How to Use Psychotherapy to Treat OCD

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) affects millions of people worldwide. An anxiety disorder, OCD causes a person to obsess on certain thoughts and/or perform compulsive rituals. Someone suffering from OCD often feels as if they have no control over these things. Fortunately, it is possible to use psychotherapy to treat OCD in many cases.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Use Psychotherapy to Treat OCD

1. Find a psychologist who specializes in cognitive psychotherapy. To maximize effectiveness, cognitive therapy must be done under the supervision and guidance of a trained professional.

2. Practice ignoring your compulsions. For example, if you feel the need to turn the bathroom lights on and off ten times before leaving the room, try leaving the room without doing this. Your therapist will help you do this more often through positive reinforcement and other methods.

3. Expose yourself to your fears. Some OCD compulsions involve not touching things that you see as "contaminated." This could be anything that someone else has touched or something that looks dirty. Your therapist may ask you to go ahead and touch these things in spite of your compulsions.

4. Expect to experience some discomfort at first. Ignoring your compulsions will cause you anxiety and distress at first. As you continue to practice, however, this feeling should pass.

5. Know that many people respond quickly to psychotherapy. This is due to the continual practice of ignoring the compulsions. The more often you practice something, the faster it will become easier for you.

6. Know that as you gradually learn to ignore your compulsions, your obsessions will likely cause you less distress. Part of performing the compulsive activities as a part of OCD is to alleviate anxiety from the obsessions. When you no longer feel the need to perform the compulsions, your obsessions will probably not enter your mind as often.

Tips & Warnings

• It has been found through numerous scientific studies that a combination of psychotherapy and medication is the most effective way to treat OCD.
• Psychotherapy is also known as cognitive therapy and behavior therapy.
• You need to be completely committed to getting better for psychotherapy to work. Overcoming OCD can be extremely difficult. Psychotherapy can be an effective treatment to use for OCD, but only if you work at it.
• While psychotherapy can be a highly effective treatment for many people suffering from OCD, it does not work for everyone. A small percentage of people with OCD do not respond to any of the conventional treatments, including psychotherapy and medication. For these people, brain surgery may be their only option for treatment.
• None of these steps should be completed without first consulting a licensed medical profession such as a psychiatrist or psychologist.

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on 6/10/2009 Thanks for the great information. I work with children with OCD, so it's a good review for me.