OCD Therapy for Adolescents, Teens & Young Adults in Connecticut
Specialized virtual OCD therapy for individuals throughout Connecticut.
“You don’t need to figure out every ‘what if.’ You’re capable of living a really good life without knowing for sure.”
— Kendra Dascano, LPC-A
Your brain throws out a thought you never asked for and suddenly, you need to know what it means.
“What if I hurt someone?” “What if I made the wrong choice?” “What if this feeling means something?”
You just want that awful feeling to go away. So you Google until you find an answer that makes you feel better. Replay the conversation to make sure you didn’t say something wrong. Ask someone, “But you really don’t think I would do that, right?” Avoid the person, place, or situation that brought the thought up in the first place.
And for a little while, you feel better. The anxiety comes down and you breathe a little easier. Then another “what if?” shows up, and you’re right back where you started.
It’s exhausting to feel like every uncomfortable thought needs an answer and every doubt needs to be settled before you can finally relax. You’ve spent so much time trying to make the anxiety go away. But somehow, your world just keeps getting smaller.
You stop going places because you don’t trust what might happen when you get there. You avoid things and people you actually care about because of the thoughts they might trigger. Decisions that used to take five minutes can take hours. You’re physically with the people you love, but half of your attention is somewhere inside your head trying to figure something out.
Somewhere along the way, the things you do to feel better in the moment started getting in the way of the life you actually want to live.
The “what ifs” have taken up enough space. Therapy can help you start taking some of it back.
Let’s start with the bad news: you’re never going to be 100% certain.
The good news? You don’t need to know for sure to feel okay, trust yourself, and actually enjoy your life.
Imagine making a decision without spending hours wondering if it was the right one. Going somewhere because you want to, even when your brain gives you a dozen reasons not to. Being with someone you love without analyzing what you’re thinking or feeling. Leaving something unchecked, unanswered, or not quite right. Having a disturbing thought without needing to figure out what it says about you.
OCD has a way of convincing you that if you could just figure out what that thought means about you, check one more time to make sure nothing bad happened, replay the conversation to make sure you didn’t say something wrong, or hear someone tell you that everything is okay, you’d finally be able to relax.
The shift happens when we stop trying to win the argument with OCD and start learning that you can handle not knowing.
There will always be things you can’t know for sure. You can make room for uncertainty without making your life smaller around it. The thoughts may still show up, but you get to decide what deserves your attention.
Uncertainty doesn’t get to call the shots.
This is where the real magic starts.
Imagine feeling uncertain without immediately checking, Googling, confessing, avoiding, replaying, or asking someone, “Are you sure?”
You can start trusting yourself to handle uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, even when your brain is begging you for certainty.
As we change your relationship with your intrusive thoughts, YOU get to decide what you do next, not the other way around.
Before you know it, you might be going to the places you’ve avoided, making decisions without needing everyone else to weigh in, and staying present with the people you love even when an uncomfortable thought tags along; and realizing you’re actually pretty damn capable of living with the “what if.”
I can help you get there.
Meet the therapist who gets it.
I’m here to support you, challenge you, laugh with you, and help you build a life where OCD doesn’t get to make all the rules.
Listen: I know how quickly one tiny “what if?” can turn into an entire investigation. One thought becomes ten questions, three Google searches, a text asking for reassurance, and somehow you’re still not any more certain than when you started.
Together, we’ll start noticing the patterns that keep OCD going and practice responding differently, even when OCD is begging you to engage. We’ll work on tolerating uncertainty, trusting yourself, and making choices based on what matters to you rather than what makes the anxiety go away fastest.
Therapy can involve doing uncomfortable things on purpose; but it can also involve laughing at how wildly creative your brain can be, celebrating the things you did even though OCD told you not to, and realizing you’re capable of handling a lot more uncertainty than you thought.
And no, the goal isn’t to make sure you never have another weird, uncomfortable, or downright disturbing thought again. Brains are weird and thoughts are weird. That’s part of being human. It’s to help you build enough trust in yourself that you don’t need certainty before you live your life.
You bring the “what ifs.” I’ll help you learn how to stop letting them run the show.
OCD Themes & Concerns I Work With
OCD rarely fits neatly into one theme, and the content of obsessions can shift, overlap, or latch onto the things that matter most to you. You may also be navigating perfectionism, low self-esteem, eating or body image concerns, anxiety, depression, or difficult past experiences alongside OCD.
Using Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) alongside other individualized approaches, we’ll work toward changing your relationship with uncertainty, reducing the hold compulsions have on your life, and helping you make choices based on what matters to you rather than what OCD demands.
Contamination OCD
Harm OCD
Relationship OCD (ROCD)
Sexual Orientation OCD (SO-OCD)
Religious and moral OCD (Scrupulosity)
“Just Right” OCD
Responsibility OCD
Existential OCD
Health-related OCD
Somatic or Sensorimotor OCD
Real Event OCD
False Memory OCD
Sexual intrusive thoughts
Pedophilia-themed OCD (P-OCD)
Intrusive thoughts, images, sensations, and urges
Checking, reassurance seeking, confessing, reviewing, and other compulsions
Mental compulsions, rumination, and avoidance
Intolerance of uncertainty and the need to “know for sure
A Sneak Peek at What We’ll Explore
Intrusive thoughts are not the same thing as intentions, desires, or facts. We’ll practice noticing thoughts for what they are without needing to analyze, prove, disprove, or make sense of every single one.
Through ERP, we’ll gradually practice facing fears and uncertainty while resisting the compulsions that promise relief but keep the cycle going. Over time, you’ll build confidence in your ability to handle discomfort
OCD loves to convince you that this time really is different. We’ll learn to recognize the OCD cycle and catch the sneaky ways checking, Googling, confessing, avoiding, replaying, and reassurance-seeking keep you stuck.
OCD has probably gotten pretty good at deciding what you can and can’t do. We’ll work on taking that power back and making choices based on your values; not whichever option makes you feel safest in the moment.
You don’t actually need 100% certainty to be okay. We’ll practice making room for the “maybe,” the “what if,” and the “I don’t know;” without immediately trying to make the discomfort disappear.
