Therapy for OCD + Anxiety in Salado, Texas

I'm not sure if I have OCD or just anxiety. Can you help?

Absolutely! You don't need to know exactly what's going on or have a diagnosis before reaching out for therapy. OCD and anxiety can overlap in ways that make it difficult to understand what you're experiencing, especially when you're caught in cycles of worry, rumination, avoidance, or reassurance-seeking.

In our first few sessions, we'll explore your experiences, complete appropriate assessments, and work together to understand what's keeping you stuck. From there, we'll develop a treatment plan tailored to your needs and goals.

Whether you're navigating OCD, anxiety, or a combination of both, we'll focus on building psychological flexibility and helping you respond to difficult thoughts and feelings in ways that allow you to live more fully.

OCD can make you feel like you have to figure something out, get reassurance, or do something to make an uncomfortable thought or feeling go away. You might spend hours analyzing what a thought means, checking, mentally reviewing, or trying to find certainty that you haven't done anything wrong.

In therapy, we'll work to understand how OCD and anxiety are showing up in your life and identify the patterns that keep you feeling stuck. Using approaches like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), we'll practice responding to uncomfortable thoughts and feelings differently rather than organizing your life around trying to control them.

The goal isn't to never experience anxiety or intrusive thoughts again. It's to help you spend less time caught up in them and more time doing the things that matter to you.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is an evidence-based treatment for OCD that helps you practice facing uncertainty and discomfort without relying on compulsions or other behaviors you use to feel better in the moment.

For example, you might practice leaving a question unanswered, resisting the urge to check something repeatedly, or allowing an intrusive thought to be present without trying to prove it wrong. Over time, you'll learn that you can experience uncertainty and discomfort without having to perform a ritual or find a way to make those feelings disappear.

ERP isn't about forcing you into your worst fears or overwhelming you. We'll work collaboratively to develop a plan that fits your needs and helps you move toward a life that feels less restricted by OCD.

Nope! Yay. OCD and anxiety therapy should be collaborative, not about throwing you into the deep end and hoping for the best.

With ERP, we'll work together to identify situations that anxiety or OCD have been keeping you from and develop a plan for practicing new responses. We typically start with manageable challenges and build from there, taking into account your needs, goals, and readiness.

You don't have to feel completely confident or fearless before you begin. The work is about learning that you can make room for discomfort and uncertainty while continuing to live your life, one step at a time.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) takes a different approach to difficult thoughts and feelings. Instead of making symptom elimination the primary goal, ACT helps you change your relationship with your internal experiences so they have less control over how you live.

You might spend a lot of time trying to challenge anxious thoughts, figure out whether they're true, or find the perfect way to feel better. ACT helps you practice noticing those thoughts without automatically treating them as problems you must solve. You'll also learn to make room for uncomfortable emotions, connect with your values, and take meaningful action even when anxiety shows up.

In my practice, ACT and ERP work together to help you respond differently to OCD and anxiety while building a life around what matters to you, rather than around what fear tells you to avoid.