An Interview with :: Dr. Kristen Zaleski, PhD, LCSW :: Chief Clinical Officer

Dr. Zaleski, What are the strengths of The OCD Clinic at The Neurodivergent Collective?

We have really intentionally been building our OCD therapy toolbox. Our OCD program is 10 to 12 hours of group work, another three to eight hours of individual, and if they’re in the exposure track, exposure work, and then their families are doing about three hours a week if they take everything we offer in individual and group work.

ERP + ACT at The OCD Clinic

But I have, again, been surprised of how there is a connection overlap with neurodivergent affirming work and obsessive compulsive disorder. What we know about OCD is it can be really responsive to a therapy called Exposure and Response Prevention, ERP. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, ACT is also an evidence-based way to treat OCD, but oftentimes when you look around a treatment, that’s where it ends. And what we have found in our neurodivergent program is exposure sometimes is too much for the sensory system.

Inferential-Based CBT at The OCD Clinic

We’ve been looking around at more emerging practice-based interventions and one of those that we’ve found really helpful is Inferential-Based CBT, I-CBT. That is a form of OCD treatment that does not have the behavioral exposure lens. The clients that don’t do well in exposures tend to do really well looking at OCD as an inferential dynamic and understanding how their brains and bodies work with these inferences around OCD.

EMDR, Somatic Programming, + Narrative Psychology at The OCD Clinic

In addition to having one of those two choices of the exposure lens or the inferential lens, we have a coming together of other modalities that we know are helpful, such as EMDR for phobias and obsessive thoughts. We have a somatic program around OCD. We have a narrative psychology lens of OCD. How does the story you’ve created actually impact your mental health and your obsessions, and how do we recreate, restory that for you?

Family Psychoeducation at The OCD Clinic

We have their family members and loved ones in family therapy around accommodation and over accommodation. As well as, a separate family group on coping and understanding and psychoeducation of what their loved one’s going through. So we are trying to heal not just our individual clients from their obsessive thoughts and their compulsions, but we’re also trying to help their family members and loved ones so that when the client returns home, that they continue to have that support even when our team’s not there. I think we are healing in really meaningful and unique ways. That’s really exciting for us.