What Is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)?

  • You have intrusive thoughts, urges, or desires that you can’t make stop (these are called obsessions).

  • To cope with the stress caused by obsessions, you engage in repetitive thoughts, rituals, or behaviors to reduce your anxiety (these are called compulsions).

  • There is a vicious cycle between having obsessions that you cope with by doing compulsions.

  • Much of your day is spent ruminating on distressing thoughts and compulsively doing rituals to quiet your mind.

Examples of Obsessions

 

  • Fear of getting contaminated (i.e. illness, viruses, dirt)

  • Worry about losing control (i.e. hurting yourself, hurting someone else, saying something obscene)

  • Desire for perfection (i.e. concerns about evenness, exactness, counting, fear of forgetting)

  • Intrusive sexual, suicidal, or violent thoughts (i.e. excessive rumination about your sexual orientation, disturbing thoughts about death or gruesome topics)

  • Religious obsessions (excessive fear of offending God, constant concerns about behaviors being right or wrong)

Examples of Compulsions

 

  • Excessively washing or cleaning.

  • Constantly checking to make sure something bad did not happen.

  • Repeating activities, behaviors, or movements.

  • Persistently seeking reassurance from others to make sure they are not upset and that they are safe.

  • Searching the internet for hours to determine whether you have an illness or to figure out something.

Where OCD shows up

 

Relationships

You constantly seek reassurance that things are okay between you and your loved ones. You worry that your loved ones are going to suffer harm, leave you, or punish you for making a mistake. It’s difficult for you to make a decision without double or triple checking it with other people. Your relationships feel fragile and you are overthinking every social interaction.

Work

You dread the mistakes you make at work. This results in you feeling the need to make up for your mistakes by either apologizing or doing a ritual. You constantly feel like you are on thin ice with your employer and worry that you will be fired at any moment. You spend a lot of time after work obsessing about everything that went wrong or could go wrong.

Self

You feel a constant sense of dread and doom that something bad is going to happen. You know that your thoughts and urges sometimes don’t make sense but you feel the need to do them anyway. It’s hard for you to talk about your thoughts because you feel embarrassed or fear your loved ones won’t understand. You have a hard time differentiating between legitimate thoughts and obsessions.

Therapy can help you

  1. Find better ways to cope with obsessions and compulsions.

  2. Learn how to calm your mind and shift your thoughts.

  3. Feel more confident in your decisions and reduce your need for validation.

  4. Feel less dread that things are going to fall apart.

  5. Spent less time in your head and more time in the moment.

Struggling with OCD? Let’s talk about how I can help.

Joe@nashvilletherapy.co
(615) 268-3344

346 21st Ave N
Nashville, TN 37203