If you, or someone you know is thinking about suicide or hurting yourself/themselves
Please Call 911 for Emergencies
(800) 273-8255- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and answered locally.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
What is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)?
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is a common, chronic and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (obsessions) and behaviors (compulsions) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over.
What are the symptoms?
Obsessions
v repeated thoughts, urges, or mental images that cause anxiety.
o Examples: fear of germs/contamination, aggressive thoughts, needing symmetry and/or order of items or things.
Compulsions
v repetitive behaviors that a person feels the urge to do in response to an obsessive thought.
o Examples: excessive cleaning, counting of items, arranging of things, checking on tasks repeatedly
How do I get diagnosed?
First, talk to your athletic trainer, doctor, or health care professional about your symptoms
Steps to help diagnose OCD may include:
v Physical exam. This may be done to help rule out other problems that could be causing your symptoms and to check for any related complications.
v Lab tests. These may include, for example, a complete blood count (CBC), a check of your thyroid function, and screening for alcohol and drugs.
v Psychological evaluation. This includes discussing your thoughts, feelings, symptoms and behavior patterns. With your permission, this may include talking to your family or friends.
v Diagnostic criteria for OCD. Your doctor may use criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), published by the American Psychiatric Association
How do I get treated?
v Cognitive Therapy: When applied to treating OCD, cognitive therapy helps you understand that the brain is sending error messages. Your therapist will help you learn to recognize these messages and respond to them in new ways to help you control your obsessions and compulsions. Cognitive therapy focuses on the meanings we attach to certain experiences that we misinterpret. For example, if a friend passes you without acknowledgment, you might interpret her action incorrectly and think “Mary doesn’t like me because she did not say hello.” And you might believe your thought is very important or meaningful. Cognitive therapy helps you stand back from these thoughts, look at the evidence closely, and tell yourself something more realistic or accurate; in this case it might be, “Something is on Mary’s mind, but I don’t know what it is.”
v Habit Reversal Training: This intervention includes awareness training, introduction of a competing response, social support, positive reinforcement, and often relaxation techniques. Awareness training may be practicing the habit or tic in front of a mirror, focusing on the sensations of the body and specific muscles before and while engaging in the behavior, and identifying and recording when the habit or tic occurs. These techniques increase awareness of how and when the urges develop, making it more likely that an individual will be able to intervene and make a change.
v Imaginal Exposure: For those who may be resistant to jumping right into real world situations, imaginal exposure (IE), sometimes referred to as visualization, can be a helpful way to alleviate enough anxiety to move willingly to ERP. With visualization, the therapist helps create a scenario that elicits the anxiety someone might experience in a routine situation. For someone who fears walking down a hallway in a way that diverts from their “perfect” pattern, the therapist may have them picture themselves walking in that divergent manner for several minutes every day and record their level of anxiety. As they habituate to the discomfort, with decreased anxiety over time, they are gradually desensitized to the feared situation, making them more willing to move the process to real life, and engage in the next step, ERP.
v Exposure Therapy: The psychotherapy of choice for the treatment of OCD is exposure and response prevention (ERP), which is a form of CBT. In ERP therapy, people who have OCD are placed in situations where they are gradually exposed to their obsessions and asked not to perform the compulsions that usually ease their anxiety and distress. This is done at your pace; your therapist should never force you to do anything that you do not want to do.
Living with OCD.
https://adaa.org/living-with-anxiety/personal-stories/living-ocd-one-womans-story
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/index.shtml
