OCD Treatment: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Video Transcript

"In this clip we'll talk about how OCD is treated. There are two commonly and widely used treatments for OCD. They are cognitive behavioral therapy and medication therapy. First, let's talk about cognitive behavioral therapy. The goal of CBT is to teach people with OCD to confront their fears, and reduce the anxiety that often comes along with them, and causes them to repeat their ritualistic, or their routine behaviors. In doing so, the hope is that after you perform CBT, and you work with your therapist, you'll be able to have these thoughts kind of diminish, and the fear and the anxiety that comes along with them actually come down to such a manageable level that you no longer are having the repeated or the ritual behaviors, and you are now able to go along with your everyday normal routine life. CBT is a technique used by a therapist in which the individual who is suffering from OCD is exposed deliberately but voluntarily to the ideas, images, or thoughts that are disturbing them. In hopes that by gradually approaching each of these thoughts and images, they can give you other skills and tools that will allow you to manage your anxiety, so that you don't have to repeat your behavior, and so that you can manage your OCD, and continue with your everyday life. So for example, if you are really, really, really having disturbing and intrusive thoughts about your safety; that you are going to be killed, or something really bad is going to happen; again, these are thoughts that don't have any basis in reality. And you constantly go around the house, and have to check every single lock, every single window, every single door, and you know this can take up hours of your time; what CBT might do for you is a therapist might actually walk you through the image of you know, you're looking at a door, and it's unlocked. What do you have to do? And you lock, and you walk away, and then you know would you have to do it again? What is it that you're afraid of? And by being able to confront the fear or the thought of you know you being hurt or killed, you're then going to be able to learn different skills; different techniques that will allow you to deal with that fear without having to go around the house you know checking every single door, every single window. It doesn't mean that you're not going to lock your doors or windows anymore. It just means that that constant act might be diminished to the point where it's actually livable at that point."