with your Kids

If you are working with young children, try to make it fun. If your child is in lock down, have Bossy Benjamin tell Panicky Pete to “scram!!!!”. You could say, “You don’t belong here Panicky Pete!”   You might also ask the lovely Calming Catarina to help with breathing and doing a fun activity that engages your child.

For little kids (and us big Adult kids), you might ask Reasonable Renee to keep and eye on Worried Wanda. Worried Wanda often spends too much time worrying about the future and all the bad things that might happen. Reasonable Renee can help remind Worried Wanda that her imagination has gone a little wild.   Reasonable Renee might also sit down and come up with some activities that your child can do when Worried Wanda talks too loud and starts to become a bother.   Ideas might include arts and crafts, take a walk, build a lego castle, do a jigsaw puzzle. The trick is to get hat upstairs AND downstairs brain engaged and communicating together!

Play around with some of these ideas and please let me know if you have any great ideas or questions.