ARFID or OCD? Understanding the Difference When Food Feels Scary | Ep. 444

In this episode, Kimberley Quinlan breaks down the subtle but crucial differences between OCD, ARFID, orthorexia, and eating disorders—and how understanding these distinctions can lead to more effective, compassionate treatment.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• Why the function behind food-related anxiety matters more than the behavior itself
• How OCD, ARFID, and orthorexia can look similar—but require very different treatment approaches
• What exposure therapy looks like for each condition (and why it must be values-led)
• The unique role disgust plays in ARFID and how to gently work through it
• How to involve family members in the recovery process without reinforcing avoidance
• Why healing doesn’t mean perfection—and how to measure progress with compassion

Is It OCD, ARFID, Orthorexia, or an Eating Disorder? Understanding the Differences to Get the Right Treatment

If you or someone you love feels intense anxiety around food—whether it’s preparing meals, eating in front of others, or even choosing what to eat—it can be confusing and overwhelming. You might wonder:
Is this an eating disorder? OCD? ARFID? Or something else entirely?

In this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit, licensed therapist and anxiety specialist Kimberley Quinlan breaks down the nuanced differences between these conditions. Understanding the root cause is the key to getting effective treatment—and lasting recovery.

Why Diagnosis Matters

Many people experiencing food-related anxiety are misdiagnosed. For example:

• Someone with OCD may be placed in traditional eating disorder treatment that doesn’t address their obsessions and compulsions.
• A person with ARFID might be misinterpreted as having anorexia when body image isn’t the issue at all.

 

Getting the right diagnosis helps guide you—or your clinician—toward the appropriate evidence-based treatment plan.

Similar Symptoms, Different Roots

Although the symptoms might look alike—avoiding food, obsessive food preparation, distress at mealtime—the function of those behaviors is what matters.

Kimberley walks us through how to differentiate between:

1. OCD with Food-Related Obsessions

When OCD latches onto food, the fear is often rooted in specific obsessions, such as:

• Contamination fears (germs, poisoning, mold, expired food)
• Symmetry or “just right” obsessions (food must look, feel, or taste a certain way)
• Moral or scrupulous concerns (“If I eat this, I’m a bad person”)
• Health anxiety (fears of allergic reactions, choking, or getting others sick)

The compulsive behaviors—checking, reassurance seeking, ritualistic eating—are attempts to neutralize those fears.

2. ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder)

ARFID is a recognized eating disorder diagnosis that has nothing to do with body image. Instead, people with ARFID avoid food because of:

• Sensory aversions (texture, smell, appearance)
• Fear of adverse outcomes (nausea, vomiting, choking)
• Traumatic or distressing childhood feeding experiences

ARFID is about the physical and emotional experience of eating, not concerns about weight or shape.

3. Orthorexia

Though not officially listed in the DSM, Orthorexia is widely recognized and involves:

• An obsession with “clean,” “pure,” or “healthy” eating
• Elimination of entire food groups due to fear of additives or impurities
• Anxiety driven more by health perfectionism than physical appearance

Orthorexia shares elements of both OCD and ARFID and requires a blended treatment approach.

 

A Breakdown of Core Differences

Condition	Primary Fear	Typical Behaviors	Role of Body Image
OCD	Intrusive thoughts (e.g., contamination, harm)	Compulsions like checking, reassurance seeking, ritualized eating	Usually unrelated
ARFID	Sensory discomfort, fear of eating outcomes	Avoidance, strong disgust response, refusal	Not relevant
Orthorexia	Fear of food being impure/unhealthy	Extreme restriction, health-driven food rules	Somewhat relevant (health-focused)

 

The Gold Standard Treatments

Kimberley emphasizes that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be effective for all three conditions—when properly tailored.

OCD: Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)

• Gradually face food-related fears
• Practice reducing and eliminating compulsions
• Build confidence in tolerating anxiety and uncertainty

ARFID: Sensory-Based Exposure Therapy

• Slowly introduce avoided foods through a structured hierarchy
• Help clients build tolerance for discomfort or disgust
• May include occupational therapy, feeding therapy, or additional support for children

Orthorexia: A Combined Approach

• ERP to target obsessive fears
• Psychoeducation to challenge food-related health myths
• Compassion-based therapy to address perfectionism and control

 

Kimberley’s Compassionate Treatment Process

Treatment is most effective when it’s collaborative and values-led. Kimberley outlines a process that respects each client’s pace, boundaries, and goals.

Step 1: Psychoeducation

• Learn how avoidance fuels anxiety
• Understand the “why” behind each exposure

Step 2: Treatment Planning

• List food-related rituals, behaviors, and fears
• Create a realistic hierarchy of exposure tasks

Step 3: Goal Setting

• Define what life could look like without food-related anxiety
• Use this vision to guide and motivate the recovery process

Step 4: Response Prevention

• Work on reducing rituals after eating (e.g., reassurance seeking or spitting food out)
• Build distress tolerance skills and learn that anxiety can be managed without compulsions

Step 5: Relapse Prevention

• Practice exposures repeatedly for mastery, not perfection
• Focus on tolerating distress, not eliminating it
• Embrace tools like mindfulness, value-based actions, and self-compassion

Family Involvement

Food-related conditions rarely impact just one person—they often affect the entire family system. Kimberley encourages:

• Including family in therapy when possible
• Reducing accommodating behaviors that reinforce avoidance
• Teaching family members how to be supportive without enabling compulsions

This is especially critical for children and teens, but valuable for adults as well.

 

You Deserve to Feel Safe and Nourished

Whether you’re living with OCD, ARFID, or Orthorexia, the most important takeaway is this:
You are not alone. And you are not broken.

There is a path forward—one that is compassionate, evidence-based, and fully tailored to your unique experience.

Final Thoughts

Getting the right diagnosis—and the right treatment—can be life-changing. These conditions are treatable. Full recovery is possible.

As Kimberley reminds us:
It’s a beautiful day to do hard things.

 

The podcast is made possible by NOCD. NOCD offers effective, convenient therapy available in the US and outside the US. To find out more about NOCD, their therapy plans, and if they currently take your insurance, head over to https://learn.nocd.com/youranxietytoolkit

Transcription: ARFID or OCD? Understanding the Difference When Food Feels Scary

If you or someone you love has intense anxiety around food, maybe food preparation, mealtime, you might be wondering, is this ARFID? Is this an eating disorder or is this OCD or maybe an entirely different condition? My name is Kimberly Quinlan. I’m an anxiety specialist, and today I’m going to be focusing on breaking apart these.

 

Different presentations and what might appear to look the same, but in fact, these are completely different conditions and that require different specialized treatment so that you can get the recovery and the outcomes that you want. Thank you so much for being here, Your Anxiety Toolkit. We’re here to bring you all the virtual hugs and effective strategies and science-based tools so that you can get better, faster. That’s what we’re all about over here at Your Anxiety Toolkit. So let’s get to the bottom of what is OCD? What is ARFID? Is it maybe something completely different? We’re going to pull apart. We’re gonna dissect this and go through it together so that you know that you can move forward and get the correct treatment that you deserve.

 

So let’s go.

 

So oftentimes clients will present in our office with these symptoms of, um, anxiety around food, lots of preparation, lot of rumination about food, maybe a lot of checking of the food item. Uh, there might be a lot of distress around eating. There might be massive emotional dysregulation around meal time.

 

These are all things that a lot of people are struggling with, however. What we wanna do before we immediately just jump in and try to target specific symptoms and manage different avoidant behaviors is we want to understand what is actually going on. What is the underlying fear of these behaviors? And when we identify those specific underlying fears or what the function of those behaviors are, we can then ident identify.

 

We can then identify the correct diagnosis, the correct treatment plan, and we can address any nuances that, believe it or not, are incredibly important when deciding on a treatment modality for these. Symptoms that are presenting, like I said before, the same symptoms can, could be A OCD, it could B ARFID, it could be an eating disorder.

 

Most of the time we will actually hear from clients who said they got put in eating disorder treatment with a bunch of, you know, people, maybe young females, if that is the most common, you know, generalized population when really they had an OCD diagnosis. Or they’re being treated for OCD when they maybe have ARFID and we’ve, they’ve been misdiagnosed in that way.

 

Maybe there’s a combination of these two. And we need to identify the function of each behavior so that we can find the specific treatment for that behavior, whatever it may be, a compulsion, maybe a safety behavior, and make sure that we’re being as specialized and as customized as we can. So today we’re gonna talk about.

 

How to differentiate the between them and also look at a few of the different methods of treating these conditions.

 

Okay. So as a clinician, I’m always gonna focus first on doing a thorough assessment. Now, what would that assessment involve? Well, first we wanna understand what particular behaviors are going on. Often by the time people come to us, they’re very malnourished. Maybe their doctor or a nurse has referred them, or their general practitioner.

 

Saying this person has dropped weight or has maintained a low weight for a very long time, and I think it’s time for you to get some mental health help. Now, by the time they come to us, they may already have done a Google, you know, such, and they feel that they resonate with a condition or a certain con anxiety condition or mental health condition.

 

That would be ideal. But if not. We’re first going to look at what specifically is going on. Now, common symptoms for all three of these OCD ARFID and an eating disorder will involve, again, a significant reduction in food or food groups. A lot of rumination around food, a lot of avoidance of food, um, avoidance of mealtime, a lot of reassurance.

 

Seeking around certain foods, a lot of checking of food behaviors, counting of calories and counting of certain parts of the food. Um, and again, just a general overwhelming degree of distress. But what we wanna do then is once we get a thorough understanding of the safety behaviors that are being done, we wanna ask the question.

 

What purpose do these behaviors serve? What is the underlying fear or the underlying concern that’s causing you to engage in these behaviors? Now, let’s first talk about OCD when it comes to having OCD or food related obsessions. A lot of the time the person is engaging in these behaviors because of specifics.

 

Because of specific obsessions that they may have. A really common example of this might be contamination. They might have contamination obsessions, which means they’re avoiding foods, checking foods, examining foods, having a lot of distress in fear that that food may have some kind of. Poison in it.

 

Maybe it may cause them to get sick. Maybe they’re afraid of the germs or the mold that might be associated with that food. Maybe they have a fear that that food is out of date, um, and that they may get a illness of some type. Maybe they’ll throw up and they don’t want to. That would be very common for someone with contamination related obsession.

 

Now, there are other people who have more symmetry obsessions related to their food. They want to know that their food is aligned symmetrical. The numbers are certain numbers. Maybe they’re good numbers, not good numbers, and so forth. Maybe there is some just right obsessions involved in that. They feel like the food has to feel right or smell right, or taste right.

 

Maybe it has to look right. Maybe they can’t touch and it doesn’t feel right. For them to touch. Maybe it doesn’t feel right for them to be cooked together. It could be many reasons when, when it comes down to just right obsessions, other obsessions related to OCD might be scru. Might be scrupulous or moral obsessions, such as if I eat meat, I’m a bad person, or if I eat this certain food, when I have this sort that certain thought that would make me a bad person.

 

Or again, maybe it’s a religious obsession. If I have a bad thought about God while I swallow this item, well then I may or may not go to hell again, causing them to avoid food in fear that they will have that intrusive thought. Often people with health related obsessions may be afraid that the food may set off an allergic reaction.

 

Maybe they’re afraid of going into anaphylactic shock. Maybe they’re afraid that if they don’t cook the food correctly, they don’t examine the food correctly, that they may cause harm or illness to other people. Therefore, avoiding the food, ruminating about the food, or having. Significant impaired distress related to mealtime.

 

Now, other examples of OCD could be really anything. Sometimes OCD can attach and, um, attack things in ways that we would not have. Even thought of, these are common ways in which OCD can target food and food routines and cause someone to become malnourished or have a lot of rituals around food. But the key point here to know is that there is a different primary.

 

Fear related to their food related compulsions. The food compulsions may be, as we’ve mentioned, counting, um, a lot of preparation, avoiding food reassurance, seeking maybe needing to take small bites, big bites, certain amount of bites, certain amount of chewing. Um, it’s very ritualized. Um, and again, there’s a lot of avoidance.

 

Involved. Now, if we move on, we’re gonna now look at what Ahed is in relation to how people,

 

now moving on, we’re going to look at Ahed and what that looks like and to.

 

Okay, so now we wanna look at what is ah, Alfred. Now Alfred is an acronym that stands for Avoided Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. It’s actually its own diagnosis and it’s under the umbrella of an eating disorder, but again. So often folks with Alfred get misdiagnosed with people who assume that they’re avoiding food or restricting food, or they’re having a lot of distress around food because of their fear of gaining weight or their fears and concerns around body size and shape.

 

That is very common for folks with eating disorders and even though ARFID. Is under the category of an eating disorder. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with the person’s perceived body shape, weight, or any body concerns. For folks with Alfred, they tend to be more concerned about the sensory ex.

 

Experience of the food, the reason they avoid foods, the reason they have all these ritualized behaviors around food is because they have a high level of distress and fear of what will happen when they eat that food item. Maybe they will have disgust. Maybe they don’t like the texture. Maybe they don’t like the smell, maybe they don’t like.

 

Having things touched because they have this strong disgust reaction when they do. The thing to remember for people with ahed is they aren’t just afraid of food. They’re often afraid of the consequences of eating, and often this is not. Fear that’s irrational. Oftentimes, they actually have a very strong disgust reaction within their body.

 

That idea of eating is gross, it’s repulsive. They may have no appetite at all making it so difficult for them to eat. And again, identifying the difference between AED and OCD again can help us to determine how we want to target treatment.

 

Now, often folks with a Alfred have had many repetitive, severely distressing experiences with food. They’ve attempted to eat food. Maybe they’ve been forced to eat food as a young child. Maybe they’ve had feeding conditions as an early child. And they’ve been forced so much that they maybe have actually vomited from having to eat food that they didn’t want to eat.

 

And now they have this inbuilt nervous system that associates certain foods with very stressful, with very stressful experiences. They may a, they may associate certain foods with. Throwing up nausea, um, severe social anxiety about what people will say and so forth. And this is another reason that we wanna identify specifically what is going on.

 

What is the experience of the person when they’re having to eat a certain food or food group?

 

Now there’s one additional form of AFR that I wanna make sure we cover here, and this is Orthorexia. Orthorexia is a term that was coined in the early nineties. It is actually under the terminology and diagnosis of afr, but it actually is more of a fear of, um. But when we look at the function of the behavior for folks with orthorexia, they tend to be most concerned with the contamination of a food item.

 

Often when someone presents to us with orthorexia, they are saying that they’ve cut out foods because they want to eat as purely as they can. A lot of media has really sort of. Um, made this very, uh, fantasy of this idea of eating very pure, only real whole organic, whole grain raw vegan that could be in any of these areas.

 

And the person with orthorexia has become so afraid of food groups that they have minimized their diet to. Some cases, one or two items that must be purely prepared, purely cooked, or no cooking at all. And they’re not allowed to have any additional ingredients or pesticides or any, um, additives. They have become so anxious about adding anything into their body and the fear of the consequences of that, but they too become incredibly malnourished and require mental health care.

 

Again, orthorexia is understood under the condition and diagnosis of Alfred, but there are folks with Orthorexia who feel that that term suits their symptoms better than Alfred in general, and that’s why it’s really important to present all of these to our clients and ask them which one of these conditions.

 

Feels most relevant to you, which one fits you the most? When they can understand what’s going on for them, they’re more inclined to ask for help to get the help they need, and to feel understood and recognized for what the amount of stress, for the amount of distress that they’re going through.

 

Now, as you can imagine, it’s probably likely that in many cases, but not all, it may be a combination of one or all of these conditions. A lot of folks with a Alfred have coexisting OCD. A lot of folks with Orthorexia have. More general experience of aed. They may also have this sensory experience of food and this aversion to food because of AED symptoms and their underlying concern about these, um, consequences of eating certain foods.

 

A lot of folks with OCD also have discussed obsessions, and so we can actually see that the overlap here is going to be very high, just like it is with other eating disorders such as orthorexia. It such as anorexia, such as bulimia, um, binge eating disorder.

 

So let’s do a recap so that we. So before we move into treatments, let’s just do a general recap. Folks with OCD are going to have a specific obsession and compulsion that are causing them to reduce or minimize the food in, in the food groups for folks with Alfred, they’re gonna have more of a. Sensory aversion to food.

 

It could be from childhood experiences, it could be something that they just experience in relation to that food that caused them a significant degree of distress. And again, they’re going to be doing very similar safety behaviors and compulsions as folks with OCD. But the underlying fear or the underlying consequence is different now for folks with orthorexia.

 

Again, very similarly, the actions around food and the aversion of food may look the same, but the fear is more related to the contamination and the fear of additives or any concerns with the the purity of food. Now, when we talk about treatment, the good news here is that all three of these conditions.

 

Can be treated with cognitive behavioral therapy, but the degree of the cognitive be therapy. The behavioral therapy and any supplemental treatments is going to be a little different for folks with OCD, the gold standard treatment for OCD is exposure and response prevention. Now, this is a specific. Type of cognitive behavioral therapy where the person practices exposing themselves to their fear while they res have response prevention, which is the reduction or elimination of their compulsive behaviors.

 

That was what we’re going to practice with OCD, and it has very good outcomes when it comes to we are still going to use. Cognitive behavioral therapy, and we may even use exposure and response prevention as well. The main thing for folks with arfid is to remember that when they practice eating those things, it will reduce and, and lower the degree of anxiety and distress about it.

 

They may still have that disgusted reaction. The cool thing about this is that we can still practice gradual exposure to the foods that they have been avoiding, and over time they actually learn that they can tolerate the distress and the disgust and whatever aversion they experience. Similar to folks with OCD.

 

We learn through exposure and response prevention, that they can tolerate the uncertainty and distress and anxiety associated with their obsessions. The other thing that you wanna consider when it comes to is there may be a need for occupational therapy. There may be a need for. Feeding therapy if needed.

 

Um, and we may also need to look at if there are children, are there any additional therapies that they may qualify for to help them move in the direction of getting back to the foods that they can eat and getting them nourished as fast as we can. Now for folks with orthorexia, again, because Orthorexia is sort of this beautiful marriage of Alfred and.

 

Now for folks with Orthorexia, because it’s is somewhat of a, a marriage between Orthorexia and OCD, we’re still gonna be using exposure therapy. But the main thing here for all three conditions is as we move towards this model of exposure. We’re going to be very compassionate in making sure that they feel empowered, that they feel in control of this process.

 

We are not here as clinicians to push them to do something they don’t want to do first in treatment. We are going to do a lot of psychoeducation. We are going to train them on why exposure is helpful. What other strategies, such as mindfulness and dialectical behavioral therapy, a heavy emphasis on compassion focused therapy, so that they’re brought in on the process, that they feel empowered and they are leading the way.

 

They’re deciding what foods they start with and we build a hierarchy. From easiest to hardest so we can practice and take bo baby baby steps as we go. Now, the second stage of treatment is going to be treatment planning. This is where you’re going to write down all the behaviors that you do and organize them in a way.

 

That feels in line with your values and feels doable for you. We’re never gonna do treatment where we take you from a zero to 100. We want this to be a process where you feel supported and, and somewhat, even though this is an incredibly painful part of process, but someone excited about the idea of taking your life back.

 

From this condition, we may also do treatment planning about what rewards you’re gonna give you. How are we gonna celebrate when you put this plan into action? The third piece is goal setting. What do you want? What do you want your life to look like? If you have this condition, how would you like it to be different?

 

How would you like your life to, um, how would you like it to look if this condition wasn’t taking over? That looking into that people and taking a look at the life you wish you had can help fuel and help us understand what we want treatment to look like.

 

Now, as we mentioned with exposure therapy, we’re going to be looking at this food-based exposure therapy. We are going to gradually, step by step work you up a hierarchy where we practice. Being uncomfortable. We are not doing this to torment you. We are not doing this to punish you. We are doing this to help you build mastery over allowing discomfort to be there, learning that the discomfort is not dangerous, that nothing bad will happen, and if you do happen to feel the adverse.

 

Experiences such as nausea, disgust, um, maybe even vomit, that you can tolerate it, especially if we do it in very, very ba baby, baby steps.

 

The beautiful part about this treatment is it helps the person with OCD Orthorexia or Alfred learn to trust themselves with food, learn to trust their limits. Learn to trust their body and learn to trust their digestive track in the way that it experiences and processes food. This takes time. I want to stress to you that this is not a throw it all in at once method.

 

This is a deeply compassionate process. That’s very much led by the person’s values, whether it’s their health and their wish to be able to eat in social settings, whether it’s their, um, mental wellness and freedom in that they don’t want to be overwhelmed with preoccupation around food anymore. Every exposure we do is intentional, is compassionate and values led.

 

We are never here to make our clients do something they don’t wanna do. We are never here to force them to do something that we wouldn’t do ourselves or that they don’t again, want to do. Of course, they’re going to need to stretch themselves a little. Of course, they’re going to need to present with a good degree of willingness.

 

But across the board, when I have practiced this with clients, they have all said that they finished treatment finally having some mastery over their food and their. Food rituals and routines that they don’t feel like this food aversion or this food anxiety or this obsession around food is running their life anymore.

 

Now, the last piece of work here.

 

Now the last part of treatment here is where we talk about response prevention and relapse prevention. Now, this is where once we’ve got them practicing eating those foods, we’re going to focus on reducing any other. Safety behaviors or food rituals that they’re using compulsively. So an example of this might be, while they may be eating the food, we wanna make sure that once they’ve eaten the food, they don’t spit it out, maybe they, um, don’t do a lot of rumination around it.

 

A lot of reassurance seeking around it. That they’re slowly and surely reducing those compulsive behaviors. Now, this tends to be more prevalent for folks with OCD, but again, they can go across the board. Another thing to remember here, if you’re someone with Alfred, is a part of the treatment here is repetition.

 

And that’s gonna be true for any of these conditions, but especially for folks with Alfred. Often when we are doing these. Food exposures, we’re going to need a lot of repetition in order for them to gain that mastery. In some cases, people can get full desensitation. In some cases people can get full desensitization or habitation with foods, but that is not an actual goal or outcome that we’re going for with treatment.

 

We are not looking for this to be comp, make eating completely easy because that goal in and of itself can set the person up for a lot of frustration, a lot of hopelessness, and feeling like this just isn’t working. Instead of the goal being a. Elimination of distress. We actually wanna change the goal to the ability to tolerate any level of distress and have a really well-rounded tool belt to manage that distress if and when it shows up.

 

So we will, as we go, be practicing a lot of mindfulness, compassion focused skills. We’re gonna be practicing a lot of distress tolerance. We’re gonna be practicing a lot of value-based. Behaviors. So while you’re eating and as you’re having this distress, what can you engage in that is in line with your values?

 

These things are gonna help the person, again, build a sense of mastery as they move through these different treatment stages. Now, another important part of treatment is including the family. Often, by the time that we get someone in our practice with these conditions, the family is. Frustrated, overwhelmed, exhausted.

 

Maybe they’re engaging in a lot of behaviors to help accommodate the person, and I completely understand that this is a family condition. It affects everybody around them. And so in treatment, whether you have OCD ARFID or orthorexia, we are going to want to include the family as much as we can. We wanna make sure the family has.

 

Reduced the, any type of accommodating behavior that is not helpful to the person. We wanna increase the amount of support that the family brings. We want the family to be encouraging them, cheering them on, sending them lots of love and identifying how the family member can, um, support them in a way.

 

That brings them more in line with their values and not letting these conditions run the, again, the show and the whole family system. This may involve a lot of psychoeducation with family members. It may involve family therapy if needed, um, and in and including the pa, the family, and the loved ones in treatment As much as possible, and this is especially helpful for young children with Alfred and OCD.

 

Now, as always, these treatments are going to be so helpful. Especially if you’re doing it from a place of compassion. Every time we can go through a treatment program and lace that compassion into every single stage, the kinder we can be, the more successful treatment will be, the more we can improve their outcomes, reduce procrastination, increase motivation.

 

The benefits are unlimited, so please be gentle with yourself if you are someone with Alfred, if you are someone with food related obsessions or orthorexia. Please be gentle with yourself. You did not ask for this. This does not mean there’s anything wrong with you. This does not mean that you, um, are going to feel this way forever and be stuck with this forever.

 

Um, I have had so many clients who have overcome these conditions with time and patience and support, and that involves you too. There are a few compassionate takeaways I want you to have after this episode. Number one, if foods feel scary, overwhelming, you’re not alone. This is not your fault. This is not a, a fact that has to continue in your life.

 

This is something you can overcome. Number two. The right diagnosis is key. It will allow you and your clinician to find specific treatment outcomes and strategies and modalities that will work specifically for your condition. So please, if you do not understand yet, or you’re still confused, reach out to a mental health provider in your area so that they can do a formal assessment.

 

Number three, you deserve a life where you are not ruled by the fear of food. The shame of this condition, um, or the avoidance of food you deserve to ha be nourished in your body and you deserve to find some peace with the foods that you’re eating. Even if that is a smaller amount of food groups, then.

 

Other people in your family are out in society. We’re all just doing the best we can. There’s no perfect. We’re not even goal for that. We’re just going on getting you back to a healthy lifestyle, nourishing your body, and breaking free from the mental anguish of these conditions.

 

Now if you have OCDI thoroughly encourage you to reach out to the international OCD Foundation. You can again take our online course called your OCD Toolkit. That’s where I will show you the step by step tools and strategies. And process that I take my clients through when I see them one-on-one. You can head over to cbt school.com to get more information about your OCD toolkit.

 

Now, if you have ARFID, I strongly encourage you to head over to Instagram or TikTok. Or YouTube and follow my ARFID life. Um, Hannah and her family show what it’s like to have ARFID, and it is such a wonderful way of understanding ARFID and experiencing and seeing someone practice exposing themselves by eating their feared.

 

Foods. Hannah is an absolute rock star, and I could not be more proud of the work she’s doing and the advocacy that she has shown our community. So that is a great resource for you if you have ARFID and you’re wanting to feel less alone. Now with Orthorexia, again, this is a condition I encourage you to reach out to the OCD Foundation.

 

You can go to my private practice if you’re wanting specific treatment in this condition. We have licensed and unlicensed therapists who are so beautifully well-trained and absolutely inspired by the work that we do with clients with OCD and Orthorexia, and we would love to help you. All you need to do is be living in the state of California.

 

We would love nothing more to help. And with that being said. I hope that this helps you feel much better understanding. And with that being said, I hope this has given you a deeper understanding of the differences between OCD and Alfred and Orthorexia and eating disorders In general, I hope that you feel more empowered.

 

I hope that you feel like you have some direction now and you understand the nuance. Differences between these conditions. The importance of this is it may be the difference between you having long-term recovery or not and getting your condition treated in a way that in which you deserve, which is a holistic, compassionate response,

 

which is a holistic, compassionate approach to your condition. Have a wonderful day. As always, it’s a beautiful day to do hard things, and I’ll see you next week.