Meet Adrienne Boland, MA, LPCC the therapist who came to NOCD for specialized OCD training and found more support working from home than she expected.
When Adrienne Boland joined NOCD in November 2023, she knew she wanted to become a better OCD therapist. She wasn’t as sure about working completely from home.
Boland had been working at a group private practice, treating clients with concerns ranging from PTSD and ADHD to generalized anxiety. She had also worked with some people with OCD, but wanted more specialized training to serve that population.
“I knew that having the specialization and the mission of NOCD was really important to me because of my personal experience with OCD,” she says.
Still, leaving an in-person environment for a fully remote role brought up questions. Would she have enough support? Would she feel isolated? Would specializing in one population be the right fit?
She decided she had to find out.
“I knew that I had to do it, afraid or not,” she says.
Finding support from home
Boland quickly discovered that working remotely didn’t mean working alone.
“Something that I was really nervous about doing complete telehealth was that I wouldn’t have the support that I needed as a therapist,” she says. “But I would actually say I received more support working completely from home than I did working in private practice.”
Rather than learning new skills and being left to apply them independently, Boland had access to clinical leadership and one-on-one support as she learned.
“Learning it and having that one-on-one consultation and support while we’re learning these new skills was great.”
Learning to recognize avoidance
Boland already knew a lot about OCD through her personal experience and previous clinical work. At NOCD, her learning became more focused on applying exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy in a structured way.
One of the biggest lessons has been recognizing the different ways avoidance can appear when a Member is anxious about an exposure.
“I think it has helped me specifically to learn how different ways that avoidance shows up and how to clinically redirect that while also validating that member’s experience too,” she says.
From fear to making memories
For Boland, some of the most meaningful moments have come from treating Members with pedophilia OCD, or POCD, which she describes as one of the most stigmatized OCD themes.
She has worked with Members whose fears made it difficult to be alone with or even hold their own children. Through ERP, she has watched that begin to change.
Boland describes seeing Members go from being afraid to be alone with their children to later sharing stories about birthday parties and Christmas celebrations.
“I was able to just be a parent and have fun and make memories,” she recalls Members saying. “That is extremely rewarding.”
“I’m home, but I’m not alone”
The isolation Boland once worried about hasn’t materialized.
Consultation groups give her opportunities to hear what other therapists are navigating, learn from their cases, and share in both the challenges and wins of the work. Those conversations can continue afterward through Slack, where clinicians can reach out to one another individually.
“You get to see that maybe other clinicians are hitting some of the same roadblocks that you are,” she says. “You can learn just by hearing other people present cases.”
That connection has helped create the sense of community she wasn’t sure she’d find virtually.
Boland also appreciates being able to choose her schedule, including building a break into the middle of her day. And when it comes time for documentation, she says NOCD’s dictation tool helps reduce the mental work of recalling a session and connecting it back to the treatment modality.
Taking the leap
Looking back, Boland says many of her initial challenges came down to confronting her own anxieties: working from home, learning something new, and wondering whether she could specialize in one population.
Her answer was to approach those fears much like she asks Members to approach theirs.
“I always tell my members I’m not going to ask you to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself,” she says. “I’m always trying to find ways to challenge my own discomforts.”
Her advice for therapists considering a similar move comes from that experience.
“You take the leap, and because you’re not going to know for sure if it’s going to be a good fit for you unless you do it,” she says.
Looking to make an impact like Adrienne? Explore therapist opportunities at NOCD.
