OCD Therapy Going Nowhere?

Although any medical doctor can take your blood pressure, only a few can do heart surgery. Likewise, any therapist can help someone who is feeling a bit blue, but only a few can effectively treat OCD. OCD treatment is a type of therapy that requires a specialized protocol called Exposure and Ritual Prevention (ERP or EX/RP). Learn about the Top Mistakes Made by OCD Therapists.

Top Seven Myths About OCD

One stereotype is that people with OCD are neat and tidy to a fault. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Although many people with OCD wash because they are concerned about dirt and germs, being tidy is actually not a typical symptom of the disorder. Almost two-thirds of people with OCD are also hoarders... Learn more about the Top Myths about OCD.

Homosexual Fears in OCD

Sexuality Concerns in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

There are many people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who have sexual obsessions surrounding homosexuality. Homosexuality anxiety is a recognized symptom of OCD, sometimes referred to as "HOCD."

HOCD includes the following:

  • the obsessive fear of being or becoming homosexual
  • the experience of intrusive, unwanted mental images of homosexual behavior, and/or
  • the obsessive fear that others may believe one is homosexual.

A person may have only one of these facets of the disorder or a combination. Learn more about sexual obsessions in OCD.

Take The OCD Self Test

The OCI-R is a short, reliable, scientific test of common obsessive-compulsive symptoms. This measure was developed by OCD experts. Take our OCD Self Test.

About Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Mental Compulsions

Although obsessions without overt rituals are now considered relatively common among people with OCD, this OCD type has generally been understudied and until recently has been considered resistant treatment. Beliefs regarding the importance of thoughts and the need to control them are commonly reported by people with this type of OCD. The meanings associated with unwanted thoughts may be related to views of self, i.e. "Having a bad thought means I am a bad person".

The distressing thoughts are usually unacceptable or taboo in nature (sexual, harming, religious thoughts). Rather than perform an overt ritual, such people will engage in covert rituals and mental neutralizing. This might include repeating silent prayers, replacing "bad" thoughts with "good" thoughts, or erasing unpleasant mental images. These mental compulsions result in the same temporary relief from anxiety, and are thus are thus equivalent to more overt rituals.

Common mental rituals

  • Special words, images, numbers, repeated mentally to neutralize anxiety
  • Special prayers (short or long) repeated in a set manner
  • Mental counting
  • Mental listmaking
  • Mental reviewing (e.g. reviewing conversations or actions)
  • Mental erasing of unwanted mental images
  • Mental un-doing