OCD Therapy
In-person in Corvallis | Online therapy in Oregon
Has OCD Made It Hard To Trust Your Own Mind Or Feel Less Anxious?
Do you analyze conversations long after they end, searching for something you might have said or done wrong?
Does one unsettling thought quickly turn into ten more questions, leaving you desperate to feel completely certain?
Perhaps your mind keeps presenting you with unwanted possibilities, doubts, or images that seem impossible to dismiss.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) does not always look like visible rituals, excessive cleaning, or arranging things perfectly. Sometimes, the struggle happens almost entirely inside your head. You may mentally review events, become worried by tension or unease in your body, question your intentions, or repeatedly get ‘hooked’ by your thoughts and feelings, all the while wondering why you cannot simply let the thought go.
When Your Mind Keeps Asking For Certainty
OCD can create an overwhelming sense of responsibility for preventing something bad from happening. You might become preoccupied with contamination, safety, relationships, health, morality, or the possibility of accidentally harming someone. Intrusive sexual thoughts or images may feel especially disturbing because they conflict with your values, leaving you frightened about what they could mean about you.
You may also find yourself repeatedly questioning a relationship: Do I really love this person? Is this relationship right? What if I’m making a mistake? Seeking reassurance, avoiding triggers, replaying memories, or performing mental rituals may provide a brief sense of relief, but before long, another doubt arrives demanding your attention.
Living inside this cycle can be exhausting, contributing to anxiety, guilt, shame, poor sleep, avoidance, and hopelessness. Fortunately, OCD does not have to keep setting the agenda for your life. With effective OCD therapy, you can better understand these patterns, respond differently to uncertainty, and begin to move increasingly towards self-support and meaningful activities that create a more fulfilling life.
Have a question or want to schedule a consultation? Reach out!
Understanding How OCD Takes Hold
If you have OCD, you are far from alone. Approximately 1 in 40 adults in the United States will experience Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder during their lifetime. OCD can develop through a combination of factors.
Some people may have a biological vulnerability that makes their brain especially sensitive to uncertainty, doubt, or potential danger. Stressful or traumatic experiences may also contribute, especially when past circumstances have made unpredictability feel threatening and being in control feel necessary.
Once OCD takes hold, it can sustain itself through intrusive thoughts, visualizations, sensations, or doubts that create distress, which lead to a compulsion intended to make that discomfort disappear. This is why overcoming OCD through willpower alone is so difficult. Therapy, however, can help a person respond differently to intrusive thoughts and uncertainty, gradually reduce one’s reliance on compulsions, and build greater freedom to live without OCD continually calling the shots.
With Objective Support, You Can See OCD As Separate From Your Identity
Your thoughts do not have to lead to your actions and do not define your character. Many have learned to work mindfully through uncertainty, and you can too.
One can learn how to respond to obsessive thoughts more flexibly, and over time, begin to notice their obsessions more compassionately. It is possible to learn how to be present with uncertainty in ways that ultimately lower the felt intensity.
By practicing responding differently to the obsessions and interrupting their rigid and compulsive behavioral responses, a person can begin to lower the hijacking power of the obsessions and reduce the illusory sense that they must engage in the compulsions.
You may have told yourself to "be strong," “not be dramatic,” or "just get over it," but that kind of self-talk may be stopping you from getting effective support. Even if you are often seeing your obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms as useful or protective, you may have another sense (from a calmer and more creative aspect of your psyche) to interrupt... the OCD cycle and engage in therapy treatment in order to create more flexibility in your experience and behaviors.
OCD Therapy Can Provide A Stable Path Forward
When we begin sessions, we’ll develop a clear understanding of your circumstances and fears. During therapy, we’ll engage in symptom-mapping of your obsessive and intrusive thoughts, images, and urges, as well as any compulsive rituals, avoidant behaviors, or mental acts you engage in.
As your therapist, I will assist you in exploring the core values that you are attempting to express through your OCD experiences. We’ll consider how your compulsions are part of your brain’s attempt to protect those values, and I’ll help you more accurately assess how effective your compulsive behaviors have truly been.
Therapy can help you understand how your obsessions serve as overly sensitive alarms in your brain, almost like a hypersensitive glitch. You’ll have a chance to reclaim your quality of life by identifying and engaging in behaviors that reflect more balanced and sustainable expressions of yourself and open up more space and energy for joy in your life.
Evidence-based OCD Treatment Modalities
As we work through your fears, organize them into a hierarchy, and work through evidence-based treatment methods for OCD, you’ll be able to face your most debilitating compulsive mental approaches and behaviors that have come to diminish your quality of life. Over time, you’ll find that your fears aren’t so controlling of your actions or as effective in holding you back from meaningful activities.
I’ll help you develop mindfulness skills, which are foundational to the OCD therapy process here at Present Quest Counseling. You’ll have the chance to practice being present through mindful breathwork, somatic awareness, mindfulness of thoughts, and mindfulness of feelings, which are all useful skills in OCD treatment. Mindfulness practice can help a person connect to, and more frequently observe and operate from the Wise Self within, which expands calmness, clarity, curiosity, self compassion and flexibility.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can be used to identify and reduce faulty reasoning and assumptions that otherwise intensify obsessions and powerfully reinforce compulsions. Under the larger umbrella of CBT are more specific forms of treatment such as ACT and ERP.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a mindfulness-based psychotherapy that can support how to more flexibly view and respond to intrusive thoughts and feelings, rather than struggling with them by trying to control, avoid, or eliminate them.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is a version of CBT and the cornerstone of OCD therapy. It involves compassionately confronting one’s fears without engaging in compulsions.
Practicing deliberately experiencing unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and uncomfortable body sensations in a safe and therapeutic environment helps to build distress tolerance. You’ll find that over time you more readily allow for uncertainty without the compulsive behaviors.
You are not alone in your struggle with OCD. Many people like you have been treated successfully and have gone on to realize that they are much more powerful and flexible than their OCD experiences.
You May Still Have Questions Or Concerns About OCD Therapy…
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To have a successful therapeutic relationship, your OCD therapist should understand your experiences in a nonjudgmental, curious, and empathetic way.
I will ask you if it seems like I am getting “it” or not getting “it,” and your honesty is important during our first few sessions. I will let you know if I think that I’m missing something, but overall, as a counselor, I assure you that I'm committed to nonjudgmentally making space to support my clients and their larger goals.
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Therapy should offer a place where you feel heard, respected, and comfortable sharing your experiences without fear of judgment. If others have dismissed your concerns, downplayed what you went through, or made you question your own experience, it is understandable to feel hesitant about opening up again. Our work would begin by listening closely, considering the full context of your experience, and helping you understand and process what happened at a pace that feels supportive and useful.
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Exposure and response prevention therapy and other methods do invite an increase in uncomfortable OCD related symptoms, such as anxiety, in the short term. While one could say this is making things feel worse in the moment, fortunately, accepting that difficulty ultimately allows a person the best chance to move beyond the life-altering ruts of OCD.
As your counselor, I can help you approach OCD patterns and triggers gradually, while staying grounded in the present so the process does not feel overwhelming. This might include practicing grounding or breathing techniques while gradually and compassionately facing feared thoughts, sensations, or situations.
Reach Out To Discuss How OCD Therapy Can Help You Find Relief
Present Quest Counseling helps people understand and manage obsessive-compulsive disorder experiences so that they can move forward with confidence and live a more full life. Please use our contact page to request a free, 20-minute consultation.
