How To Recognize A Person With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)?

What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is defined by obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors that interfere with a person's normal routines, daily functioning, or relationships with others. They are distressing to the one who suffers from OCD and they are time-consuming.

Obsessions are persistent thoughts, ideas, impulses, or images that cause anxiety and worry. The person feels that the thoughts are not within his or her control and that the thoughts are not normal. The person suffering from obsessions knows that these thoughts come from within and are not imposed from an outside source.

Compulsions are repetitive behaviors performed in response to obsessive thoughts in order to relieve anxiety or worry. The discomfort of an obsessive thought compels the sufferer to want to contain or neutralize the discomfort by engaging in some ritualistic behavior. These compulsions can be mental acts, such as counting, praying, repeating words silently, or repetitive behaviors such as checking, hand washing, or putting objects in order. People with OCD do not experience pleasure from performing these behaviors they engage in them in order to avoid some dreaded consequence, such as harm that might come to others or to themselves, if they do not perform the rituals.

To qualify as obsessive-compulsive disorder, the person recognizes that the obsessions or compulsions are excessive or unreasonable. They cause marked distress, are time-consuming (taking up at least one hour per day), and significantly interfere with the person's normal routine, work or school functioning, or usual social activities or relationships.

OCD is not the same as substance abuse, compulsive gambling, an eating disorder, or superstitious behavior. It is important to realize that OCD is not the same as Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, which is a tendency that some people have to be perfectionists. These people like having order and some rigidity in their lives. People with OCD, on the other hand, are disturbed by their ritualistic patterns.

The onset of OCD is usually gradual, although in some cases, people have reported a sudden onset. When a person has a biological predisposition to OCD, it can be triggered off by stress at home, with a relationship, with friends, or on the job. It is often associated with major life transitions, such as pregnancy, leaving home for the first time, increased levels of responsibility, or health problems.

OCD is linked to anxiety. Not only do the obsessions and compulsions cause the person great anxiety, but they may actually be the way a person alleviates anxiety. When victims of this disorder experience anxiety, they find structure and a degree of comfort in repeating the same thoughts or behaviors over and over again. But engaging in these thoughts and behaviors seems itself to cause further anxiety. This becomes an endless cycle in which the person truly feels trapped.

Some OCD Statistics

About 20% of the people with this disorder have only obsessions or compulsions (but not both), and the remaining 80% experience both obsessions and compulsions. Most people who have obsessive-compulsive disorder will show symptoms prior to the age of 25; only 15% of all OCD sufferers will first show signs after the age of 35. About 15 to 20% have a family member who also suffers from this disorder.

Approximately 70% of those with OCD will suffer from a major depression at some point in their lives. There is a slightly higher incidence of OCD in women if it first appears during adolescence. However, if it first shows itself in childhood, boys with OCD outnumber girls by about two to one. What these statistics show is that if you suffer from OCD, you are not alone. People with OCD keep it a secret, so we don't usually realize how many of the people have it.

How To Recognize A Person With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)?

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What Causes OCD?

Despite the myths that early childhood experiences (like the way one is toilet trained) might lead to OCD, there is no real evidence to support this notion (although one may end up with a particularly rigid personality because of early childhood training). There does seem to be a genetic component to this disorder, however. It runs in families. There is evidence that it may be related to brain chemistry, especially with neurotransmitters such as serotonin.

Furthermore, about one-fourth of all those with this disorder seem to have it triggered by a stressful life experience. While the exact cause is not known, it appears that OCD results from a combination of inherited predispositions combined with environmental factors. These environmental factors may include trauma, childhood neglect, family stress, illness, divorce, accidents, as well as major life transitions such as adolescence, leaving home, marriage, parenthood, and retirement.

Some Common OCD Obsessions

People who suffer from this disorder realize that their obsessions do not make sense, but they are not able to put them out of their minds. Here are some common themes in the thoughts of people with OCD:

• Fear of getting a disease
• Fear of being contaminated or infected by things in the environment
• Fear that a disaster will occur
• Fear of committing a crime or harming oneself or others
• Recurring sexual thoughts and images
• Fear of losing things that will be needed later, resulting in hoarding and collecting things
• Concern over order, structure, exactness
• Excessive worry over religious issues, morality, and issues of right and wrong

Some Common OCD Compulsions or Rituals

In order to reduce anxiety caused by obsessions, people with OCD feel that they have to do something, so they engage in ritualistic behaviors. The fears soon return, however, and they have to start the rituals all over again. Here are some common ones:

• Grooming behaviors, like washing hands repeatedly
• Changing clothes again and again
• Counting to oneself over and over
• Arranging things in a certain ritualistic way
• Checking light switches, stove burners, locks, or electrical outlets constantly
• Hoarding things like magazines or mail

Some Common OCD Patterns

Counting and Repeating: Some people with OCD feel that they have to count things, like passing automobiles or the number of seconds it takes to brush one’s teeth. They may feel that they have to repeat a word a certain number of times in order to protect themselves or someone else from harm, or they may feel that they have to change clothes repeatedly before leaving the house.

Protecting Against Contamination: The most common form of compulsion is repeated cleaning and washing. Some OCD sufferers may wash their hands thirty, forty, or more times a day, or they may take a shower several times throughout the course of a day. If someone has come into the house, they may later scrub the house thoroughly to avoid possible exposure to germs or other contaminants.

Checking: A common OCD compulsion involves checking things over and over again to make sure that everything is in order. A person may check the locks on the doors repeatedly or go through all the light switches in the house to make sure that they are turned off. They know logically that everything is alright, but they have a secret feeling that things should be checked again and again. They may go over a report on the job or at school so often that they cannot get things in on time.

Hoarding: Some people cannot throw out anything. In order not to lose anything of importance, they will save old mail, newspapers, magazines, old clothes, dead plants, or used containers until it becomes impossible to maneuver through the house.

Strange Movements: Sometimes rituals can be seen in the form of odd movements, like making every fourth step a skip while walking or rotating one’s neck a certain number of times before entering a room.

Being Scrupulous: Some people with OCD will do anything to avoid certain thoughts or actions. For example, their obsessions may lead them to avoid certain words in their speech, certain places, some items of clothing, or consuming certain foods or drinks.

What Causes OCD?

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Is There Help For Ocd?

Although there is no absolute cure for OCD at this point, there is substantial help available for those who suffer from this disorder. Life for the OCD sufferer can become normalized so that the symptoms don’t interfere with everyday living. With effective treatment, people with this disorder can live full, productive, and normal lives.

Psychotherapy, including cognitive-behavioral therapy, is an important part of recovery from OCD. This form of therapy provides the tools and skills necessary for managing obsessional and compulsive behavior. One helpful therapeutic tool used with OCD is exposure and response prevention.

This technique reduces the anxiety associated with obsessive thoughts through a process called habituation. When a person is exposed to anxiety repeatedly, the nervous system gradually adjusts to the anxiety (just as our hands adjust to being dipped in cold water after a period of time).

Thus, we learn to tolerate the anxiety associated with obsessive thinking and decrease the need to engage in compulsive techniques for reducing the anxiety. Psychotherapy also aims to challenge the faulty thinking patterns that drive and maintain the obsessive thoughts. Another valuable technique is called mindfulness, in which we increase our awareness of the thoughts that guide our debilitating behavior.

Supportive therapy with a concerned professional can help the person to gain knowledge and courage to try to deal with anxieties without resorting to obsessional thoughts and compulsive behavior.

An important component of therapy is to bring other family members into the process so that they can learn appropriate ways of coping with the disorder and provide a supportive and understanding environment for the sufferer.

Most people who suffer from OCD try to keep their condition secret and may engage in denial. The first step in overcoming this debilitating circumstance is to make an appointment to talk to a professional psychotherapist. The sessions with your therapist are safe, trustworthy, and supportive. Getting your condition under control is a challenge – but things will only get better after making that first call. Help and hope are just a phone call away.

Is There Help For Ocd?

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Family Counseling

• Some reasons why families seek counseling:
• Families are going through a time of transition or change
• Divorce, Remarriage or Death has affected your family system
• The family is not functioning and feels constantly drained of energy
• Presence of continual and disruptive communication breakdowns
• Exhibition of extreme emotions from one or many family members
• Distancing, cutting off or isolation of one or more family members
• Sudden changes in child/children’s behavior at home or at school
• A traumatic experience within or affecting the family
• One or more family members is struggling with mental illness
• One or more family members is struggling with substance abuse

Even healthy families experience situations where they can benefit from guidance to regain positive connection. If this is happening to your family, we can help.

Experienced therapists at Fox Valley Institute can help you see how your family system works, how the individual family members within the system are interconnected and how each person’s patterns of relating affect the whole.

Families are like a mobile. Each member, like the pieces hanging from the mobile, is interconnected. When one piece moves, the whole mobile moves. If one piece is disconnected or trying to sustain too much of the load, the mobile is out of balance and ineffective.

To understand the individual is to know his or her place in the system. People simply cannot be understood in isolation from one another. Thus, one family member cannot be a problem in isolation. They simply are part of a struggling system.

Here are some examples of ways family therapy can help you to understand and change your family patterns:

• Understand how the specific ways your family relates define the personality and functionality of your system
• Clearly see how each part of the system affects the others, whether positive or negative
• Identify the family rules and roles created to protect your family system, whether in times of health or dysfunction
• Assess how boundaries ñ whether they exist in extremes or not at all — are affecting the functionality and quality of your family relationships
• Recognize how your particular family system adapts to change in response to its members and the environment
• Distinguish dysfunctional patterns within family systems
• Differentiate normal changes in the family system (predictable life cycle changes) from crisis

Family systems are self-reflective. We have the capacity to examine our own behavior and use our knowledge to set goals and affect change. We do not have to accept things as they are, we can always strive for better connection and effectiveness.

At Fox Valley Institute, we offer a confidential, safe and comfortable space for our clients. From evening and weekend appointment times to our warm and soothing waiting room, your well-being is a priority.

Family Counseling

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To Grieve Is To Be Weak

Grief does not have to hold us in its grip, we can move through it. What are we to do with the feelings we have when we have to deal with loss? Sometimes we allow society to dictate how we deal with our feelings. 

Society tells us

We are expected to be strong and courageous. Growing up, boys and men are often told “don’t cry, shake it off, just get back in there and play.” In “A League of Their Own” Tom Hanks’ famous quote, “There’s no crying in baseball” is a prime example of how to deal with emotions. Little boys are told they have to be “the man of the house” and have to “be strong and take care of your Mom now.” Older males are often told “It’ll be OK.

You have to be strong for your kids. Don’t let them see you cry.” Society expects us to avoid grief because it is a sign of weakness. When we say, “she is not coping very well” we seem to convey someone is failing in the grieving process if she directly expresses her sadness. We do not encourage others to cry, mourn, or openly express their pain.

We have things that need to be done.

“Well now that your husband is gone are you going to clear out the house and move to a smaller place?” “Now that you are alone maybe you should move to be closer to your children?” “How long has it been, aren’t you ready to get on with your life?” When someone passes we have things to do and we tend to do them. Are we then going through the motions and avoiding the emotions?

To Grieve Is To Be Weak

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