I Joined "Parenting Teens with Dr. Cam" to Talk About Anxiety, OCD, and What Parents Get Wrong
I was recently a guest on Parenting Teens with Dr. Cam, a podcast built for parents trying to understand what's actually going on underneath their teenager's anxiety, avoidance, and, in a lot of cases, undiagnosed OCD. You can listen to the full conversation on Spotify here. I want to use this post to expand on what we talked about, because the questions Dr. Cam asked me are the same questions I hear almost every week from parents across New Jersey who are trying to figure out whether what they're watching their kid go through is "just a phase," garden-variety anxiety, or something that needs a very specific kind of treatment.
I'm Dana Colthart, LCSW, CEDS, founder of Clear Light Therapy, a specialized OCD and anxiety practice based in Englewood, in Bergen County, seeing clients in person and by telehealth across the entire state of New Jersey. I want to be direct about why this distinction matters so much, because it's the thing most parents, and honestly most general therapists, get wrong first.
Why "It's Just Anxiety" Is the Sentence I Hear Right Before Someone Tells Me About Their OCD
Anxiety and OCD are not the same disorder, and treating them as though they are is one of the most common reasons people, teens and adults both, stay stuck for years longer than they need to. Anxiety, broadly, is a fear response to a real or perceived threat. OCD is a specific cycle: an intrusive thought, image, or urge (the obsession) that creates unbearable distress, followed by a compulsion, a checking ritual, a mental review, a reassurance question, an avoidance behavior, that temporarily quiets the distress and then guarantees it comes back stronger and faster next time.
That distinction isn't academic. It changes what treatment actually needs to look like. Generic talk therapy, the kind built around processing feelings and validating experiences, can genuinely make OCD worse, because a well-meaning "let's talk through why you feel this way" becomes one more compulsion, one more ritual of analyzing instead of resisting. I said something close to this on Dr. Cam's show: parents will tell me their teen has "always been an anxious kid," and what they're describing, once we go through it together, is a textbook OCD cycle that's been running quietly for years, sometimes since elementary school, without anyone naming it.
This is why I specialize the way I do. I'm trained specifically in Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), the two approaches with the strongest evidence behind them for OCD and anxiety disorders. Not "anxiety" as the tenth item on a list of things I treat. OCD, and the anxiety disorders that travel alongside it, is the thing I built this practice around.
What Parents Across New Jersey Are Actually Describing
In session, and in that podcast conversation, the patterns repeat themselves constantly, regardless of which town a family is calling from. A teen in Ridgewood who can't leave the house without checking the stove three times. A parent in Montclair whose daughter asks the same reassurance question in six different ways because the answer never quite lands. A father in Westfield who didn't realize his son's hours-long homework sessions were rumination, not diligence. A mother in Hoboken watching her teenager's world get smaller, fewer friends, fewer activities, more rules, and not understanding why "just relax" isn't landing.
None of that is a character flaw, and it isn't bad parenting either. It's a pattern, and patterns respond to the right treatment. That's true whether I'm meeting with a family in Englewood, Tenafly, Fort Lee, Teaneck, Paramus, Hackensack, or Fair Lawn here in Bergen County, or working by telehealth with someone in Morristown, Summit, Princeton, Jersey City, or down the shore. New Jersey has a lot of excellent general therapists. What it has far fewer of is clinicians trained specifically in ERP for OCD, which is why families end up driving an hour, or searching statewide, for the right fit. Telehealth has made that search a lot shorter. I'm licensed to treat clients throughout New Jersey virtually, in addition to seeing people in person at my Englewood office.
What I Told Dr. Cam About Spotting OCD in Teenagers
A few of the things I emphasized on the podcast are worth repeating here, because they're the pieces I most want parents to walk away with.
OCD rarely looks like the movies. Most of the OCD I treat has nothing to do with visible handwashing or lining things up symmetrically. It looks like a teenager who needs to reread a text message eight times before sending it, who mentally replays a conversation from three days ago trying to find the exact moment they said something wrong, who has an intrusive thought about harming someone they love and is now too afraid to be alone with a younger sibling. These are the OCD presentations that get missed for years, sometimes labeled as anxiety, sometimes as perfectionism, sometimes as "just a sensitive kid."
Reassurance feels like help and functions like harm. This is the single hardest thing for parents to hear, and I understand why. When your child is panicking and asking "are you sure I didn't do anything wrong," every instinct says to answer them. But answering is the compulsion. It buys ten minutes of relief and teaches the brain that the only way to survive uncertainty is to resolve it externally, which means the next question comes faster and louder. Learning how to respond differently, with support instead of reassurance, is one of the most important shifts a parent can make, and it's something I coach families through directly.
Waiting doesn't make OCD plateau. It rehearses. Every month a teenager (or an adult) spends managing OCD instead of treating it is a month the cycle gets more automatic, faster, sneakier. The compulsions get harder to spot because they've become mental instead of visible. This is why I told Dr. Cam's audience that timing matters as much as the treatment itself. The earlier a family gets an accurate read on what they're dealing with, the shorter and more effective treatment tends to be.
Introducing Life Beyond OCD: My 10-Week Group for Adults Ready to Stop Managing and Start Treating
One thing that's come directly out of conversations like this one with Dr. Cam is how many adults reach out after recognizing themselves, not just their teenagers, in what I described. Adult OCD and anxiety don't disappear on their own, and my individual caseload at Clear Light Therapy is currently full, which is exactly why I built Life Beyond OCD, a 10-week live group program using the same ERP and ACT frameworks I use in individual sessions.
This program exists for the adults across New Jersey who've already tried general talk therapy, journaling, meditation apps, maybe years of processing-based sessions, and are still stuck, because none of that was ever built to treat OCD specifically. Over ten weeks, participants build and climb their own fear ladder with real guidance, learn to identify the "sneaky" mental compulsions that don't look like classic OCD, practice cognitive defusion, and work directly with rumination, uncertainty, and relapse prevention. It's live, it's small, and it's led by me, not a workbook and not a self-paced course.
The group format matters clinically, not just logistically. OCD thrives in isolation and shame; most people I meet assumed they were the only person carrying the specific intrusive thoughts they've never said out loud. Watching someone else name that thing, and watching a room full of people not flinch, does something individual therapy alone often can't. It's part of why exposure work actually sticks.
If you're an adult anywhere in New Jersey, Bergen County, Hudson County, Essex, Morris, Union, Monmouth, wherever you're calling from, and you recognized any part of what I described above, whether in yourself or in a conversation you just had with your own teenager, that recognition is worth acting on. You can read the full program details and current availability here, or reach out for a free 15-minute consultation to talk through whether the group, individual treatment, or a referral is the right next step.
Where to Listen and Where to Go Next
You can catch the full episode of Parenting Teens with Dr. Camon Spotify, and find more of Dr. Cam's work at askdrcam.com. If you're a parent in Bergen County or anywhere in New Jersey trying to figure out whether what you're seeing at home is anxiety, OCD, or both, or if you're an adult who's recognized your own patterns in this post, that's exactly the work I do at Clear Light Therapy. You can learn more about how I treat OCD and anxiety, using ERP and ACT, the two approaches with the strongest evidence behind them, on my website, or book a free consultation directly to talk through what treatment could look like for you or your family.
