The Intern Journey

By: Dyan, Graduate Intern 

​Being halfway through my second month at Cornerstone and writing this blog-post; gave me an opportunity to reflect on some of the writing I did as part of my application process. The subject matter came out of videos and interviews of people who are actively engaged in the ERP lifestyle and those that are in early treatment. Now, my perspective on OCD continues to be on how challenging treatment is the daily work that goes into recovery. 

Every session and supervision session I participate in is a reminder of how much work goes into recovery for clients. And there are a couple of fundamentals that I keep coming back to as a reminder. An important foundational piece for my understanding is the difference between trauma anxiety and intrusive thoughts and OCD intrusive thoughts. Trauma intrusive thoughts are those of experiencing or witnessing, things seen or done (I think of it as thoughts from the outside). With OCD, the thoughts come from the inside, without an experiential component. Metaphorically, from out of nowhere with little or no warning. 

Living with uncertainty is something we all do; life is a series of probabilities. There is an X percent chance that a plane will crash, a Y percent chance that a road trip will end abruptly because of an accident. But we still take a plane to Europe or Asia for vacation and the car to the theatre. We do not calculate probability; we just do it consciously or unconsciously, accepting the degree of uncertainty or ignoring it completely.  OCD is the quest for the grail of certainty that can never be found. For the client, the grail is the acceptance of uncertainty.

Being witness to Exposure/Response Therapy is humbling. To be with a person or group that intentionally situates themselves in a position of anxiety, a degree to which they agree beforehand for a specific amount of time is inspiring. And in the words of a therapist from one of the videos “…it’s almost unbearable to watch.” Fortunately for me, I also get to see the results over time when clients are living the “ERP Lifestyle” and how it is worth the time, energy, and struggle for the result. It is a privilege to be part of the quest.