Obsessive-compulsive Disorder

Obsessive-compulsive Disorder (OCD) can be a devastating mental health condition where the symptoms interfere with work, school, and interpersonal relationships. Sufferers of OCD struggle with ubiquitous unwanted thoughts, doubts, and urges. Obsessions are thoughts, images, impulses, doubts, and ideas that are experienced as unwanted, persistent, and intrusive. Compulsions are rituals and similar behaviors that are repetitive, senseless, and excessive. Many times, compulsions are expressed with rules. Compulsion serves to reduce obsessional anxiety and fears with avoidance behavior to prevent obsessional fear and compulsive urges.

Unfortunately, people believe many misconceptions about OCD. Perhaps one of the most common myths about OCD is the idea that OCD is simply the same as being a “neat freak.” People can be particularly organized without having OCD. On the other hand, people can have OCD and not obsess over cleanliness. A person with OCD who obsesses over cleanliness does so at the expense of living a healthy life.

Healthy people also have rituals, such as checking to see if the stove is off several times before leaving the house. The difference is that people with OCD perform their rituals even though doing so interferes with daily life and they find the repetition distressing. Although most adults with OCD recognize that what they are doing is senseless, some adults and most children may not realize that their behavior is out of the ordinary.

For many people, OCD starts during childhood or the teen years. Most people are diagnosed by about age 19. Symptoms of OCD may come and go and be better or worse at different times. OCD affects about 2.2 million American adults. It strikes men and women in roughly equal numbers and usually appears in childhood, adolescence, or early adulthood. One-third of adults with OCD develop symptoms as children, and research indicates that OCD might run in families.

Symptoms of OCD:

• Obsessions and compulsions.

• Guilt over the compulsions.

• Panic attacks.

• Frequent nightmares.

• Hoarding tendencies.

• Avoiding parts of daily life due to fears of triggers.

At MindShift Psychotherapy, we are highly trained to assess and treat OCD. Treatments consist of evidence-based approaches such as Exposure Response Prevention, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), Family Systems Therapy, Expressive Arts Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Virtual Reality Therapy, and Neurofeedback.