Robert Williamson

I received counseling when I was very young. I believe that helped change the course of my life in a way that allowed me to become the person I wanted to be. I wanted to try and be that person for someone else.

I was diagnosed with OCD. I engaged in rumination—thinking about worries for hours on end—and counting. I experienced the pain of OCD, and I experienced the relief of a diagnosis. Knowing that other people experience something like what I went through made me want to specialize. And it's very rewarding, as a therapist, to see people consistently make progress. OCD is very receptive to ERP therapy.

I have extensive experience working with anger and grief. In general, mood regulation is something I'm very good at working with. Mood regulation is something that I think a lot of people struggle with, even people who don't have a diagnosis. It's a core skill that can feel almost impossible to build up when you're on your own. But when you're given the tools for it, it's pretty responsive—just like OCD. In addition to working with people with OCD, I also specialize in grief and family work gaining experience at a children's bereavement center. I’ve done mental health crisis assessments, and worked at Jewish family services focused on underprivileged families. In terms of grief, I've experienced a lot of loss in my life. I noticed that, at least where I am in Texas, there's a real lack of male counselors in that specialty. People have different gender preferences for the counselors they want to work with, and I thought it was important to fill that gap. I've worked with all different age groups. I'm comfortable working with youth as well.

ERP is highly effective, highly reliable. It doesn't just work well for some people—it works very well for a great many people. And this is not just numbers on paper to me. I've been through it, and I've seen members go through it over and over. If you show up and do the work, you will almost certainly see progress. Some people may see a small rise in anxiety in the first few weeks. This is common. You shouldn't interpret it as 'this is the wrong treatment for me,' or 'this is making it worse.' It is just part of the process.

Maybe we can start with whatever you are comfortable sharing. If you have intrusive thoughts about self-harm that you're not ready to share, but you have some intrusive thoughts about contamination that you are ready to share, let's start with those. And then, when you see how that plays out, you'll probably feel more ready to share the other thoughts. I try to be very transparent with people and let them know as much as I can—and as much as they want to know—about the processes involved in OCD perpetuating itself. I believe that the more you know about it, the easier it is to motivate yourself to break that cycle. It's like if you're peering into a murky pond: if you don't really know what's going on in there, it feels scary. But if you can see almost everything that’s happening, it's a lot easier to find the motivation to do the scary things.