What in the World is OCD?
Katerina “Rafaela” Dikefalos, M.S.
OCD has a lot of bad representations coming from social media and movies. When people think of OCD, they think of someone being very organized or needing to be clean regardless of what they think. While some representations of OCD might include some of these characteristics, a lot of people forget what it is. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a debilitating, yet very treatable mental health disorder that involves two components, obsession, and compulsion. The obsession can be anything. For instance, a person might think of harming someone they love, and that thought scares them, leading them to repeatedly thinking about it. This does not mean that they want to harm the person, they are dealing with intrusive thoughts that everyone deals with from time to time. Most people acknowledge the thought as “AH this is weird thought” and go on with their day. The issue with a person dealing with OCD is that these thoughts scare them and they attach meaning to them. A person with OCD might think “Hey why am I having this thought? Does this make me a bad person?” The second part is compulsion. The compulsion can either be a physical compulsion, i.e. check to see if a door is locked, ask parents for reassurance or it can be a mental compulsion such as rumination, praying, counting, to list a few. There are different types of OCD subtypes, and OCD can attack anything you love or value. Some examples are:
- Harm OCD (harm another person or themselves)
- Scrupulosity OCD (questioning their belief in a higher power, thinking of blasphemous thoughts)
- Sexual orientation OCD (questioning their sexual orientation, doubting their beliefs)
The main thing is that OCD can go after values of an individual which is why the person gets so emotionally sucked into the cycle. It is not the person’s fault. Their brains are wired in a way that keeps a certain thought looped causing the individual distress. Certain people are more likely to have OCD than others. OCD is genetic and can be passed down. This does not mean that you are stuck with this disorder. Even though OCD can be chronic, with proper treatment, there are treatments to help with this. Most common is therapy, but there needs to be specific therapy for the person to decrease OCD symptoms. ERP or exposure response and prevention therapy is effective in decreasing OCD symptoms. It involves de-sensitizing your brain from the obsession which decreases the compulsion. For instance, a person who is afraid of vomiting might avoid certain foods that they think might get them sick. In ERP, it is a gradual process of reintroducing foods, and sitting with discomfort of anxiety, until the brain habituates to the stimulus. Important reminders is that the mental health professional checks in to see that the exposure is done at the appropriate time and not throwing in the individual to a situation in which they are petrified to the extreme. Another type of therapy is ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy which focuses on living life to your values and being able to accept thoughts and using mindfulness to help become more aware of how you respond to your thoughts. In addition, CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, and DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy is also helpful for distress tolerance and learning to be aware of cognitive distortions. Please be aware that OCD does not respond to typical “talk therapy” and thought stopping or replacing a thought, can make the OCD worse leading to a new compulsion. Medication can also be helpful. Common anti-depressants can be beneficial to helping reduce intrusive thoughts and making it easier to manage anxiety.
It is crucial to remember that OCD is called the doubting disorder because people often doubt their own values or beliefs. It can be debilitating for a person to obsess for hours about a topic and be “stuck in the loop”. There is hope! Many suffer from this disorder and are able to get the help that they need.
For additional resources check out the International OCD Foundation: https://iocdf.org/