Harm OCD: Tips & Resources to Help Move You Past Intrusive Thought OCD
Debra Kissen, Ph.D, M.H.S.A
Ashley Kendall, Ph.D
Michelle Lozano, AMFT
Download Harm OCD eBook (Sections 1-24)
Section 1: Introduction
Why we wrote an eBook
The origin of this workbook was a Huffington Post blog on Harm OCD. Dr. Debra Kissen, founder of Light On Anxiety CBT Treatment Center (Chicago, IL) wrote this after a session with one of her wonderful patients who she was treating for harm OCD.
While walking to grab lunch, Dr. Kissen was thinking how lovely her patient is and how she is such a pleasure to work with. From here, she started thinking about all of her other Harm OCD patients and started noticing a trend. They were all caring, conscientious, kind, and valued their relationships with loved ones above anything else in life. From this line of thinking Dr. Kissen wrote a brief blog on Harm OCD. The key message of the blog was to highlight how harm OCD goes after what you care most about and how, of the hundreds and hundreds of individuals who we have treated for harm OCD, we have yet to meet someone struggling with harm OCD who we would distrust as a babysitter or teacher or health provider (and we can be quite picky on this front… we only want kind, compassionate, conscientious care givers in our life).
Shortly after posting this blog, Dr. Kissen began receiving messages from readers all over the world, stating how appreciative they were to have finally found information that shined light on their silent suffering. After so many messages came in stating some version of “Thank you so much. You may very well have saved my life.” Dr. Kissen, Dr. Ashley Kendall and another therapist at their practice, Michelle Lozano, decided there was too much unnecessary suffering experienced by those struggling with harm OCD symptoms and that the time seemed right to offer all of the tools and tips that they currently offer patients experiencing harm OCD in an eBook format, so this information can be accessed by a broader audience. Next: Section 2.
