Kelly Fallon

It was the only thing that ever made sense to me. I knew I wanted to study psychology, and when I got some experience, I just knew I was supposed to be a therapist. I find mental health so interesting. I love learning about people, understanding our differences, and utilizing all the tools we have to help people.

I have OCD and had experiences with ineffective treatment. After going through that, then learning about ERP and seeing what a huge difference it made, I wanted to specialize in it. I have a really deep understanding of OCD that a lot of people don't, because of my lived experience. Most of my OCD symptoms were in the 'Pure O' realm. I had a lot of intrusive thoughts and mental compulsions. They were going on in my head 24/7. I was always a high-functioning person, so I always had this nightmare going on in my head while I was pretending to function normally and hiding it from everyone. That was extremely distressing, all the time. Thankfully, ERP was effective for me. There's just no way to manage OCD long term without accepting the thoughts and deciding that you're just going to live your life anyway. And that's a lot of what ERP teaches. It teaches you that you can tolerate distress. Life has distress in it, whether you have OCD or not, and it's so important to know that that is something that you can manage. It's not something we need to run away from.

I also specialize in the realm of anxiety disorders. There's a lot of overlap between OCD and those struggles. Many people who have OCD also qualify for another anxiety-related diagnosis. I think it's useful to teach people that anxiety can have different manifestations over time, and if they're able to learn the core set of skills we teach with ERP, those same skills can be applied whenever anxiety starts to pop up, whether it's social anxiety, panic disorder, generalized anxiety, or phobias. I also like working with young adults on self-esteem. That's near and dear to me because anxiety disorders and OCD can really take a toll on self-esteem. Shame and guilt are central to so many people with OCD; you're struggling with them all the time. Today, young adults have to deal with social media—all those comparisons!—which can feed into their self-esteem. I like helping people navigate that and learn to use things like social media in healthier, more constructive ways.

It's hard. It's a lot of hard work. But it's so worth it, to get your life back. I take a non-judgmental, compassionate approach. It's important to create a safe place for you to be able to talk about these things. But at the same time, I will be firm and push you when necessary. ERP requires hard work to get better.

Do it anyway. Take the risk. With OCD, we can rationalize all of the different reasons why it may or may not be a good idea to do that. But at the end of the day, you kind of have to decide, 'All right, I know this person has experience. I know she understands OCD, and I just have to take the risk and share these thoughts anyway.'