Does this sound familiar? If you live with anxiety or OCD, you probably know that feeling of needing someone to tell you everything’s okay. You ask, they answer, you feel a little calmer… and then, a few moments later, the doubt washes back up.

The difference between reassurance, validation, and understanding it can be a real game-changer for managing anxiety episodes and symptoms of OCD.

Many clients with symptoms of OCD come to therapy thinking they need validation or only work on reframing thoughts, but what they’re really doing is seeking reassurance which brings them in another OCD spiral.

While reassurance can feel comforting in the moment, it often keeps us stuck in the anxiety loop, reinforcing anxious thoughts over time.

Validation vs. Reassurance: what’s the difference?

Validation

• Your feelings are seen and understood.

• Example: “Yeah, that makes sense. I get why this is scary.”

• Important: Validation doesn’t mean you have to do what your anxiety or trauma urges you to do.

Reassurance Seeking

• One of the big five behaviours that keep anxiety stuck:

• Avoidance

• Reassurance seeking

• Distraction

• Substance use

• Compulsions

• These behaviours give short-term relief, but in the long run, they strengthen anxiety and reinforce OCD patterns.

Satisfy OCD or walk away?

When OCD symptoms hit, you have a choice: feed the compulsions… or step away.

Walking away is a practice from Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) which is a highly effective OCD treatment. ERP helps you face anxiety without giving in to compulsions, allowing your nervous system to gradually learn that fear isn’t permanent.

Habituation: learning to let fear pass

Resisting compulsions helps your brain and body learn that fear is temporary. Think of it like watching a scary movie scene over and over. It gets less intense with time. Anxiety and OCD works the same way.

Quick experiment: stare at your ceiling for 10 seconds and wish it would fall on you. It won’t. Thoughts don’t make things happen — even when OCD tells you they might.

Ways to walk away from OCD compulsions:

• Pause before acting: First step is awareness by calling out OCD and Anxiety. Take a moment to slow down.

• Practice duality and be gentle: “I notice the urge to do familiar compulsion. It’s okay to do this hard thing and feel anxious while doing it.”

• It’s all about Exposure and Response: Gradually face triggers or fears without performing your usual compulsion. Start small and work your way up. Please work with a trained therapist on ERP (Exposure Response Prevention) as an approach before trying it on your own.

• Stay present whenever you can: Practice mindfulness and grounding by observing intrusive thoughts without judgment.

• Engage with intention: Focus on meaningful activities — not to escape anxiety, but to reconnect with life and the present moment.

• Remember it’s about practice. Just because you succeeded once doesn’t mean it will go away forever. Seeing yourself doing the compulsion again is part of healing.

Tip: Need a therapist who understands anxiety and OCD and can guide you through the spiral? Check out our therapist directory to find support.

The core of obsession and compulsion

The heart of OCD and anxiety work is learning to build up tolerance of emotional discomfort now so you can feel calm later.

Reassurance might feel good temporarily, but validation, patience, and practice are what truly help anxiety lose its grip.

Therapy Options That Help

• Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP): which is a branch of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): Useful when past experiences or trauma contribute to anxiety or OCD patterns. EMDR helps process distressing memories so they no longer fuel compulsions.

✮ monthly TEAR CLUB! (a soft space for inner child-like joy) with Chloe, our art therapist / counsellor.ᐟ.ᐟ ˚⊹

✮ weekly OFF-SCREEN HOURS digital detox drop-ins with our interns, Nikki (art therapist/counsellor-to-be) and Michelle (counsellor-to-be) .ᐟ.ᐟ ⋆˙⟡

Need an artist date ASAP? No idea where to go on a rainy weekend? 

Join us at tear club! with Chloe: ​Welcome to tear club! — a monthly, soft-guided, open studio style collage workshop. Every month, we will connect with our inner child-like joy, with the Sanrio character, Pompompurin as our cheerleader for November!

​why tear club? ✂️✨

A lot of us want to slow down but don’t always know how.

the purpose of tear club is to…

⭑ calm/connect with your nervous system to reduce stress levels.

⭑ spark creativity + problem-solving skills!

⭑ build social connections + feelings of joy outside of work/capitalism.

⭑ embrace our imperfections with curiosity instead of pressure.

📅 Upcoming: Sunday, Nov 23rd @ 1:30pm - 3:30pm

​🎟️ Tickets: $20 ; 6 spots max! Save your spot

​📍Location: Decipher Counselling Art Therapy Studio
Room #316, 402 W Pender St, Vancouver

🍎 About the Facilitator:

𖦹 Hi, I’m Chloe! Currently taking on new clients for individual therapy sessions!
𖦹 Qualifying counselling art therapist + art school grad
𖦹 Avid Sanrio fan + recovering perfectionist
𖦹 tear club! is my way of mixing nostalgia, comfort + the healing power of art.

Follow Chloe's art on Instagram @hichloekwok and if you’d updates on future art therapy workshops, check out @deciphercounselling or visit our website.

Lately we’ve been feeling how hard it is to be human in a world that never stops. 

Notifications, deadlines, the pressure to always be available and productive. We’re constantly connected, yet more disconnected than ever.

Off-Screen Hours is a space to step away from the noise. 

To rest, make art, and heal in community.

Intentional breaks from screens and the grind of constant doing, slowing down long enough to feel present again. ˚⊹

⊹ ࣪ ˖ Series 1: Digital Disconnection explores how technology shapes the ways we connect, communicate, and care for ourselves
 

Nov 14 → Algorithmic Loneliness — isolation in the age of constant connection (1 spot left)

Nov 21 → Digital Ghosts — what remains of us in digital spaces, and releasing what no longer serves us (4 spots left)

Nov 28 → Lost in Transmission — what gets lost in digital communication: the emotions and presence screens cannot carry (5 spots left)

Expect gentle art making, reflection, and conversation as we find our way back to ourselves and each other. ˚⊹

📅 When: weekly Fridays 3-5pm starting on Nov 14th.
🎟️ Tickets: $20 / workshop [coupons on lu.ma]
📍 Location: Decipher Studio B [room 317 - 402 west pender st.]
max 5 participants | masks encouraged

Your facilitators:

Nikki Hayashi (she/her), a mixed-race, neurodivergent, and queer practicum counselling art therapist grounded in intersectional feminism + narrative therapy. Helps you reclaim the stories that feel most true to you.
 

Michelle Jeong (she/her), a queer, neurodivergent, chronically ill practicum counsellor and eldest daughter of Korean immigrants. Brings warmth, curiosity, and 10+ years of supporting survivors & folks navigating trauma.

We believe rest is resistance, and that healing happens together.

✨ Come as you are. Take a breath. Log off for a while. 🌳

written by Maryam Dada, M.A., RCC
mildy edited by Linda Lin, RCC, CCC RCAT

Do you have a favourite fictional book and if so, what makes it your favourite?
Is it the characters? The storyline?
Or a bit of both?
Increasing research has come out around the therapeutic benefits of reading fiction and bibliotherapy.  

In this blog post, we’ll be exploring:
• the self-improvement fallacy
• why reading is an act of resistance
• how reading fiction both influences and amplifies our empathy and sense of self
• bibliotherapy as a creative approach to collective healing

The Self-Improvement Fallacy

In the 90s, we saw a big push towards reading self-help or psychological books that really influenced societies’ reading habits. It makes sense, when we think about therapeutic reading, we are naturally going to want to read educational, self-help, and informative books. 

According to market research, the self-improvement industry (books, podcasts, academies, courses) is only going to continue growing. While there is a lot of good and useful information in these self-help books, they often sway towards being text heavy, which can take some time for us to process and digest, and don’t always leave us feeling ‘improved’. 

On one hand, I understand the desire for accessible self-improvement interventions, and on the other, I worry about the implications of a society driven by “self-improvement” (air quotes intended). 

Self-improvement implies that there is always something to be working on. In other words, it operates on the belief that you, just as you are, are not good enough. 

From a therapeutic perspective, there is a difference between acknowledging things that would be helpful to work on…and believing that you always need to improve.

You don’t always have to be improving something about your life — in fact, this notion may stem from feelings of internalized capitalism and productivity. Instead, it can be helpful to ask, who benefits from you having these feelings? 

Why Reading Fiction is Key 

This is where fiction comes in. Human beings are experiential in nature. This means we learn best through experiencing something. 

Reading fiction is different from studying a text or absorbing information. The very act is experiential. When we read stories we are getting a first-hand account of a characters’ lived experience. 

We get to go on adventures with them, understand what they’re feeling, and take part in their journey. It’s a gateway into a different life or timeline, a peek into a world different from our own. That’s what makes reading fiction so invaluable, the opportunity to experience life from a different perspective.

Bibliotherapy is a gentle, creative therapeutic approach that uses literature, storytelling, and poetry to offer perspective, deepen insight, and support positive change in clients. Books can provide a form of support that allows clients to find comfort, wisdom, and emotional connection. 

“We are more alike than we are unalike”- Maya Angelou

The Therapeutic Benefits of Reading Fiction 

There are many therapeutic benefits to reading fiction  (Billington et al., 2010; Parker, 2018; Dodell-Fetir, Tamir, 2018) it can:

• ↑ our capacity to understand and relate to others 

• ↑ our empathy and compassion for ourselves and others 

• ↑ our social well-being—while reading we relate to characters in the story and that helps to both normalize and validate different experiences 

• Give us diverse perspectives on matters 

• Give us insight into other communities and groups

• ↑ our concentration and ability to focus 

• ↑ our self-awareness and ability to articulate 

• Allow us to slow down and process stories

• Help to regulate our nervous system

• Help us engage in an act of counterculture. In a fast paced world that lauds productivity as the standard, reading is an act of resistance. 

Increased Empathy and why it matters

Reading fiction allows us to deep dive into the human condition with its powerful capacity for resonance. We experience the spectrum of emotions from the protagonist and in doing so are simultaneously expanding, validating, and normalizing our own experience of what it means to be a human. 

One of my favourite quotes comes from Donna Tartt’s Goldfinch, on Art. She says:

“…even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open.”

Increasing our empathy and our understanding of human behaviour, we take part in the struggle against moral apathy… or what happens when we no longer care about one another. 

James Baldwin famously said, “I am terrified of moral apathy, the death of the heart” 

Reading fiction is one of the best protective mechanisms against that struggle, precisely because of its relatibility. Given the current climate on book bans and universities censoring students, it is incumbent on us, the people, to question the systems at place, seek knowledge, and expand our awareness.

Have you read any famously banned books? If yes, consider why they might have been banned and what it means to sensor a narrative. Knowledge is our best ammunition against ignorance, and as a result against indifference. It's not only cool to care, it's crucial. 

Maryam is a Registered Clinical Counsellor at Decipher. If you like to explore themes in tv, media, or literature and how it relates to your life or the different things you may be going though, she may be a good fit.  She is currently taking new clients! Book a free consultation with Maryam today—available online and in person in so-called Vancouver, BC.

DreamLab : An Art Therapy Experience Rooted in Dreams and Inner Landscapes, Inspired by Marin Majić’s roundabout as part of CICA’s Art & Mindfulness series

The Art and Mindfulness Experience Series at CICA Vancouver is designed to explore the profound connection between artistic expression and mindfulness. Rooted in the belief that art is a powerful medium for healing and self-discovery, this series invites participants to engage in reflective and grounding practices through creative expression.

Art, in its many forms, offers a pathway to mindfulness by encouraging presence, introspection, and emotional release. Whether through painting, sculpture, movement, or sound, the act of creating becomes a meditative process that fosters deep awareness and healing. Our series harnesses this transformative power of art to create accessible spaces for mindfulness that center BIPOC, women, and queer communities.

Facilitated by artists and mindfulness practitioners from these communities, each experience is designed to hold space for collective healing and cultural storytelling. This platform not only nurtures personal well-being but also elevates the work of marginalized practitioners, providing them with visibility and opportunities within Vancouver’s art and wellness landscapes.

Event Details:

Save the date: Saturday, June 14, 3–5 PM

CICA Vancouver | Facilitated by our RTC and Art Therapist, Coco Huang

Only 20 spots available

Join us for DreamLab, the first workshop in CICA’s new programming series, Art and Mindfulness—a series designed to explore the profound connection between artistic expression and mindfulness. Rooted in the belief that art is a powerful medium for healing and self-discovery, these experiences invite participants to engage in reflective and grounding practices through creative expression.
Led by Coco Huang  a Registered Therapeutic Counsellor and Art Therapist at Decipher Counselling  this immersive 2-hour session includes dream journaling, grounding exercises, and sensory art-making. The experience begins with a walk-through of roundabout by Marin Majić, setting the tone for exploring subconscious landscapes and inner symbols through art.
Together, we’ll breathe, create, and co-regulate in a supportive space centered on healing, curiosity, and community. No prior art experience needed. All materials provided.