There is a simple human truth that shows up again and again in this work:

You cannot fully untangle yourself from the inside.

Many people come to therapy saying something like this: “I don’t know if I believe anymore, but I also can’t let go.”

They aren’t rejecting faith. They’re reacting to pain.

I see this moment almost every week in my office.

A client is doing well by most measures. Smart, capable, thoughtful, successful. They sit down and start telling me about their week. At first it sounds organized, even insightful. And then something subtle shifts.

Their words speed up. Their breathing tightens. Their shoulders lift just a bit. Not because they are overwhelmed but because their mind has already jumped ahead. They are no longer here in the room. They are managing, anticipating, fixing.

What Therapy Taught Me About Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Exposure Response Prevention (ERP Therapy), and Relational Work 

I did not walk into therapy feeling ready.

I walked in tense, unsure, and already questioning the decision. My mind was busy evaluating everything. The therapist. The setting. Whether this would help or make things worse. I was trying to decide if it was safe to stay before anything had even started.

I sat in the waiting room rehearsing conversations that had not happened yet. In a word: I was totally SPOOKED!

They didn’t come in saying sexual trauma.

They came in saying, “Something feels off between us.”

The marriage looked solid from the outside. Shared values. Shared history. A real desire to make it work. But intimacy had slowly waned and conflict seemed unavoidable.

Closeness felt impossible.

But the couple could not explain why.

Most people don’t struggle with time because they’re lazy or disorganized. They struggle because they’re trying to live meaningful lives inside calendars that are run by urgency, noise, and other people’s expectations.

Time management, at its core, is not about squeezing more into your day. It’s about protecting what actually matters.

Or as Stephen Covey put it: “Keep the main thing the main thing.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from years of sitting with couples, it’s this: Most people aren’t struggling because they’re broken. They’re struggling because they’re human.

Most people do not come to personalized therapy because their life has collapsed. They come because something inside no longer feels safe, even if everything on the outside still looks fine.

Most people think OCD is about rituals or perfectionism. In reality, OCD is about fear and uncertainty — and the desperate attempts the mind makes to escape those feelings.