Understand the Cycle
Learn to recognize obsessions, compulsions, avoidance and reassurance-seeking without automatically getting pulled into them.
OCD can leave you questioning your thoughts, checking your decisions, seeking reassurance or repeating behaviors just to feel okay again.
The relief may come – but often only temporarily.
OCD therapy can help you better understand this cycle, change the way you respond to intrusive thoughts and gradually feel less controlled by them.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder involves unwanted thoughts, images, urges or doubts that can create significant distress. In response, you may find yourself doing something – physically or mentally – to reduce the anxiety or find certainty. Sometimes those compulsions are visible. Other times, they’re happening entirely inside your head.
You might find yourself:
Having an intrusive thought doesn’t mean you want it, believe it or will act on it.
Learn to recognize obsessions, compulsions, avoidance and reassurance-seeking without automatically getting pulled into them.
Build your ability to experience doubt and discomfort without needing immediate reassurance or certainty.
Develop healthier ways of responding to intrusive thoughts rather than checking, avoiding or trying to neutralize them.
Reduce the space OCD occupies so you can put more energy into your relationships, interests and the things that matter to you.
The content of obsessive thoughts varies widely from person to person.
Some people experience fears around contamination or harm. Others become caught in questions about relationships, morality, identity, mistakes, responsibility or whether something feels “just right.”
And compulsions aren’t always physical behaviors. They can include mental reviewing, analyzing, reassurance-seeking, checking your feelings or repeatedly trying to determine what a thought “really means.”
What the thoughts are about can change. The cycle underneath them can remain remarkably similar.
Everyone experiences strange, uncomfortable or unwanted thoughts sometimes. With OCD, the problem often becomes the importance attached to those thoughts – and the cycle of behaviors used to make the uncertainty or distress go away. Therapy can help you recognize that cycle and gradually learn that you don’t always have to respond to the thought, solve the uncertainty or perform the compulsion. Over time, the goal is to build a different relationship with intrusive thoughts so they have less influence over the choices you make.
Intrusive thoughts can feel especially frightening when they conflict with your values or sense of who you are.
That can create a powerful urge to analyze the thought, prove it isn’t true, check how you feel or ask someone else for reassurance.
Unfortunately, repeatedly trying to reach complete certainty can keep the OCD cycle going.
Therapy provides a place to understand what’s happening without judging you for the content of your thoughts – and to practice responding without having to solve every question your mind produces.
A thought can feel important without requiring an answer.
Jeff takes an active, collaborative approach to therapy, helping you recognize the patterns that keep OCD going and develop different ways of responding to intrusive thoughts, uncertainty and distress.
Rather than spending every session trying to determine whether a particular fear is true, the work can focus on changing your relationship with uncertainty and reducing the behaviors that keep pulling you back into the cycle.
The goal is not perfect certainty.
It’s having greater freedom to choose what you do even when uncertainty is present.
Overthinking can happen to anyone. OCD typically involves recurring obsessions that create distress alongside compulsions, mental rituals, reassurance-seeking or avoidance intended to reduce that distress. A qualified mental health professional can help assess what you’re experiencing.
Unwanted or unusual thoughts are common. Experiencing a thought does not mean you agree with it or intend to act on it. In OCD, intrusive thoughts can become particularly distressing because of the meaning or importance attached to them.
Yes. Compulsions aren’t always visible. Mental reviewing, counting, analyzing, repeating phrases, checking memories or repeatedly trying to reach certainty can also become compulsive patterns.
The goal of OCD therapy isn’t necessarily to prevent unwanted thoughts from ever occurring. Treatment can help change how you respond to them so they create less disruption and control over your life.
Yes. Jeff provides online therapy to adults located throughout California.