INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) \u2014 Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental health condition. Obsessions include recurring, distressing thoughts of ideas that cause anxiety, and compulsions are physical or mental rituals that relieve the anxiety. But despite the prevalence of jokes, OCD cannot be narrowed down to just repetitive cleaning or organizing, it is a serious disorder with many facets.<\/p>\n
About one in 40 adults will develop OCD in their lives. That\u2019s about the population of New York City. However, OCD isn\u2019t one-size-fits-all, there are many different subtypes.<\/p>\n
\u201cObsession with death is a very common symptom of OCD. It\u2019s under the harm-related subtype of OCD,\u201d said Sydney Olsen, MA, RMHCI, registered counselor with the state of Florida at Inner Balance Healing, LLC.<\/p>\n
It can be intrusive thoughts of yourself or others dying, as well as harming yourself or others, but that doesn\u2019t always mean they are suicidal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re having this thought without having much control over it in that moment,\u201d Olsen said.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also the hit-and-run subtype.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone has a fear of hitting someone while driving and it follows with that compulsion of wanting to turn back and repeat the route over and over again,\u201d Olsen said.<\/p>\n
Body hyperawareness is a subtype where you are focused on specific bodily functions, which can be due to fear of not being aware.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we think about heart rate, we\u2019re focusing on it and causing the heart rate to get even higher and causing that, ourselves to get to that point of panic,\u201d Olsen said.<\/p>\n
No matter the subtype, one of the ways to treat OCD is exposure and response prevention therapy, where the person is exposed to a trigger but can\u2019t respond to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd over time they realize that there\u2019s no correlation between the fear and what they\u2019re actually doing about it,\u201d Olsen said.<\/p>\n
She says this is very successful when combined with cognitive behavioral therapy, where the thoughts are reframed as unrealistic.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only are we desensitizing from the anxiety, but now we\u2019re able to control our thoughts a little bit and challenge it more,\u201d Olsen said.<\/p>\n
Other symptoms of OCD are extreme perfectionism, where the person fears that if they don\u2019t get something perfect there will be disastrous consequences; emotional contamination, where the person fears something can infect them or vice versa, like avoiding someone getting a divorce to avoid themselves getting one, and frequent confessing, where the person fears going to hell and confesses every perceived sin they commit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) \u2014 Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental health condition. Obsessions include recurring, distressing thoughts of ideas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,137,514,515],"class_list":{"0":"post-400397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}