What is OCD?
OCD is not about being organized or particular.
OCD is a serious mental health condition involving intrusive and distressing obsessions and related compulsions that can feel impossible to resist. This disorder causes significant anxiety, distress, and disruption to everyday life.
Obsessions are unwanted, intrusive, and persistent thoughts, images, sensations, or doubts that can bring intense feelings of anxiety, guilt, shame, disgust, or fear.
OCD can attach itself to anything — your relationships, health, morality, religion, safety, identity, past, or future.
Compulsions are behaviors or mental acts you feel driven to perform in an attempt to reduce distress, gain certainty, or prevent a feared outcome from happening.
Compulsions can be physical—such as checking, washing, avoiding, or asking for reassurance—or they can happen entirely in your mind, such as reviewing memories, analyzing thoughts, replacing a “bad” thought with a “good” thought, or trying to “figure something out” until you feel certain.
The OCD Cycle
At the heart of OCD is a always a cycle:
Doubt → Anxiety → Compulsion → Temporary Relief → More Doubt
The brain learns that compulsions are necessary to feel safe, certain, or okay. This reinforces the cycle and makes the doubts feel increasingly real and the compulsions increasingly important.
The great news? This cycle can be unlearned.
Schedule a Consultation to learn more.
OCD is seriously misunderstood.
Common OCD Themes
The content of your OCD attaches itself to the things you care about most.
Some of the most common themes include:
Harm — Fears about accidentally or intentionally harming yourself or someone else, or losing control and causing harm.
Relationships — Persistent doubts about your feelings for a partner, the “rightness” of a relationship, compatibility, or whether you have made the right choice.
Sexual Content — Intrusive sexual thoughts, images, or doubts that feel unwanted, disturbing, or inconsistent with your values.
Pedophilia — Intrusive fears or doubts about being sexually attracted to children, becoming a danger to children, or what unwanted thoughts might mean about you.
Contamination — Fears about germs, illness, chemicals, bodily fluids, or other forms of contamination, often accompanied by washing, cleaning, or avoidance.
Just-Right — Intense feelings that something is not quite right, complete, symmetrical, or “just so,” leading to urges to adjust, repeat, or arrange things until they feel “just right.”
Moral Scrupulosity — Excessive fears about being immoral, sinful, unethical, or a bad person, often involving repeated self-evaluation, confession, reassurance, or mental review.
Sexual Orientation — Persistent doubts or fears about your sexual orientation, often accompanied by checking, analyzing, comparing, or seeking reassurance.
Existential Concerns — Persistent doubts and questions about existence, reality, consciousness, or the meaning of life.
Suicide — Intrusive fears about becoming severely mentally ill, fear of harming yourself despite having no desire to die.
Compulsions look different for everyone.
Sometimes compulsions look like checking, washing, or asking for reassurance.
But not all compulsions are visible.
Mental compulsions can feel like thinking about something over and over. Analyzing every detail. Researching for hours. Reviewing what happened. Trying to find the “right” answer.
It may feel like problem-solving—but really, you’re caught in the cycle.
Some of the most common compulsions include:
Asking others for reassurance
Searching online for answers
Replaying conversations or memories
Analyzing your own thoughts or feelings
Mentally reviewing whether you did something wrong
Avoiding situations that trigger unwanted thoughts
Repeating words, prayers, or phrases mentally
Trying to replace unwanted thoughts with "better" thoughts
Checking how you feel about your partner or relationship
Monitoring physical sensations
Trying to determine whether a thought means something about you
Repeatedly questioning whether you are making the right decision
Checking something repeatedly
Washing or cleaning excessively
Schedule a Consultation to learn how to get out of the cycle.
