ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — Obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, is a mental health condition. Obsessions include recurring, distressing thoughts of ideas that cause anxiety and compulsions are physical or mental rituals that relieve the anxiety. But despite the prevalence of jokes, OCD cannot be narrowed down to just repetitive cleaning or organizing, it is a serious disorder with many facets.
About one in 40 adults will develop OCD in their lives — that’s about the population of New York City! But OCD isn’t one-size-fits-all, there are many different subtypes.
“Obsession with death is a very common symptom of OCD. It’s under the harm-related subtype of OCD,” said Sydney Olsen, MA, RMHCI, registered counselor with the state of Florida at Inner Balance Healing, LLC.
It can be intrusive thoughts of yourself or others dying, as well as harming yourself or others, but that doesn’t always mean they are suicidal.
“They’re having this thought without having much control over it in that moment,” Olsen described.
There’s also the hit-and-run subtype.
“Someone has a fear of hitting someone while driving and it follows with that compulsion of wanting to turn back and repeat the route over and over again,” Olsen explained.
Body hyperawareness is a subtype where you are focused on specific bodily functions, which can be due to fear of not being aware.
“When we think about heart rate, we’re focusing on it and causing the heart rate to get even higher and causing that, ourselves to get to that point of panic,” Olsen stated.
No matter the subtype, one of the ways to treat OCD is exposure and response prevention therapy, where the person is exposed to a trigger but can’t respond to it.
“And over time they realize that there’s no correlation between the fear and what they’re actually doing about it,” Olsen told Ivanhoe.
She says this is very successful when combined with cognitive behavioral therapy, where the thoughts are reframed as unrealistic.
“Not only are we desensitizing from the anxiety, but now we’re able to control our thoughts a little bit and challenge it more,” Olsen said.
Other symptoms of OCD are extreme perfectionism, where the person fears that if they don’t get something perfect there will be disastrous consequences; emotional contamination, where the person fears something can infect them or vice versa, like avoiding someone getting a divorce to avoid themselves getting one; and frequent confessing, where the person fears going to hell and confesses every perceived sin they commit.
Contributors to this news report include: Marcy Wilder, Associate Producer; Shay Goldschmidt, Videographer; Chuck Bennethum, Editor.
Sources:
https://therapymantra.co/ocd/about-ocd/ocd-jokes/
https://iocdf.org/about-ocd/who-gets-ocd/
https://ocdla.com/sensorimotor-hyperawareness-ocd
https://www.amenclinics.com/blog/15-often-overlooked-symptoms-of-ocd/
* For More Information, Contact: Sydney Olsen, MA, RMHCI
Registered Counselor with the state of Florida at Inner Balance Healing, LLC
(407) 283-7905
innerbalancehealingfl.llc@gmial.com
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