Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, also known as OCD is mental health condition that has two main components: Obsessions and Compulsions.
– Obsessions are unwanted intrusive thoughts, images, or urges that cause significant anxiety. Some examples of obsessions are:
o Worrying about germs and getting sick.
o Worrying about eating something bad and throwing up.
o Worrying about hurting someone you love despite having no intention of doing it.
o Worrying that something bad will happen.
o Worrying that you will be responsible for something bad happening
o A strong need for things to be symmetrical or arranged in a specific way.
o Anxiety over thoughts of sin or doing something wrong according to someone’s moral code and religion.
o A fear of not doing something perfectly.
o Fears about having a serious illness, even in the absence of symptoms.
– Compulsions are repetitive behaviors or mental acts that a person feels driven to do in response to an obsession or because of rigid rules, with the goal of reducing anxiety or preventing a feared event to happen. Some examples are compulsions are:
o Repeatedly checking locks, stoves, car doors, or appliances to make sure they are off.
o Washing hands repeatedly to prevent contamination of germs or illness.
o Arranging items in a specific order to reduce feelings of anxiety.
o Mentally repeating phrases
o Avoiding places, objects, or people due to obsessive fears.
o Seeking reassurance constantly about your anxious thoughts.
o Reorganizing items or doing certain tasks in a specific order to achieve symmetry or to get the feeling of it being “just right”
How OCD can affect your life:
o It can be very time consuming.
o It can negatively impact your social relationships due to feeling embarrassed or ashamed.
o It can interfere with productivity and performance.
o It can increase levels of anxiety and distress.
o It can make you start avoiding people and places.
o It can physically harm you such as having raw skin from washing your hands too much.
How to Treat OCD:
The most common way to treat OCD is by using Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy (ERP), which is a type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It is known to be one of the most effective forms of therapy. Let me tell you a little bit about how this works.
The first step is figuring out what specific obsessions and compulsions are most problematic. This information helps to see if there is a certain theme happening. Next, we want to assess how anxious you are for specific situations. We measure this by using SUDS (Subjective Units of Distress Scale). I use a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest level of anxiety and discomfort.
First the person is exposed to situations, thoughts, or triggers that cause anxiety or cause someone to have obsessive thoughts. When doing this with a trained therapist, it is done in a controlled environment. It begins as a slow process and usually will start with less anxiety-provoking situations. As you continue to work through them you will continue up the ladder to harder ones.
Next comes the response prevention. After the exposure, you are directed to try to resist the compulsion that you perform to help control your anxiety. For example, this could mean not checking if you locked the door or not tapping a wall a certain amount of times.
The key to ERP working is repetition. By continuing to expose yourself to the anxiety-provoking situation while also preventing compulsions, your anxiety will gradually decrease. This is called the habituation process. Clients will have homework assignments for exposures daily.
The other great part of ERP is that is also helps you to become more comfortable with uncertainty. The goal is for you to learn to be more comfortable with not knowing whether something harmful will happen, because when you think about it, we can never truly predict that.
Whether you are an adult, teenager, or adolescent, you could be struggling with Obsessive Compulsive disorder. If you feel that you or your child may be suffering from OCD, give me a call or send me an email and we can talk further on how we can work through this together.
By: Tara Amanna, M.Ed., LPC