How to Deal With Obsessive Thoughts In Your Relationship? - In Conversation With Kimberly Morrow

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In today's episode we are talking with therapist and author Kimberly Morrow, who wrote Face It and Feel It: 10 Simple (But Not Easy) Ways to Live Well with Anxiety and CBT for Anxiety: A Step-By-Step Training Manual for the Treatment of Fear, Panic, Worry and OCD.

Kimberly specialises in working with anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD); in today's episode she discusses  how anxious, compulsive thoughts can impact on relationships.
OCD means that the very thing you worry excessively about is something that is really important to you and that you value. It is not your actual truth. For example, an obsessive thought in a relationship might be 'what if I don't love him'. The compulsion then becomes to doubt all the time. OCD is often called the 'doubting disease'.

OCD always wants to get to certainty; it needs to make sure. However, this certainly may never be reached and you will need to accept a level of uncertainty and acceptance.

OCD can be treated well; one of the most helpful treatment is Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). In this therapeutic approach you are encouraged to face your fears and address your obsessive thoughts without getting overwhelmed.  Kimberly explains how this approach works.  She talks us through the steps of working with somebody who experiences OCD.

If you are in a relationship with a partner who struggles with OCD you  need to learn to respond to your partner's OCD in a helpful way.

Other helpful approaches to treat OCD are Acceptance and Committment Therapy or Inference Based Therapy.

For further information check out the website that Kimberly mentions in this episode: NOCD. If you are in the US, you can find therapists here who are trained specifically work to with OCD.

Kimberly Morrow, LCSW helps people live well with anxiety using compassionate, evidenced-based treatment. She has been in private practice in Erie, PA for 30 years. Kimberly earned the Clinician Outreach Award and the Member of Distinction Award from the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. She is a graduate of the International Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation’s Behavior Therapy Institute. She serves on the board for OCD Pennsylvania.  Kimberly is co-owner of Anxiety Training, which provides online training for therapists and schools to provide evidenced based treatments for anxiety and OCD.  She authored Face It and Feel It: 10 Simple (But Not Easy) Ways to Live Well with Anxiety and co-authored

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