A

Foreign.

B

Hi, everyone. Welcome to a somewhat different episode of what we usually do in our get to Know OCD podcast. Today we're going to work on getting to know a NOCD therapist, which is always exciting to be able to bring one of our therapists in to chat about the work that they do here at nocd. We know that the work that our NOCD therapists do is amazing. Amazing and life changing. And I'm excited to introduce to you today Dylan McElroy. Hi, Dylan, how are you?

A

Hey, Dr. McGrath, I'm doing great today. Thanks for having me on.

B

Thank you for being here. And I wanted to chat with you today because there are people out there who are working in the mental health field, maybe have seen some of the NOCD ads, might know some NOCD therapists may be considering what would it be like to work at nocd?

A

And.

B

And you're one of those people who kind of saw some things about NOCD and eventually decided to join. And so I wanted to get your take on what brought you to NOCD and maybe even into just first getting to know you a little bit, the mental health field in general. And then let's kind of build from where you started until how you got here. So what's your story of coming into the mental health world?

A

Yeah, so my story is I feel like a little bit different because I come initially from construction, from a construction background. Since graduating high school, I predominantly just worked in construction and the trades while in construction. I even started college because I wanted to do. I liked building. I like making a difference in the world, but I wanted to work with people a little more hands on.

B

Okay.

A

And that's when I got into college and started working towards becoming a therapist. Eventually graduated, started working in community mental health, which is, I feel like we're a lot of a start. So in community mental health, I enjoyed working with people. I really figured out that I loved being a therapist. I started realizing that I want to do a bit more than what I was doing. I was working with traditional talk therapy and I didn't feel like I was making as much of a noticeable impact as I wanted to. And that's when I started researching into different modalities, different forms of therapies that I felt like could have a really big impact on people's lives.

B

Okay.

A

That brought us to me researching things like, you know, biofeedback, neurofeedback, eventually learning about no CD and kind of the work that's being done here.

B

So did you see some NOCD ads or how did You. How did you find out? Yeah, lots of them. Yeah, we're pretty good.

A

Lots of them.

B

By the way.

A

Yeah, that was one of the first things I said in my interview is the, the marketing campaign here is great. I've seen so many of your interviews with celebrities and people that are well known individuals, and it was great way to get to know the company better.

B

I'm glad, Dylan, that the messaging that's come out from NOCD was really impactful on you, because it's so important on both sides that people with OCD recognize that they have ocd, because many people don't know that they have OCD and that what they're struggling with is ocd. And unfortunately, there's also a lot of therapists who don't know how to diagnose ocd and even if they do, don't necessarily know how to properly treat obsessive compulsive disorder. They'll use a standard talk therapy, which maybe is probably what you were taught in graduate school. That seems to solve every problem, but we know does not actually solve every problem, and it really does require a specialized care. So that really has been a lot of the messaging that we've put out here at nocd, and I'm glad that that resonated with you and, and was an impetus for you to take a look at us as a company. That's great. What is, what are some of the messages that you now have? Kind of, you know, because each therapist has their own take on this. How do you, how do you give that spin to people? What do you say OCD is and how it interferes in the lives of people?

A

So I've heard OCD referred to as the thief of time. It really just steals time from you. So that's what has stuck with me the most, is that people that live with OCD don't have the time in their life to do things that they want to do, to be the person that they want to be. And that's kind of the message that stuck with me the most.

B

Yeah, I like that. It really doesn't care about you or what you need to do. It only cares about itself and what it wants to be done. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, and you came in not having any OCD experience, correct?

A

Correct. I was more so just background knowledge from going to college. Never worked firsthand with anybody with ocd, but just that general understanding of what the disorder was, but not exactly the treatment.

B

Okay, and had you had OCD cases on your caseload prior to? Nocd. And if so, how are you treating them?

A

So I had had one or two people that came in that were diagnosed with OCD and I wasn't prepared or experienced enough to be able to treat them, so I had to refer out. So it was something that I was lacking in.

B

I already know the answer to this question, even though you haven't told me the answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway. About how many minutes did you spend on OCD in your graduate school program?

A

Oh, I, I, maybe reading the title in the dsm.

B

That's about what I thought. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's amazing that to this day we, we allow people to get through schooling without unfortunately teaching them evidence based treatments for some of the most significant conditions that are, that are out there. But in a way that lack of training and understanding is what led to the development of NOCD and why we are what we are and why we do what we do. Because of our founder, Stephen Smith, basically going through numerous therapists who all said they could treat what he had and yet either couldn't identify it as OCD or were giving him, you know, the standard treatments of here's some coping strategies or actually telling him to do more compulsions.

A

Take some breathing techniques. What makes you feel better?

B

Yeah, yeah. Diaphragmatic breathing cures OCD of course, and celery juice and various other things that.

A

Going for a good walk.

B

Yeah, yeah, exactly. What was it like then to come into the training that we gave and to really learn about OCD for, for you, how, how was that experience?

A

So I think somebody said it during the beginning of the training program. You're going to be entering NOCD Academy. This is really like going back to college. And that's what it felt like. It was an entire in depth program where by the end of it I felt completely prepared to meet with all my members to work with people with ocd. I really didn't have any questions or doubts by the end of the program. So case consultations, absolutely love them. So they're available nearly every single day of the week. You're able to just kind of open up your calendar and say, kind of, what do I need help on? And even if you're not having anything you're struggling with, even if you don't have questions about a client, what do I want to learn more about? Because you can pick a group, you can see what the group's titled, what the consultation options for that group are and you could learn more about that specific thing for that week.

B

We Give a lot of feedback. And we talk to people in our interviews about the fact that we give a lot of feedback and no one just gets through training and then starts. You have a process to go through of our clinical advising meetings, mock sessions. What was that process like? Because we do test people to make sure that they are ready to start working with. With NOCD members, as we call them here.

A

Yeah. So how the process for me worked was traditionally there was so many days of hands on training where we're in a meeting, there's a group of us, but cameras are on, it's interactive. You get called on, you're encouraged to, hey, we need you to talk, we need you to be present, take notes, participate. Then you have your clinical advisory meeting where you meet one on one with somebody who, hey, we're gonna do a whole mock session here. We're gonna go through everything that you've learned. We're gonna role play clients and you're gonna role play therapists, and we're gonna go through this whole thing. And you guys got some good actors.

B

Thank you.

A

We practiced a little bit. Yeah, I could tell. I was like, oh, they're doing the whole thing, you know, role playing children, adults, anybody of any age and background. So you really get the feeling that you're doing a traditional therapy appointment with somebody for the first time.

B

That's great. And in addition to all that training, you have a manager here on a team, your clinical operations manager, comms, as we call them, and they're available to you for questions, concerns, coaching, things of that nature. How is that relationship going?

A

That relationship's great. I've been working with my comm since the very beginning. She reaches out regularly. Just saying, hey, just checking in. Do you need anything right now? I want to see how you're doing. You're doing great on paper, but is there anything you need? And if I need anything at any point, all I have to do is shoot her a message. She gets back to me same day, usually within. Within the hour, and reaches out with an answer or a solution or, hey, I don't have a solution right now, but I'm getting you one asap and I'll let you know very soon.

B

Sure. And how is it working from home? How do you find that to be for you?

A

Great. It's great. So comfortable. I can have my, my desk organized how I want it. You know, things that I enjoy out and on my desk and available to me. Snacks. Everything's here. I don't have to get up, I don't have to drive anywhere. The biggest part is I don't have to commute to an office.

B

Yeah.

A

Get ready in the morning.

B

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. For people who are thinking about working at nocd, you know what, what do you are, you know what, what's the upside? And you know, two, I don't want this just to sound like, oh, you know, of course. Are there things that you feel that over time at nocd, like you've seen change or have you been able to give feedback to people? And we've been able to work some of that in so that the job is a continuous, continuously and consistently evolving experience.

A

Yeah, I mean, I, I do receive feedback, especially during the clinical advisory meetings. Feedback about what I needed to improve on, feedback on anything that, like, hey, you're doing really good, but let's work on this. And especially, you know, my supervisors meet with me, we talk about things. So anytime that there is feedback needed, it's something that's expressed.

B

What do you feel the impact has been on the members that you're working with? Obviously you've had other experiences at other institutions that you've worked. How do you feel utilizing evidence based treatments like ERP has impacted the members you've been assigned?

A

So I really love it. That's. This is what I was looking for when I started looking for something that has more significant impact on the members. Because we keep track of metrics, we're able to actually see the difference that we're making over time. We're able to see a reduction in symptoms, we're able to see an improvement in their life. This is something that I wanted to work with because instead of just, you know, traditional talk therapy where it's like, how are you feeling this week? How do you, how do you feel? Everybody says, okay, we're able to really see on paper, you know, what the reporting, what their scores are over time.

B

We use a lot of metrics here, right? We, we have assessment tools that people fill out and sometimes that's newer for therapists who are maybe used to, you know. One brief question here. Every couple of sessions. How have you found, utilizing the tools that NOCD provides to you and to our members to add to the treatment that you do.

A

So they really help to highlight any area that, hey, you've made great progress in this area, but here we, we've kind of stagnated or we're lacking a little bit. And so let's focus on this. Let's kind of shift what we're working on here for a little while. So we can really make progress in every single category. So it really helps to kind of operate as a barometer of, like, how's therapy going? What do we need to work on? What's going well, where do we need to, you know, shift focus to? Right now,

B

We don't just treat ocd, right. We do trainings in other areas. Body focused, repetitive behaviors. We have horizontal hoarding opportunities, ptsd, anxiety disorders. Sometimes people might think, will I just be kind of pigeonholed into treating one thing? You have the opportunity to work with mood anxiety, you know, all these other things. How has all of that helped to round out your experience at nosing?

A

So, great question. I'm a big fan of treating hoarding. So that's actually something our knowledge hub. The, the knowledge hub that we have here is extensive. It shows so much of what you want to learn and has all the steps, what we do, videos, training videos, everything that you could want to learn. So hoarding is actually something I'm setting to begin to specialize in at this moment. So it's wonderful to have the opportunity to pick up other forms of treatment.

B

And sometimes people might think, wait, you know, hoarding, you have to be in someone's home. What's it like to just tell someone to turn the camera around and walk them through their house, but without having to go into the home?

A

Yeah, it's, I think with any sort of like telehealth therapy, it's dependent upon how much you're putting into it, how willing you are to like, really engage with the member. If you're just going to haphazardly, just kind of like, okay, turn, you gotta really, you know, you've got to put in the work to have them really be present and functional during the session.

B

As a therapist here, you have access to all of your metrics, right? You can see how your scheduling is, how your members are doing. I think sometimes at first that could be a little weird. For people who come in, maybe they've come from a private practice and they've just never had the data like this, or they've worked at community organizations and they hear about this data maybe once a year in a review, you have at your fingertips all sorts of data available to you. What's it been like to be able to really get that level of insight into the work that you're doing?

A

Like you said, it's a lot of data. It really helps to highlight where I'm doing good in and also things I can do to improve my interactions with my members. Sometimes I notice that between session, check ins, messages to my members, contact my members, might start to get a little low, might say, hey, you haven't reached out to all your members recently enough. So I'm like, oh you know what, good to see that on paper. I'm going to go ahead and go through my list of members, reach out to everybody, just check in between the appointments. So it's really helpful just to highlight what I'm lacking on currently. And most of them are just, you know, hey, doing great here, doing great here. Members are here, great, great job. But for the areas that are starting to drop a little low, it's a reminder of what I need to do great.

B

And that's never meant to be punitive or anything. I mean we just, we want you to have that access and know exactly where you're at because we hope that that transparency will really be motivating to you to continue to up your game in the work that you're doing. Because our first value as a company is member first to make sure that our members are getting the best care possible. Do you feel that value translates into the work that you do?

A

I definitely feel that it translates as member first kind of making sure that we're there. All of our metrics circle back to how are we interacting with the members, how is their care going, kind of what's going on with them, how often we're communicating with them, how long it takes for us to kind of help them get to certain levels of progress in their treatment.

B

Dylan, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I really appreciate hearing your views of being a NOCD therapist and for also being encouraging of other people to join us here at nocd. I love being here. I've been here for six and a half years and cannot wait to see us continue to grow and expand. What's your hope for the future, for your career here at noci?

A

Well, I'd love to also continue to be able to just grow and expand here, learn more specialties like boarding is an option. So just being able to expand and become the best therapist that I can be, that's awesome.

B

Well, as you know Dylan, and for all of you listening at nocd, we're on a mission to restore hope for people with OCD through online awareness, through treatment. And we're really pushing that mission and a key to that mission is really investing in our therapists to make sure that they have just the greatest experience that they can being a therapist and to be sure that they're equipped to deliver really great, amazing life changing care and Dylan you've talked to us today about how you get to do that. If you're a licensed therapist you're looking to deliver specialized treatment for OCD and you want to see if a place in our network might be right for you. Well we'd love to talk to you. Go to our careers page fill out some information. We will get in touch with you, our recruiters will chat with you, we'll do interviews and we'll see if NOCD is right for you because we want the best here at NOCD so that we can provide our members with the best care possible because again our number one mission is member first. Thank you for watching today Dylan thanks for being with us today. I really appreciate it and I'm going to let you get back to providing that amazing care that you do to our members. And for all of you watching I hope you'll consider NOCD as an option for your future. We look forward to meeting you. Thanks.