Jenny C. Yip, Psy.D.» Patient Blogs – Child OCD Treatment, Child Anxiety Treatment, OCD Treatment, Anxiety Treatment

Overwhelmed with unexplained anxiety

tony — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:52:07 +0000

The other day, I became overwhelmed with unexplained anxiety. “Where could it be coming from?” I thought. “I’m not worried about anything specific. There’s no imminent threat or other reason for the “fight or flight” reflex. What could be causing this?” I thought. Soon I remembered one of my earliest lessons: the “fight or flight” response does not occur without reason. There must be some form of trigger to this anxiety. What’s the only trigger I had ever experienced that had ever been able to completely hide its face? Cognitive distortions. As soon as I began paying attention I noticed, “should” statements, magnifications, and “black-and-white” thinking flying left and right. Somehow I had come to think that I had moved passed cognitive distortions. I stopped noticing them, and so just figured I had become so adept at correcting for them that it was almost automatic. How wrong I was. Distortions have always proved a hidden saboteur on the mission to managing anxiety.

At my first appointment with Dr. Jenny Yip, she handed me a list of the ten cognitive distortions. She asked me to look over the list and tell her which of them might apply to me. As I read them I felt like I was reading through a bad melodrama (“You’re so stupid, stupid, stupid!”) Clearly, none of these could apply to me; an intelligent and rational individual, or so I thought. As time went on, I slowly began to admit to one and then the next until I found myself committing them all. I was simply not noticing them and sometimes intentionally avoiding them because I felt ashamed of such blatant errors in judgment. The reality is that cognitive distortions are a part of our everyday thought process. This is something we must accept, and once we do, we are more capable of remaining mindful of them. Keeping an “automatic thought record” helps a great deal. In fact, after my recent experience, I just began keeping one again after not doing it for months. Managing an anxiety disorder is a lifelong process. If I find myself more edgy or overwhelmed than I am used to, perhaps it is time to reevaluate my present position and review and reuse the tools that I have learned along my journey.

Steady progress

Väike — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:03:38 +0000

I began therapy with Dr. Yip at the end of July 2008 and have been making steady progress ever since. A few months before starting non-intensive cognitive behavior therapy sessions I had failed to complete an undergraduate class at UCLA for the second consecutive quarter and knew that I could no longer hold off taking a significantly more aggressive approach to battling my hoarding form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Thus far, I have come to believe that I am capable of making strides I never imagined I could make before the summer of 2008, and am currently progressing in ways that have made my life substantially more livable than it was just a few months ago. I don’t know that the future holds, but I’m not afraid to consider the possibilities anymore.

Bryce telling his story

Bryce — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:10:22 +0000

Hello, my name is Bryce. My story involves a long, challenging journey against OCD that I am still on. It is one I would like to tell in the hope of helping other people with this disorder and at the same time, gain some personal therapeutic value from this experience. I have had OCD since the age of five, experiencing many themes from homosexuality and cancer, to self-harm and “morally wrong” thoughts. Most of my symptoms included excessive worrying, mental dialogues, and gastrointestinal issues. I suffered through this quietly and most of my family members thought it was funny and just a phase. No one could have predicted the upcoming trials that lie ahead.

My most recent OCD episode was sparked by the college search. While I was unaware at the time, I was experiencing OCD for a large period of my junior year. In high school, I was an academically astute student. I finished in the top fifteen in a class where eleven of those students were in the top one percent in the nation. My high school was exceptionally competitive when it came to college selection, and this helped pray on my OCD, panic disorder, and social phobia. I went on a campus visit to a liberal arts school in Oregon during early April my senior year. I had a panic attack the entire time and I fell pray to the thinking that told me that “this college wasn’t good enough” and that there were “better options out there for me.” I then had panic attacks every day thinking there was a perfect option out there, and that if I made the wrong choice, I would be a complete failure. My parents forced me to go to a school I only applied to because they wanted me to, and it was close to home. I then demonized that school and felt as if an incoming death was coming.

My situation was magnified by those students that I compared myself with. I went through high amounts of emotional turmoil, because everyone from my best friend to my girlfriend seemed to have found a perfect college and I was a loser left behind. I didn’t want to go to the school I was headed to, and at the same time, all my friends could ever talk about was going away to school. This combination of perceived social pressure and my intense intrusive thoughts ruined my daily life.

Once school got out, I spent most of my time researching schools and my role models and where they went to school. I also began having excessive doubt. I doubted I could achieve my career goals at the school I was headed to. I doubted whether anyone would ever hire me from the school I was going to. Everything just was so “awful” about the school I was heading to. I stopped going outside and spent all of my time on the computer researching. Whenever my friends talked about school, I would leave, and a depression finally set in. My therapist diagnosed me with OCD about halfway through the summer, and my doctor put me on medication. All of the medication I first tried didn’t work and I finally began having suicidal ideation when the time to go to school got closer and closer. I was admitted to the hospital and stayed for two weeks. I finally saw a glimpse of hope, but alas, I was too drugged up to go to school and was forced to stay home.

All of my worst fears were occurring and all of my friends left for school. I was stuck with pain and rejection until finally my parents found Doctor Yip and Gorbis, and it felt like I finally had real help. I left for Los Angeles and Doctor Yip first started helping me deal with my Panic Disorder, employing numerous tools such as interoceptive exposures, and continuing to do so until my anxiety went down. She also started me on mindful awareness and other books to help change my black and white thinking. At the same time I started to visit campuses around the Los Angeles area and I began getting some confidence and hope. I went home for a brief period during early October and used a variety of methods to help keep my OCD and Panic levels minimized as I visited campuses back home. I then went back down to Los Angeles where I continued my treatment with Doctor Yip and Doctor Gorbis. I began using loop tape exposures to expose myself to the worst possible consequences and also gaining more tools to help treat my OCD. In the mean time I also did Social Phobia exposures where I engaged in bizarre behaviors in front of complete strangers. For example, I shaved a reverse mohawk into my hair and got what I considered flamboyant clothing and wore it around UCLA.

At the end of the program my OCD went down to a manageable level and my general anxiety went down a lot too. Doctor Yip supported me in making a college choice and the eventual psychological ramifications to knowing I was locked into a college. Since then my anxiety has gone up and my OCD has gone up, but I have done a better job knowing how to deal with my OCD and avoiding catastrophic thinking. My family and friends have also been great supports, and I can say I am living a more normal life now. Though I had to change medications, and I am still waiting for the effects to set in and help me deal with my anxiety and OCD intrusiveness the closer I get to school. Even last week I was able to visit the college I was going to attend all by myself for two days, and felt ok about going there. I have learned to feel wrong and be ok, and to not catastrophize when the anxiety comes but to embrace it. My mind still gets tunnel visioned sometimes, but I am using the tools Doctor Yip gave me and drawing on past experiences to see reality and disregard unwanted thoughts.

I still feel like I am incapable of doing things and in a largely down and out mood, but I hope with my medication and tools that I will go to college and do well. All of my OCD thoughts are the same now and they most likely won’t go away until I get to school. Meanwhile I am still on my journey, fighting for my life goals, and learning something new everyday.