INNER SPACE Clinical Psychology

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can impact people of all ages and circumstances. People with OCD experience intrusive and distressing thoughts, urges, or images. This often drives them to do things to try to prevent negative consequences or relieve the distress. People with OCD generally find these experiences extremely uncomfortable and/or disruptive, which is one of the things that differentiates OCD from, for example, helpful routines or pride in being detail oriented. The obsessions can take many forms, from preoccupation about contamination, perfection, violence, and sexuality, to gender identity, offending God, perfectionism, responsibility or one's relationship and partner. The compulsions may or may not be logically linked to the obsessions. For example, someone obsessed with ordering things may have an underlying fear that if they don't keep everything perfectly ordered they will be seen as flawed (which may not be true but is a logical association) or it may be that a loved one may come to harm (which is called "magical thinking" because the cause is not logically linked to the feared outcome). OCD usually targets something you value deeply, like your morality, health or safety or the safety of others. Psychological treatment for OCD typically involves a type of CBT called Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). This is an area of specialisation for Inner Space Clinical Psychology. You may like to check out our blog or the International Foundation for OCD for further information. https://iocdf.org/ and get in touch to start treatment.