Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental health disorder that impacts millions of people. It is more common than many people believe, but it is also a bit of a mystery for most. Due to misinformation and people carelessly saying that someone "is OCD," it's no surprise that many view this as a mysterious condition. OCD is when someone has obsessive...[ read more ]

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental health disorder that most people have at least heard of. It is often mentioned casually in phrases like, "Oh, they are so OCD!" However, OCD is a mental health disorder that many do not fully understand. Because of these misconceptions, there is a lot of misinformation about what OCD actually is. OCD is characterized...[ read more ]

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD are both conditions of overcontrol that seem to have some overlap in the display of rigid behaviors and perfectionistic tendencies. However, despite these outwardly seeming commonalities, these conditions fall within different diagnostic categories, are maintained by different factors, and are experienced quite differently by people with these conditions. OCD is the...[ read more ]

What Is It? Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is an evidence-based treatment that is known as the gold-standard treatment for anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). ERP is a treatment that targets anxiety through the process of engaging in gradual and repeated exposure to anxiety triggers while concurrently reducing reliance on safety behaviors, methods of avoidance, and compulsions (Response Prevention)....[ read more ]

The OCD Cycle We live in a society that collectively has difficulty tolerating anxiety and accepting ambiguity. Anxiety is an emotion that is associated with a lot of negative connotations and generally leads us to quickly seek out solutions to escape the discomfort. For some people, anxiety becomes connected to everyday, seemingly neutral things such as other people, social situations,...[ read more ]

What is Real-Event OCD? Real-Event OCD is characterized by the presence of obsessions pertaining to concerns that stem from an event that has occurred in the past. The event may have occurred in the recent past (i.e. the past couple of months), or the remote past (i.e. years or even decades ago). Most often, individuals are concerned that they may...[ read more ]

What is Just-Right OCD? Just-Right OCD is characterized by the presence of recurrent obsessions pertaining to things feeling “not right” and/or incomplete in some way. These obsessions are more likely to provoke feelings of tension and/or discomfort about things not “feeling” right, as opposed to anxiety about feared outcomes (as seen in other OCD subtypes). The compulsions associated with this...[ read more ]

The OCD Cycle   We live in a society that collectively has difficulty tolerating anxiety and accepting ambiguity. Anxiety is an emotion that is associated with a lot of negative connotations and generally leads us to quickly seek out solutions to escape the discomfort. For some people, anxiety becomes connected to everyday, seemingly neutral things such as other people, social...[ read more ]

You likely have previously heard about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, in some context. With roughly a 2% prevalence rate in the general population, millions of people experience clinical-level symptoms of OCD each day. Despite this wide prevalence, the true characteristics of OCD are not as widely understood amongst the general population as other mental health disorders, such as depression or...[ read more ]

The OCD Cycle We live in a society where we do not like to be uncomfortable and where we have difficulty tolerating distress. Anxiety is an emotion that has a lot of negative connotations and leads us to quickly try to find solutions by going into problem-solving mode. For some people, the danger signal gets attached to everyday neutral things...[ read more ]