Often clients will reach out to us here at Good Therapy SF because they think they’re experiencing symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder, otherwise known as OCD.
Really, when people are talking about OCD, sometimes they’re just talking about some anxiety they feel when things are disordered in their home in some way, or sometimes they’re having intrusive and really uncomfortable thoughts or images in their mind, and they have some repetitive behaviors as well to go along with it. So it’s really important to reach out to a professional to help you assess if it’s actually obsessive compulsive disorder. And if it is, just be aware that this is not a lifelong illness. This is something that can definitely be improved. And in some cases completely extinguished is the term for some people.
So it certainly isn’t a forever type of experience where there’s no hope. There is absolutely hope when it comes to treating obsessive compulsive disorder.
In general, there’s a particular type of therapy called exposure and response prevention that is within the cognitive behavioral therapy umbrella or framework that is really effective when it comes to working with OCD symptoms. Even if you don’t meet full criteria for OCD, a lot of people will benefit from this exposure and response prevention approach. So that’s something to make sure if you’re reaching out for a provider who seems to know how to work with OCD make sure they’re well versed in CBT and exposure response prevention approaches.
Additionally, for some cases, usually the more moderate to severe cases of OCD medication might be part of the picture as well, and that’s certainly reasonable. Often this is a good question for a prescribing provider, but often the medication is going to be a type of SSRI or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, often referred to as antidepressants. Please don’t let the name antidepressant fool you. They are often prescribed for both mood And anxiety disorder conditions at times. So sometimes CBT is part of the picture for OCD. Sometimes medication is part of the treatment for OCD.
