"It's natural" is not a safety label.

This week, Blair Buckley returns to the pod and we are getting into holistic medicine for neurodivergent bodies. The genuinely helpful, the ineffective, and the stuff that can turn you yellow.

We talk about why supplements are less regulated than you think, what "proprietary blend" actually means, and why serotonin syndrome is a real risk, especially if you're already on antidepressants.

We get into acupuncture, including a very important contingency plan for what to do if you're full of needles and there's an emergency in the building, why the holes are much smaller than you think, and how chiropractic care requires a lot more nuance than just finding the nearest guy who will crack your neck. If you have Ehlers-Danlos or hypermobility, this part is especially for you.

We also go deep on chronic pain and mental health, because living in a body that hurts all the time has a psychological cost that most providers are not equipped to talk about. And because this is us, we end up in a whole conversation about ADHD, autism, and sleep, why the standard sleep hygiene advice was never written with neurodivergent people in mind, and how sometimes the goal is just harm reduction.

Blair is based in Denver and sees neurodivergent clients of all ages. You can find her on Psychology Today under Blair Buckley.

Find me at alyssazimmerman.com for therapy in New York State or to apply to be a guest.

In this episode, I'm joined by my unlikely friend Rain Glynn to keep our Heated Rivalry hyperfixation going with a full Enneagram breakdown of the characters. We prepared separately and compared notes live, which means there's some lighthearted beef, a lot of six blindness, and an apparently very important clarification that the plane did not, technically, crash.

We type Scott, Kip, Shane, Ilya, Hayden, Rose, Yuna, David, Svetlana, and Elena covering core types, wings, integration and disintegration lines, and what any of this has to do with being AuDHD. We also get into why nines are slippery, how every woman on this show is from Bad Bitch City, and why it's difficult to type someone during an ongoing meltdown.

New to the Enneagram? Check out Episode 2, Ennea-what Now, for a foundation before diving in.

In this episode of Clinically Awkward, I sit down with Dr. Alice Rizzi, a New York licensed psychologist specializing in OCD and anxiety disorders, to blow up everything you think you know about obsessive compulsive disorder and actually replace it with something useful.

We get into the OCD cycle, intrusive thoughts, mental compulsions, and the presentations nobody wants to talk about: pure O, harm OCD, health OCD, and the relationship and sexuality spirals that have people texting their friends for reassurance at 2am. We cover the difference between OCD and OCPD, why your brain's smoke alarm is broken, and why the compulsions you've been using to feel better are actually making it worse.

We also get into exposure and response prevention, why ERP is the gold standard for OCD treatment, what it actually looks like in practice, why traditional CBT can accidentally keep people with OCD stuck, and how to find an OCD therapist who genuinely knows what they're doing versus someone who listed OCD among their 57 other specialties on Psychology Today.

Dr. Rizzi's therapy practice is based in New York and Florida. Find her at dralicerizzi.com. For entrepreneurs and women in business, find her mindfulness and values work at togethermindful.com.

If you're an adult looking for therapy in New York, find me at alyssazimmerman.com.