You're listening to The O. C.D. Stories,

hosted by me, Stuart Ralph.

The O. C. D. Stories is a podcast dedicated to raising awareness and

understanding around obsessive compulsive symptoms.

I do this for interviewing inspired therapists,

psychologists and people who have experienced OCD. Welcome to the OCD stories.

So welcome to episode 273 and in this episode I interview Dr Michael Toohig. Michael is the co-director of the Utah State University Act research group, a licensed psychologist

in the state of Utah and a professor of psychology at Utah State University.

So I've wanted to get Michael on since 2016 when I was doing my first master's dissertation where

I was looking at Act specifically for OCD and I was looking at Act, specifically for OCD and I was doing a systematic review of the studies that had been done.

So around that time I got to see a lot of the work Michael had been doing over the years,

specifically looking at how Act could be used to treat Ocili.

So in this episode I chat with Michael about his research and acceptance commitment therapy or Act story,

his experience of training under Dr Stephen Hayes,

what is Act, why he studied Act initially

as a sole intervention for OCD and what he found.

He breaks down the eight session act protocol he used in his research.

We talk about psychological flexibility and why it's important. We discuss cognitive diffusion and integrating act with exposure and response prevention therapy.

We talk about how bringing in values into therapy can be helpful, some of the metaphors he likes for OCD and so much more.

Really enjoy this conversation and I like the way Michael explained Act in relation to OCD,

I think it's going to be useful to many of you. And thanks as always to

N. C. D. for supporting the show and the work that we do. And O. C. D. are now

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