OCD Therapy

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a disorder marked by the presence of obsessions and compulsions, creating a significant amount of distress for an individual experiencing it. Many people with OCD experience intense, distressing intrusive thoughts, considered to be thoughts and images that are unexpected and distressing. These thoughts and images can be of sexual or violent nature and cause a great deal of stress in individuals with OCD, who may adapt through compulsive behavior that relieves them of the thought, causing temporary feelings of safety. 

The truth is while everyone has intrusive thoughts at times, an individual with OCD may take these thoughts, such as the thought of being violent towards someone, and believe that it says something true about themselves, leading them to, for example, putting their knives deep in a cabinet so they don’t accidentally hurt someone or themselves. It also may lead an individual with OCD to believe they have hurt someone, creating the need for the individual to “check” that they didn’t do such a thing. This checking can happen over and over, and the intrusive thoughts can get more and more intense, leading to more intense compensatory behaviors. 

There are many subtypes of OCD, usually specified by the types of obsessions and compulsions that occur most within the individual. These are just some of the most common subtypes of OCD, and ones that may show up in the work we do at Valid Love:

• Harm OCD: This subtype entails that the individual has OCD around potentially causing harm to oneself or others. This may take form in the individual hiding sharp objects like knives in fear of accidentally stabbing someone, or holding knives around others to check that they don’t actually want to cause harm.

• Sexual Orientation/ Gender Identity (SOGI) OCD: This subtype creates doubt in an individual’s mind about their sexual orientation or gender identity. Individuals who struggle with this subtype may doubt their identity despite no evidence that they are not who they are inside. While many cisgender and heterosexual individuals may struggle with this, it is also very common with LGBTQ+ individuals as well. 

• Sexual OCD: Due to sex and sexual topics being taboo, it is often very difficult for individuals struggling with sexual obsessions and compulsions to talk about. Sexual OCD may show up in an individual experiencing distressing sexual thoughts and checking to see whether or not they are aroused. 

• Relationship OCD: Obsessions in relationship OCD may show up as doubt that one really loves their partner or feeling distress over not knowing whether the person(s) they are with are “the one.” This may show up in an individual testing their attraction to people outside of the relationship or “testing” their partner to see if they will stay.

• Contamination OCD: This subtype is one of the most common seen in media involving OCD, and it involves distressing thoughts over “contamination” by germs. This may show up through someone excessively cleaning their home, washing their hands, or feeling intense fear over the thought of touching something that may be dirty.

• Checking OCD: This subtype is when an individual feels the need to check things over and over to prevent potential disaster, such as repeatedly checking the stove in case it was left on and could cause a house fire, or something like locking one’s car door over and over again in fear that someone could break in.

• Religious/ Scrupulosity OCD: This subtype involves obsessions over religion or morality. Individuals with this subtype may have intense fear over doing something bad, immoral, or out of line with the teachings of their religion. This can be difficult to deal with due to the importance and weight of religion in many people’s lives.

• Existential OCD: This subtype includes obsessions over existential questions such as “what happens when we die?,” creating immense distress for the individual in the unknown. 

• Perfectionism OCD: Sometimes called “just right” OCD, this subtype is classified by an individual’s immense need for order and perfection, and may cause distress when things are out of line or not “perfect.” This can cause feelings of dread that prevent an individual from living their life or, for instance, starting a project in the first place out of fear. 

• “Pure O” OCD: Pure O is contested amongst professionals, but has been described in OCD communities as the presence of obsessional thoughts either without physical compulsions or with purely mental compulsions. Having internal compulsions can make it difficult for both individuals struggling with OCD and clinicians to pinpoint the cause of distress, and can be greatly negatively impactful on the individual experiencing them.

OCD can be hard to catch – often, it can feel like an anxiety disorder such as GAD or panic disorder in the person experiencing it, and without the trained eye of a clinician who knows what to look for, OCD can go untreated for a long time. The thoughts that many people with OCD have can be distressing because they don’t align with one’s own values. This mismatch between thoughts and behaviors, and our values and how we wish to move throughout the world, can cause a lot of internal stress, as well as other issues like perfectionism, hoarding, and self-harm behaviors, just to name a few. While many people experience obsessive thoughts occasionally, the intensity – and the sense that it makes to have these obsessive thoughts – vary in someone with OCD.