The International OCD Foundation has a useful checklist of questions to ask of potential therapists for OCD, as well as a database of OCD therapists. This is where I refer people who ask about finding a good therapist for their OCD. There is evidence that Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy works for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and yet very few therapists who are actually trained to do it or who have even heard of it. It's a bizarre thing that OCD symptoms in all their permutations sound incredibly familiar to me, but to therapists who are unfamiliar with OCD, they don't see the patterns, and are baffled, frustrated, or assume there are deeper issues that must be dealt with first and the symptoms will then go away. I have had several excellent therapists who cared deeply about me, and wanted only the best for me, and did indeed help me dramatically with other areas of my life, but who didn't know how to treat OCD or didn't even recognize that I had OCD. There ar...
OCD A to Z O is For Only Obsessions
When you don't appear to have any physical rituals, it seems very logical to assume that you only have obsessions, and no compulsions. This is where the "Pure-O" label originates, in the idea of being purely obsessional. What I have discovered in treatment is that compulsions or rituals that take place in my mind are every bit as real as those that are visible to the rest of the world. Compulsing is the glue that makes an obsessive thought stick(after the initial hit of relief). It reminds of times I have tried to fix something I perceive as a flaw, and ending up making it worse, because the thought of walking away without trying to get rid of it seems too anxiety provoking. There are some thoughts that if I imagine letting them pass, I get very anxious, because I must make sure they aren't true, or I believe they say something about me as a person. If I get involved in the battle against them, I lose every time. Going over conversations in my mind, reconstructing wha...