Dr. Shariq Refai
Dr. Shariq Refai is a board-certified psychiatrist. He holds dual board certification, in psychiatry and in sports and performance psychiatry, and he's practiced for more than fifteen years.
He's the founder of shrinkMD (opens in a new tab), a psychiatric practice, and he medically edits a set of mental-health education sites (opens in a new tab). Over the years he wrote three books on the same problem from different angles: the loop that anxiety runs in the body, the patterns of thinking that keep people stuck, and a workbook of exercises for practicing the way out.
The material that helps people was already written.
Most of what works for everyday overthinking and anxiety isn't a secret. The problem is the form. It sits in books, in research, and in clinical practice, and most people never get it in a shape they can actually work through on their own.
shrinQ is those three books rebuilt as a structured program. Same material, organized into phases, with exercises you do on the page instead of advice you read and forget. It's the system Dr. Refai has spent his career teaching, made into something you can use without an appointment.
The three books shrinQ is built from
shrinQ didn't invent its content. It's the structured, exercise-driven version of three books Dr. Refai wrote on overthinking and anxiety. If you'd like to read first, or go deeper afterward, start here.
The Havoc in Your Head
The in-the-moment book. How anxiety runs as a loop in the body, and what to do while it's happening.
Find the bookYour Mind Is Full of Sh*t
The patterns book. The habits of thinking that quietly keep people stuck, and how to see through them.
Find the bookThe Workbook
The companion to Your Mind Is Full of Sh*t. The exercises, drawn from CBT and acceptance-based work, that turn the ideas into habits.
Find the bookThe books are a good introduction. shrinQ is the structured program that puts them to work, with exercises, a clear path, and the shrinkMD Reset taught in full.
Working with people who look fine on the outside.
Alongside clinical work, Dr. Refai works with companies on mental health and speaks on how overthinking and anxiety show up in high-performing people, the ones who look fine from the outside and are carrying a great deal underneath.
That's a thread that runs through shrinQ. It takes the high-performer pattern seriously, without treating success as either the cause or the cure.
shrinQ and shrinkMD are not the same thing.
shrinQ is an educational program. It is not therapy and not treatment. shrinkMD is Dr. Refai's separate clinical practice, where care happens between real clinicians and real patients.
shrinQ can point you toward professional care when that's the right step, and it tells you plainly when it is. But the two are separate, and the program never stands in for the care.