Contents

• Who are you?
• What is your struggle?
• How did you feel at your worst moment
• When did you turn it around?
• What steps did you take to overcome your struggle?
• Who did you share your struggle with?
• Your best piece of advice?
• Books and resources
• Learn more

Hello! Who are you?

Hello, my name is Dr. Kyle Elliott, and I currently live in Santa Barbara, California with my partner, J.V. We’re both Disney Magic Key Holders and moved to Southern California from the San Francisco Bay Area at the beginning of the pandemic to be closer to Disneyland!

When not at Disneyland, I’m a career coach, and I specialize in senior managers and executives in the tech industry. In other words, I help leaders find jobs at companies like Meta, Amazon, and Google, as well as private equity and VC-backed companies and hyper-growth startups.

I’m also a writer and love using my words to help educate others, whether it’s about navigating the nuances of a modern-day job search, growing in their careers, or managing stress and anxiety.

I’m a proud mental health advocate and manage my mental health through lots of therapy, self-care, and, of course, trips to Disneyland.

By the way: Do you find it hard to be happy and in control of your life? It may not be your fault. To help you feel better, we’ve condensed the information of 100’s of articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet to help you be more in control.

Don’t Miss Out On Happiness

Find happiness with this 10-step mental health cheat sheet.

Download The Free Cheat Sheet

What is your struggle and when did it start?

One of the biggest challenges in my life has been learning how to effectively cope with anxiety on a daily basis. In my undergraduate studies, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, following five years of daily migraines that seemed to have no cause.

While it was helpful to finally uncover the root cause of the chronic migraines and see them quickly dissipate as I began managing the anxiety, it’s an ongoing journey that has required consistent attention, ongoing tweaks, and the help of my community.

Looking back, I’ve had anxiety and OCD for as long as I can remember. As a child, I had interesting quirks such as the constant urge to straighten picture frames, ensure hangers were spaced the same distance apart, and check that the lights were turned off. As an adult, my anxiety manifested as a work addiction with perfectionist tendencies and people-pleasing behavior.

How did this struggle make you feel at your worst moments?

I’ve always been a high performer, and my anxiety has fueled my success, though it has also resulted in fatigue and burnout at times. Anxiety has been both my superpower and my kryptonite.

My anxiety was at its worst while in graduate school. I was sexually assaulted and subsequently developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One of the most frightening PTSD symptoms was panic attacks that felt like déjà vu but would last for hours on end.

Share your story: Help thousands of people around the world by sharing your own story. We would love to publish your interview and have a positive impact on the world together. Learn more here.

Was there a moment when you started to turn things around?

While I started therapy during my sophomore year of college, it really made the most impact when I met my current therapist, Stephanie, and she challenged me to stop waiting to live the life I wanted.

Before meeting Stephanie, I said I would relax once I got to college… And then once I got to graduate school… And then once I landed my first professional job… And then once I launched my business… And then once my business hit six figures…

During our very first session, Stephanie “caught on” to the fact that I perpetually pushed off my goal of relaxing. Since then, I’ve strived to live a more balanced, mindful, and meaningful life.

What steps did you take to overcome your struggle?

Therapy has been a game changer, and I wouldn’t be where I am today without therapy.

However, it wasn’t simply attending sessions that made the difference. Instead, it was reviewing my goals and deciding which ones I wanted to work toward, figuring out how to turn them into a reality, and asking for help as soon as I got stuck.

As a recovering workaholic, learning to rest and relax has also been a game-changer. I used to skip family functions and time with friends to work. Now, I schedule my work around my travels and am constantly planning my next trip with my family.

Speaking of which, I wouldn’t be where I am today without my community, which includes my family, my friends, and my professional network of peers. You cannot and should not go through this life alone. Find people who have been in your shoes and learn from them.

Have you shared any of this with people around you in real life?

I am proud to share my lived experiences with others to inspire change, and I am thankful to be surrounded by people who have been supportive and uplifting when I share my mental health experiences.

That said, I do recall a hurtful experience I had in college shortly after being diagnosed with anxiety and OCD. After finishing a therapy session, I met a then-friend for lunch. She asked where I was coming from, and I nonchalantly mentioned therapy. She proceeded to ask if I was “crazy” and whether it was safe to be around me.

While I had the courage and knowledge to educate her about mental health, the words still stung and have stuck with me to this day. They motivated me to write my dissertation on the mental health experiences of college students.

If you could give a single piece of advice to someone else that struggles, what would that be?

I know it’s easier said than done, but please don’t be afraid to ask for help if you are struggling. You are not alone, and it gets better. There are people out there who have been where you are and who want to help you.

When you’re going through a difficult time, it can be difficult to remain hopeful. However, please know that recovery is possible, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now. You’ve got this!

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, YouTube channels, or other resources for you?

• Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist: This book required me to face my perfectionist tendencies head-on, sit with the discomfort, and begin to work through the difficult feelings.
• On Being with Krista Tippet: This podcast series has tons of timely topics that give me a greater sense of meaning and make me feel more grounded in life.

Where can we go to learn more about you?

You can learn more about me at CaffeinatedKyle.com or on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

By the way: If you want to start feeling better and more productive, I’ve condensed the information of 100’s of our articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet here.

This Cheat Sheet Will Help You Be Happier and More Productive

Thrive under stress and crush your goals with these 10 unique tips for your mental health.

Download The Free Cheat Sheet

Want more interviews?

Continue reading our inspiring case studies and learn how to overcome mental health struggles in a positive way!

Want to help others with your story? We would love to publish your interview and have a positive impact on the world together. Learn more here.

Hugo Huijer Author

Founder of Tracking Happiness, with over 100 interviews and a focus on practical advice, our content extends beyond happiness tracking. Hailing from the Netherlands, I’m a skateboarding enthusiast, marathon runner, and a dedicated data junkie, tracking my happiness for over a decade.

The post Navigating Anxiety and OCD With Therapy, Social Support, and Trips to Disneyland! appeared first on Tracking Happiness.

Contents

• Who are you?
• What is your struggle?
• How did you feel at your worst moment
• When did you turn it around?
• What steps did you take to overcome your struggle?
• Who did you share your struggle with?
• Your best piece of advice?
• Books and resources
• Learn more

Hello! Who are you?

Hello! My name is Stephanie and I’m a California licensed marriage and family therapist. I own my private practice, Stephanie Gilbert and Associates, LLC, where I not only see clients but supervise other clinicians.

I have two Maltipoos, Moxie and Sunshine, and am currently training for my first half-marathon! In my free time, I enjoy traveling and spending time with friends and family.

By the way: Do you find it hard to be happy and in control of your life? It may not be your fault. To help you feel better, we’ve condensed the information of 100’s of articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet to help you be more in control.

Don’t Miss Out On Happiness

Find happiness with this 10-step mental health cheat sheet.

Download The Free Cheat Sheet

What is your struggle and when did it start?

My mental health symptoms started when I was 15 years old. My father died when I was 9, and I believe that loss contributed to my struggles later as a teen. It started with some disordered eating patterns that quickly turned into anorexia, and then anxiety that turned into OCD.

I grew up in a small town, and while my mother did take me for treatment, it was a challenge finding specialized care (as it is for so many across the country). I continued to struggle and at about 18 developed severe anxiety symptoms including panic attacks and OCD.

While I had tried therapy throughout this time and got better but then symptoms would return, it wasn’t really until my early 20s that I found a therapist and started to feel like a recovery for me was actually possible.

During the time I was struggling, I was able to complete college and maintain some sense of normality in my day-to-day life. But as anyone who’s struggled with mental health symptoms knows, my symptoms overshadowed almost every moment of my life that I remember during that time.

The times I missed out with friends because I was ‘in’ my eating disorder. The times I spent anxious and worried when I should have been carefree and having fun. From the outside I looked calm and collected, getting good grades, and involved in extracurriculars, but inside I felt like I was falling apart.

How did this struggle make you feel at your worst moments?

I felt incredibly alone, trapped in my head most of the time. My experience of having an eating disorder and OCD was awful. Most if not every moment was spent worried or obsessing over something. It was also such a strange experience to have people complimenting my looks because we do live in a society that celebrates thinness, while I was struggling so deeply with my eating disorder.

Some people closest to me knew I was struggling, but not everyone. I had a lot of guilt and shame around my OCD and eating disorder, and really felt if I was just better then I would figure out how to heal myself. I know now that’s not true, but at the time I blamed myself for being sick.

Having such severe mental health issues, I’m not sure I could say I was ever happy during this time of my life. And that’s heartbreaking to me, but I think it’s true for most who struggle with issues like mine. There were times I was laughing or enjoyed seeing friends or family or a vacation, but it was such surface-level happiness. I mastered looking happy while I was suffering, and that’s not true happiness.

Share your story: Help thousands of people around the world by sharing your own story. We would love to publish your interview and have a positive impact on the world together. Learn more here.

Was there a moment when you started to turn things around?

Finding a therapist that I felt believed in my recovery completely shifted things for me. Which is why I became a therapist too. I felt like I wasn’t alone, that there was someone who understood and didn’t judge me for what I was going through. And she believed in me at times more than I believed in myself. 

I was lucky too that I had family that encouraged me to get help. I know that’s not always the case for a lot of people. I struggled for about 10 years before I found help that really was effective. I had been trying therapy but wasn’t getting much relief, and at some points in my journey just thought it would never work for me. 

I do remember a particular moment when I was struggling and had a realization that I just couldn’t function with the amount of symptoms I had – everything was too hard to manage on my own.

That was the moment I called and made an appointment with a new therapist because I had tried therapy prior but hadn’t ever had a therapist that specialized in what I was going through so it wasn’t successful, and that’s the therapist that was ultimately the most helpful in reducing my symptoms and helping me to be where I am today.

What steps did you take to overcome your struggle?

For anyone struggling with OCD, eating disorders, or any other mental health condition, I encourage you to reach out to a mental health professional.

If you have family or friends you can confide in, that can be very helpful in the healing process too. Too many of us suffer in silence, hoping things will get better, only to have the isolation in our suffering making it worse. 

Also, it’s worth mentioning that not every therapist specializes in everything. I know for me it was key to find someone who specialized in what I was going through to actually see results.

If you go to someone with no experience in what you’re going through, at best it’s unhelpful, and at worst it’s harmful. I know this now as a mental health professional, but I didn’t know that when I was struggling, so I like to share that with others who don’t know the details about mental health professional training.

Have you shared any of this with people around you in real life?

I have shared this in my personal life, and I’ve shared this as a mental health professional as well. My hope is that talking about what I’ve been through can further reduce the stigma about mental health issues and getting help.

There was a time when I didn’t share as much, and I think everyone needs to make the decision for themselves if they feel comfortable sharing and with who. But I do believe that stigma and shame can be reduced by speaking about what we’ve gone through, myself included.

If you could give a single piece of advice to someone else that struggles, what would that be?

Get help now. You’re worth getting help now. So many people question whether or not they deserve help, if they’re ‘sick enough’ (often with eating disorders), the shame prevents people from reaching out, or fear what people may think of them if they see a mental health professional. No one. 

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, YouTube channels, or other resources for you?

• The book Brain Lock helped me understand OCD when I was first diagnosed.
• I also like Judith Beck’s writings on CBT and anxiety.

Where can we go to learn more about you?

Sure! You can visit my website here, my Instagram is @stephaniegilbertmft, this is my personal LinkedIn while this is for my practice.

By the way: If you want to start feeling better and more productive, I’ve condensed the information of 100’s of our articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet here.

This Cheat Sheet Will Help You Be Happier and More Productive

Thrive under stress and crush your goals with these 10 unique tips for your mental health.

Download The Free Cheat Sheet

Want more interviews?

Continue reading our inspiring case studies and learn how to overcome mental health struggles in a positive way!

Want to help others with your story? We would love to publish your interview and have a positive impact on the world together. Learn more here.

Hugo Huijer Author

Founder of Tracking Happiness, with over 100 interviews and a focus on practical advice, our content extends beyond happiness tracking. Hailing from the Netherlands, I’m a skateboarding enthusiast, marathon runner, and a dedicated data junkie, tracking my happiness for over a decade.

The post How I Recovered From Anorexia and OCD With a Specialized Therapist appeared first on Tracking Happiness.

Contents

• Who are you?
• What is your struggle?
• How did you feel at your worst moment
• When did you turn it around?
• How did you feel at your worst moment
• What steps did you take to overcome your struggle?
• Who did you share your struggle with?
• Your best piece of advice?
• Books and resources

Hello! Who are you?

I’m Anna, I’m 28 years old and I live in Leeds, UK.

I work in the charity sector currently but have previously worked in special education with secondary-aged children. I’ve been in a relationship for 8 and a half years now – we met at uni and got together at the end of the first year. We’ve been living together for nearly 6 years and we have no pets or children, but my partner is pretty keen on us getting a dog in the next couple of years.

I would say at the time of writing I’m not at my happiest. It’s been a really tough year and a half for me personally and for my relationship, on top of a difficult time with Covid over the last few years and general world events that leave me feeling quite down sometimes.

My mental health took a big hit at the end of September 2021 and so the last year has been spent trying to pick up the pieces and heal myself, as well as trying to settle into a new area, make friends and find things that make me happy.

The last few weeks have been a lot happier but I am not under any false illusions that I’ve finished “doing the work” by any means. I know I still have a way to go, but I try my best to find pockets of happiness along the way.

By the way: Do you find it hard to be happy and in control of your life? It may not be your fault. To help you feel better, we’ve condensed the information of 100’s of articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet to help you be more in control.

Don’t Miss Out On Happiness

Find happiness with this 10-step mental health cheat sheet.

Download The Free Cheat Sheet

What is your struggle and when did it start?

My main struggle is anxiety, though in the last year or so I’ve started to resonate a lot with the symptoms of OCD. I don’t have an official diagnosis of either, but I have been in formal treatment for social anxiety before and in less ‘traditional’ treatment for anxiety and OCD, specifically ROCD (Relationship OCD). I have also seen various counselors at different difficult periods of my life.

With anxiety, my main symptoms are a fast-beating heart, that horrible ‘drop’ in your stomach, and tenseness, especially in my jaw and shoulders.

It’s hard to say when the anxiety started because I feel like I’ve struggled with it for as long as I can remember. It definitely got worse a year or two before the pandemic (I stopped socialising as much as I wanted to and I avoided trying new things because of a couple of less-than-ideal experiences I’d had) and this led to me seeking help around the start of lockdown number one.

Weirdly, I felt a lot better during the lockdowns but I know now that it was just because I had a good excuse to turn down invitations and be comfortable avoiding life by staying at home. That said, the CBT I had in 2020 really helped and I felt a lot better in some areas of my life (mainly work) for the best part of a year until OCD came onto the scene.

I find OCD symptoms more difficult to describe (I am still getting an understanding of this for myself, really) but my compulsions come under mental rather than physical things. So things like rumination, lots of reassurance seeking or ‘checking’, and ‘confessing’ my intrusive thoughts when I can’t cope with them – these things can of course happen to anyone in certain circumstances, but for me when my symptoms are bad it can become really debilitating and affects my day to day functioning.

My understanding of it is that it was triggered in a big way not long after me and my partner moved to Leeds (where we live now). I now recognise that this was a really big life change – it was something we’d talked about for a while (even before the pandemic) and it felt like, for me at least, where we were going to ‘settle down’ and have a family one day.

I’d never thought of myself as someone who struggled with commitment before so it took me a long time to recognise that it was this that had affected me so negatively and that actually it was a really big life change.

I found myself in a cycle where I would experience an intrusive thought (a doubt) that was latched onto my OCD ‘theme’ of relationships, I’d experience extreme physical symptoms of anxiety, bottle it up for a couple of days (I only got through it by distracting myself at work and then crying my eyes out on my lunch break or in the toilet, then coming back and pretending I was okay) before breaking down on my partner and ‘confessing’ my horrible thoughts.

OCD is the “doubt disorder”, so it was largely focused on doubting whether the relationship was right, or on whether I even loved my partner.

It was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced because none of it made sense at the time. I didn’t even know I was going through a mental health crisis – I genuinely just thought my relationship was about to end.

Once I came across the idea of ‘relationship anxiety’ and ROCD, I realised I wasn’t alone and that what I was experiencing had a way out.

But I won’t deny that at first, I thought it was a load of rubbish (hello more doubts!).

Through reading and consuming content about these topics, doing workshops and online courses (and a lot of work on myself along the way) I overcame the worst of the symptoms and now feel a lot more at peace with my decision to stay in the relationship.

I still have intrusive thoughts sometimes but I have a lot more tools to deal with them and get to the root of the issue before it consumes me now.

How did this struggle make you feel at your worst moments?

I can remember one day in particular in 2020 when I had been working myself up to have a potentially tricky conversation with my manager, but they hadn’t been in for a few days.

Every day that week I had been building myself up (“today’s the day!”) to then have it drag out longer and longer each time – it felt excruciating because I wanted it over and done with and I didn’t know how to cope with the discomfort and disappointment every time.

I remember walking home from work in the rain absolutely crying my eyes out. I was so unhappy and it all felt too much, and on top of this, I was beating myself up because, in my mind, the conversation wouldn’t have been a big deal to someone else but for me, it felt huge.

At the time, I wasn’t super close with my colleagues in that job so I tried my best to hide my anxiety. I opened up to one or two people, but at the worst time only my friends outside of work knew what I was going through, plus my partner. My family knows a bit of what I struggle with but I don’t tell them the full extent usually as I don’t want to worry them.

I still have odd days where I’m barely able to move and my partner has had to force me out of the house and he’ll walk me crying to a coffee shop or the local park. This is about as bad as it gets now, but it only lasts a day or so at most and there is usually a reason why I’ve got myself into this headspace and I have ways I know to get out.

Otherwise, the worst it gets is in moments when I am with new people and if I’m feeling more shy than confident. I will go into my head and clam up. I then start comparing myself and berating myself for not being ‘interesting’ or ‘good at conversations’.

I think a lot of my unhappiness comes from comparison to other people who I see as Not Anxious. I always think it’s really obvious to others when I’m struggling, but I’ve learned over the years that people aren’t mind readers, which can be both a good and a bad thing! It’s good that people I’m getting to know don’t see my nerves, but it means I have to communicate more clearly to my partner when I’m struggling because he doesn’t always pick up on it (even when I feel it’s obvious).

For my OCD, it is another story:

At my worst moments, I felt completely and utterly hopeless, like life as I knew it was as good as over. I felt a huge amount of guilt for the intrusive thoughts I was having, and it massively impacted the happiness of my relationship.

My partner, family, and close friends knew things were bad, but they didn’t know it was OCD (I didn’t know either at that point). Now that I know more about what I was going through, I have tried to explain it to a couple of my closest friends and to my partner, and my younger brother.

But I find it so difficult to articulate – OCD is really misunderstood and I am still coming to my own understanding of it, so to explain it to other people is tricky – this interview is the most detailed and clear I’ve ever articulated it before.

Share your story: Help thousands of people around the world by sharing your own story. We would love to publish your interview and have a positive impact on the world together. Learn more here.

Was there a moment when you started to turn things around?

For my anxiety, it’s been more of a slow process than a sudden change of any kind, but when I look back I can see big improvements.

Attending Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for social anxiety was a big part of this. My therapist helped me to see that my expectations or evaluations of things were not accurate and that I could do hard things even when I felt uncomfortable doing them.

Taking the example of having difficult conversations at work, I would say maybe 35% of the improvement was my circumstances changing (I have an incredible manager now and feel much more able to bring things up to her than any previous managers I’ve had in other jobs) but 65% is due to my actions. I worked hard to realise that my needs are worthy of bringing up. It’s taken me most of my life to find things that help my anxiety and I’m still very much in that process now.

For my OCD, things changed a bit for the better when we started going to couples counseling. I had some really difficult conversations with my partner and he stuck around, which reassured me that he was worth sticking around for, too. But what made the biggest change was discovering that ROCD was a thing and finding ways to treat that.

I came across somatic healing work, movement therapy, and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) therapy. I would say that 95% of the improvement in my mental health came from my own actions (taking courses, workshops, and implementing these into my life) and 5% came from the efforts my partner put into improving the relationship.

It’s important to mention here that the presence of ROCD didn’t mean there weren’t also some issues we needed to work on, but the ROCD made it feel 100x worse than it was in reality.

I struggled with OCD pretty severely for about 4 or 5 months before I came across ways to get better, and I’ve been continuing to work on myself for a year and counting. I can now see that I have maybe experienced OCD from being young (the earliest I can pinpoint is from about 9/10 years old), but with less intensity, so in some ways, it’s taken me years to get to this point.

What steps did you take to overcome your struggle?

CBT, mindfulness (I mostly use the Headspace app), movement (specifically yoga, but any movement is good if you enjoy it), and fresh air are all things that help my anxiety.

CBT helped me to see that my overthinking mind was not accurate. My therapist would have me predict what I was worried about happening in a particular scenario and rate how likely it was that each thing would happen and how I would feel as a result of these things happening.

So in a difficult conversation with my manager, I would predict things like “they will be angry at me”, “they will treat me poorly afterward”, and “I will cry” or “I will be visibly sweaty” and I would rate these as percentages of likeliness that it would happen.

Every time, without fail, my predictions either didn’t come true at all or if they did, my predictions about how it would feel or the extent of these ‘bad experiences’ were so much lower than I had first thought. Through ‘experiments’ of this kind, she helped me to build up what she called a ‘mental filing cabinet’ of evidence for the fact that I was capable of doing hard things and evidence that what I thought would happen didn’t ever happen as badly as I thought it would.

Somatic healing work, movement therapy, and ERP therapy helped me with my OCD. Also, consuming content that actively challenges my thinking about love and relationships has really helped.

Somatic work and movement therapy is all about using the body to heal the mind. It assumes that we cannot solve a thinking problem with more thinking. There is also an argument that anxiety and OCD are not thinking problems anyway, but feeling problems – it’s the uncomfortable physical sensations and emotions that are so horrible to experience, not the thoughts alone/in a different context.

It deals with nervous system regulation and I have learned a lot of body-based tools to make things much more tolerable when anxiety hits after an intrusive thought (e.g. breathing exercises, tapping).

It also works by addressing the root causes of anxiety/doubt and is very much trauma-informed – it doesn’t assume that our anxiety is actually about the topics we are excessively thinking about, there is usually much more to it. It’s impossible for me to go over everything I’ve learned in a couple of paragraphs, but I honestly think this work has been life-changing and should become more mainstream and used for all kinds of anxiety-related disorders.

Have you shared any of this with people around you in real life?

I generally think I’m quite open about my mental health – my manager knows bits and I have no qualms with taking a mental health day off work if I need to. I am okay with dropping the odd thing into conversation with colleagues or people I don’t know that well, but I wouldn’t go into much detail about how badly I struggled with all of these people unless they asked me directly.

My family knows I have struggled but they don’t know the full extent – I don’t want to worry them and I’m not sure they would understand the OCD side of things. I have mentioned OCD briefly to my younger brother and to my sister-in-law because they also struggle with their mental health so these topics come up fairly easily for us, but I am hesitant to share more because I don’t have a diagnosis and I don’t want them to think I have just self-diagnosed something willy-nilly.

My partner and my best friends know more, but as I’ve said previously, I find it all quite hard to describe sometimes. I think they still see my last year as a ‘rough patch’ in the relationship rather than a full-blown mental health crisis with OCD (I would argue it was 80% OCD and 20% rough patch).

If you could give a single piece of advice to someone else that struggles, what would that be?

Find people that are either going through what you are going through or have come out on the other side. Knowing you’re not alone in this means so much and helps to normalise your experience.

Know as well that there is no shame in needing support.

For me, this meant:

1. Understanding that other people are nervous about talking to me just like I’m nervous about talking to them.
2. Everyone else is worried about their own things and will barely take notice of you saying something ‘weird’.
3. If you’ve had a particular set of scary thoughts, there are almost certainly other people who have experienced them too (yes, even that one!).
4. Other long-term couples I look up to have gone through rough patches too – in fact most couples will at some point and that doesn’t mean you’re in the wrong relationship.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, YouTube channels, or other resources for you?

• The Anxious Love Coach podcast: This was the first time I heard someone talk about their experience of relationship anxiety and I felt so seen. Natalie Kennedy (@anxiouslovecoach on Instagram) has helped me see love and relationships in a whole new way, as well as in other areas of life. I don’t agree with everything she says, but a lot of her content has been really helpful.
• Healing Embodied: I mainly follow their Instagram content (@healing.embodied) but I’ve done a couple of their courses (Get Outta Your Mind and Safety Within), masterclasses, and workshops and they now have a podcast too. This is the bulk of where I’ve learned about movement therapy, somatic work, and nervous system regulation.
• Esther Perel’s work: I’m yet to read her books (they are on the wishlist) but every time I hear her speak or read one of her blogs she expands my mind. She has a podcast ‘Where Should We Begin?’ and has done TED Talks as well as having her own Youtube channel. Her work has helped me to realise that relationships take work and that some of my previous beliefs about love and relationships were flawed (and were contributing to my ROCD).
• Russell Kennedy, MD (@theanxietymd on Instagram): He talks a lot about healing anxiety through working with our ‘inner child’ and with our bodies – it felt very woo-woo to me at first, but actually makes a lot of sense.
• NOCD (https://www.treatmyocd.com/): I haven’t worked with this organisation, but they have a great app that connects you to others with OCD for support. They also have really good content on their Instagram (@treatmyocd) that helped me to understand what OCD actually is and they’re good at clamping down on myths or misinformation about OCD.

By the way: If you want to start feeling better and more productive, I’ve condensed the information of 100’s of our articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet here.

This Cheat Sheet Will Help You Be Happier and More Productive

Thrive under stress and crush your goals with these 10 unique tips for your mental health.

Download The Free Cheat Sheet

Want more interviews?

Continue reading our inspiring case studies and learn how to overcome mental health struggles in a positive way!

Want to help others with your story? We would love to publish your interview and have a positive impact on the world together. Learn more here.

Hugo Huijer Author

Founder of Tracking Happiness, with over 100 interviews and a focus on practical advice, our content extends beyond happiness tracking. Hailing from the Netherlands, I’m a skateboarding enthusiast, marathon runner, and a dedicated data junkie, tracking my happiness for over a decade.

The post Dealing With Relationship OCD and Anxiety: an Interview With Anna appeared first on Tracking Happiness.

Contents

• Who are you?
• What is your struggle?
• How did you feel at your worst moment
• When did you turn it around?
• What steps did you take to overcome your struggle?
• Who did you share your struggle with?
• Your best piece of advice?
• Books and resources
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Hello! Who are you?

I’m Erik DaRosa, Founder and CEO of From Survivor to Thriver, a mental health speaker and advocate, and co-host of the popular mental health podcast From Survivor to Thriver. I was born and raised in Somerset, Massachusetts, a small coastal town located about 45 minutes south of Boston. 

In October 2011 I moved to Snowmass Village, Colorado with my wife, Amy, and two cats, Lincoln and Taylor. After almost two decades of living in New York City, which included the tragic day of 9/11, we both recognized we needed a change of scenery for both our mental and physical well-being. So, I traded in my 18-year career as a finance executive and haven’t looked back since. 

These days I can truly say I am living in joy having found my passion for helping others as a mental health speaker and podcaster. 

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What is your struggle and when did it start?

I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in December of 2021, however, the signs and symptoms were kept well hidden from the world for decades. In fact, I spent the first 33 years of my life living in silence about my struggles, without a voice, afraid to remove the mask behind which I had been hiding since the age of 7. 

Years of crippling anxiety had left me feeling both unsafe and insecure, overwhelmed and exhausted from my daily battles with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

The intrusive thoughts that were with me during most of my waking hours combined with the countless rituals that I performed to keep me “safe” from these boogeymen left me little time to be the kid and young adult that I thought everyone else was. I thought I was different, I thought I was broken, I thought I was the only one. If I had only known the truth back then.

How did this struggle make you feel at your worst moments?

Through it all, I hid my daily battles really, really well. For a very long time! I wasn’t “ok”, I wasn’t “good”, I wasn’t “fine”. I was struggling. Sometimes a little and other times a whole lot, but I was always struggling. Struggling in silence.

I never let anyone know. If I’m being truly honest, I never thought I’d be willing to share my personal journey so openly with my own family, let alone in any public forum such as this.

As I look back now, it didn’t have to be that way for me. And it certainly doesn’t have to be that way for anyone else!

At its lowest points, I often felt so alone that I could never imagine living a day without anxiety/OCD.

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Was there a moment when you started to turn things around?

When I was 33 and in the throes of my first dissociative episode, I finally went to a therapist at the urging of my wife and, for the very first time, started unraveling all of these complicated things because I couldn’t take it anymore and I wanted to live a better life. And now I am.

The defining moment came in December 2021 when I was diagnosed with PTSD, a diagnosis that would forever change my life for the better. I now had a thing…something which I could identify…no longer just treat the symptoms but finally dig down to the root cause.

What steps did you take to overcome your struggle?

I’ve been and continue to be in therapy, and on medication, and I’ve added a mindfulness routine and reiki to keep me grounded and living in the present moment. It has been a lot of hard work, but, like most hard things, it has been worth it. 

Discovering the sport of skiing, on the afternoon of March 27th, 2005, was a day that would change my life forever. In fact, that afternoon would create a life-changing transformation so great it would alter my career path for the decade to come.

A couple of months earlier, I had been in my therapist’s office in NYC, when, during one of our conversations, he softly suggested that I give skiing a try. Stubborn and defiant, as I often was back in those days, I blurted out “But I hate skiing,” a comment that makes me laugh to this day.

The truth is, I had fallen in love with a sport so foreign to me that I never once thought that it would become such a great source of healing and connection. In fact, Stratton Mountain, a well-known ski resort in Vermont and its ski run Upper Wanderer are where I truly began to heal from the severe anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder that had ruled my life since early childhood.

On that sunny and warm March Sunday afternoon, after a rather unsuccessful group lesson the morning before, a “collision” with a condo later that day, and a slightly more productive private lesson Sunday morning, I boarded the gondola with my wife, a life-long skier, and tackled my first top to bottom green run. What began on a lark would years later culminate in a successful career as a ski instructor here in Snowmass Village, CO.

Have you shared any of this with people around you in real life?

Yes, yes, yes. When it comes to my own mental health journey, I have opened the door wide for all to see. There are no longer any secrets or hiding behind masks when it comes to my day-to-day journey.

In fact, It is the reason I started my own podcast From Survivor to Thriver. For a very long time, I wasn’t ok but close-ended questions allowed me to hide my reality from the outside world. These days I happily speak on my own journey with overcoming anxiety and OCD, the importance of asking open-ended questions, how vulnerability is actually a superpower, and why we must meet ourselves where we’re at.

If you could give a single piece of advice to someone else that struggles, what would that be?

Talk about your struggles with someone else. Stigma says we shouldn’t talk openly about mental health. I say, we should! Stigma also says we shouldn’t stand high upon the mountaintop, vulnerable and transparent, for the entire world to see. I say, we must! We need to have these conversations about difficult topics!! We need to shatter these stigmas!!

Even just talking about hard things and bringing up uncomfortable topics can put us on the path to overcoming difficult things. We need to remind each other that we can do hard things!

Together, let’s work to break the stigma around mental health conversations and remind one another that it’s perfectly okay to not always be okay. And remind each other it’s perfectly okay to tell someone when you’re not feeling okay. Check in on your happy friends as they are often the ones who need it most. Just asking “How are you doing?” and taking time to listen to the answer can be extremely helpful.

Remember, you’re not alone in your journeys. We’re all in this together. There is hope, there is help and there is a way through. We all deserve to experience as much joy in our lives as is humanly possible. 

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, YouTube channels, or other resources for you?

I am an avid reader and these three books, dog-eared and marked-up with my own reflective musings, have redefined how I both think and act as a person:

• Be Water My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee by Shannon Lee: I was introduced to this book about 18 months ago when I had once again hit a low point in my mental health journey. As the book says, “We are not meant to be perfect, rather, be interested in your own process of growth.”
• Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek: Looking back on my career journey, I now realize that I had been singularly focused on the “what”. After reading this book, I finally discovered my “why” and realized that affecting real change in the mental health space was my true passion.
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson: This book was recommended to me shortly after I had failed, for the second time, my Level 3 ski certification exam. Reading this book taught me about setting boundaries and the importance of saying no well before I had begun that type of deep work with my therapist.

Where can we go to learn more about you?

You can find new episodes of the From Survivor to Thriver podcast every Tuesday morning. You can follow me here on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook. You can also email me directly.

By the way: If you want to start feeling better and more productive, I’ve condensed the information of 100’s of our articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet here.

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Hugo Huijer Author

Founder of Tracking Happiness, with over 100 interviews and a focus on practical advice, our content extends beyond happiness tracking. Hailing from the Netherlands, I’m a skateboarding enthusiast, marathon runner, and a dedicated data junkie, tracking my happiness for over a decade.

The post How Therapy Introduced Me To Skiing and Is Helping Me Overcome PTSD & OCD appeared first on Tracking Happiness.