OCD Therapy
What is OCD?
OCD, or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, is when a person has thoughts that barge into your day, scare the daylights out of you, and then feel like they get stuck on repeat. These are called intrusive thoughts.
These thoughts start dropping in uninvited regularly, with increasing intensity, and then begin giving you other terrible possibilities on the same theme. They might even begin jumping to other themes that are just as stressful to have in your head. That intrusive thought, in the hands of OCD, just became an obsession.
These thoughts can feel so scary and intense that you’ll do just about anything you can think of to make them stop. Sometimes you might even rationally know that that action isn’t related to stopping the obsession, but we are so exhausted and anxious from the thoughts that it doesn’t even matter, you’ll do them anyway because that is the only way you get a tiny moment that resembles relief. This is called the obsession.
The trouble is, that relief is usually short-lived with OCD. In fact, the more we go through this, the shorter and shorter the relief becomes. That means it’s typical that this obsession and compulsions loops begins taking larger and larger chunks of time to get through, leaving you less energy and brain space to attempt to find an alternative or a way out of the cycle. This is called “It’s time to call a professional that knows what they’re doing”, and I’d love to see if I could be that professional mental health provider for you.
The good news is that OCD is highly treatable, regardless of how intense or specifically jarring your obsessions are or how long your compulsions are taking. I love to help women overcome their cycle of obsessions and compulsions in order to begin living a life that is filled with meaning and is aligned with who they want to be again.
How is OCD Treated?
There are three primary treatment modalities that therapists use to treat OCD. These include Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT). Here is a breakdown of those three approaches:
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP): In ERP therapy you gradually confront your fear by doing exposures and prevent yourself from doing your usual responses (compulsions). This teaches your brain that your anxiety will lessen on its own and without your compulsion. A therapist is crucial to guide this process by outlining the pacing of gradual exposures, giving accountability and help you follow-through, and guiding you through integrating your new learnings.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): ACT for OCD focuses on changing your distress response when you have intrusive thoughts and obsessions that come into your mind to a more neutral one. This helps to negate the need to even do a compulsion, and allows you to choose action that aligns with the life you want to live. This is obviously harder than it sounds, which makes doing this with a therapist particularly helpful.
Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT): I-CBT for OCD focuses on reworking the thought process that creates obsessions in the first place, instead of fighting obsessions or resisting compulsions. This overhauls the entire process, which then makes neither obsessions nor compulsions compelling any longer. Going through this with a therapist is helpful because of all the mental pieces that need to be reworked in order for this to stick.
Luckily, you don’t have to make that decision before you start therapy with me. I am trained in all three of these approaches, and I usually prefer to talk through the decision-process with my clients so they can get all the information they need to make the decision that is right for them. Most of the time what ends up working best for my clients is a combination of two or all three of the approaches, and I feel very comfortable in navigating that for my clients. My goal and dream for you in OCD therapy with me is to get out of this spiral pattern, and back to life that feels manageable and meaningful Most of the time a one-size-fits-all approach just isn’t going to make that happen.
With the right support, OCD does not have to remain the loudest voice in your life. Treatment isn’t about eliminating the OCD thoughts or becoming perfectly calm—it’s about learning how to respond differently, reclaiming your time and energy, and rebuilding trust in yourself. Change is possible, even if it doesn’t feel that way right now—and you don’t have to keep trying to figure it out alone.
