S3E110: Lived Experience: From Fear To Freedom: How Ashton Pizza Faced Their OCD & Found Purpose In Helping Others
Join your host, Nicole Morris, LMFT & Mental Health Correspondent, as she continues OCD Awareness Month with the 2nd cornerstone of awareness: Lived Experience! Nicole welcomes special guest, Ashton Pizza, LMSW, to share about their story, including their autistic lived experience of OCD and C-PTSD. Learn how sharing our stories can validate, normalize and bring hope to others as we root on our warriors!
Resources:
To learn more about the resources Ashton sent me for you, fam, look below:
Websites and/or Organizations:
To check out FORCE or Facing Our Risk for Cancer Empowered, click here.
is an organization that helped us with resources when my mom found out she was positive for BRCA genes.
To learn more about NOCD, click here.
is the platform that made treatment available to me in my rural home.
Books Ashton found impactful:
Neurodivergent DBT Skills workbook by Sonny Jane Wise: Click here.
Ashton’s Take: This is a really approachable workbook based on DBT that's been modified specifically for neurodiverse individuals. The author is multiply neurodivergent themselves and is a great advocate. I found the sections on Sensory regulation to be the most helpful in my own journey)
The Gratitude Diaries by Janice Kaplan: Click here.
Ashton’s Take: Taught me what I talked about with being grateful for my husband and that some days there's lots to feel grateful for. My gratitude practice got me through the RV experience and I don't think I would have survived without the resilience it gave me.
Everyday Mindfulness Tips for OCD and it's accompanying workbook by Jon Herschfield and Shala Nicely: Click here.
Ashton’s Take: Fun fact: The day I met and introduced myself to Jon he was wearing Pizza socks, coincidence? I think not!
Unmasking Autism by Devon Price: Click here.
Ashton’s Take: It’s a great intersectional approach to autism that really approaches the question of how society keeps those with intersectional identities masking and how we approach the complicated process of unmasking.
How to Be More DnD by Kat Kruger: Click here.
Ashton’s Take: It’s a great nerdy approach to approach to accepting uncertainty in live. Our dice rolls are unknown, all we can do is live with the outcome and roll the next one.
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy: Click here.
Ashton’s Take: Jennette is an OCD warrior herself and in her memoir shares some of her lived experiences around her mom, cancer, and complicated relationships with the two of them that made me feel so much less alone.
Podcast(s) Ashton Recommends:
Purely OCD: Click here.
