This is Your Anxiety Toolkit, episode number 42.

Welcome to Your Anxiety Toolkit. I'm your host, Kimberly Quinlan. This podcast is fueled by three

main goals. The first goal is to provide you with some extra tools to help you

manage your anxiety. Second goal, to inspire you. Anxiety doesn't get to decide how you live your life.

And number three, and I leave the best for last, is to provide you with one big, fat virtual hug,

because experiencing anxiety ain't easy. If that sounds good to you,

let's go. Well, welcome back. I am so pleased to spend some time with you again this week.

We are having torrential rains here in Southern California.

So if you hear that in the background, that's what's going on.

And it is beautiful.

It's such a rare experience for us in Southern California to be getting so much rain.

But enough about the weather.

Let's talk about this amazing episode with one of my very

dear friends, John Hirschfeld. Now, I'm sure most of you know about John. He is an author of

some amazing books for OCD. He's an incredible advocate and support for many people who have anxiety.

I was lucky enough to be trained alongside of John. Well, technically, I would actually say he

trained me to some degree because when I was a new intern, learning all things anxiety, he was much further along the way than

I, and I got to witness him in doing his work. And I feel like that has really helped craft or

mold me and the therapy I do and the work that I do. So I'm just so grateful for him and he's been such a wonderful friend to me over the years.

So that being said, today I was so excited to interview him.

And when I was planning for this podcast, I was thinking about the fact that I had received

multiple different emails in this one week, all telling me about the advice their previous

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