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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
WE OFFER ocd online treatment throughout Arizona and in person in Phoenix AZ.
Set up your free 15-20 minute good-fit discovery phone call today.
Are you paralyzed in fear by intrusive thoughts or unnerving images? Are you losing hours a day to compulsions and rituals? Are you a parent who feels lost in how to help your child with scary thoughts?
The Loop of OCD
Feeling overwhelmed by your thoughts and analyzing what they mean about you as a person can be exhausting and feel scary. Uncertainty usually causes high levels of distress. You may find yourself in a loop of debilitating thoughts, engaged in a compulsion or ritual to get rid of the thought, urge or image, keeping track of what your triggers are so you can avoid them, and yet the worry or shame seems to grow even stronger.
Eventually, you are beside yourself that these fears appear to be controlling your life. OCD can occur You recognize that these compulsions only provide temporary relief but it’s hard to stop. You are too anxious or just don’t “feel right” otherwise. And what’s worse is that your fears attack what’s most important to you.
OCD can embody many different topics and themes.
OCD CAN CAUSE YOU TO:
- fear harming yourself or someone else, even though you would never harm anything or anyone
- feel contaminated, fear acquiring an illness or disease or spread illness/disease to others
- question your sexual orientation, even though you know who you are
- question who you are attracted to, causing you to feel like a gross or terrible person, even though these thoughts only cause turmoil and are not aligned with your values
- question your morality and if you are a good or bad person
- fear you are not a good person of faith and find yourself immersed in rituals to prove your faith is the most important part of your life
- fear you will die and avoid any trigger that your brain tells you may be dangerous, even if the trigger is a part of everyday life like eating or going to school
- obsess over sensorimotor sensations like noticing every time you blink, swallow, breathe, or have urges or urinate
- obsess and question your relationship, whether or not you love your partner, if your partner will ever cheat on you, if you will ever cheat on them, or if you are actually attracted to your partner
- obsess over whether or not you turned off the stove, your hair straightener, locked the door, or ran over a person while driving
- fear that you will take on characteristics or the essence of another person or worry that you will always feel contaminated if you continue to wear the same clothes you had a bad thought in and end up throwing away that shirt
- fear that you are capable of hurting your baby, directly or will be responsible for something bad happening to your baby, especially postpartum
- feel contaminated by dirt and germs, sometimes just because you feel disgusted engage in magical thinking and get stuck in rituals, counting, tapping, rubbing, or repeating things to prevent something bad from happening confess, ask, or tell the thing you are worried about repeatedly to your parent or a trusted loved one
- feel like you need to do tasks in a particular way, and it’s not that you fear something bad will happen if you don’t, but rather the physical or mental task is performed until you feel ‘just right’
- And much more!
At Outsmarting Anxiety & OCD, our therapists are trained to recognize OCD in any form because we understand how it functions and how to treat it.
Owner Kristin Mervich always says, “It is not the thing itself (e.g hand washing) that makes something OCD but the way we think about and respond to thing (e.g. washing hands numerous times per day to the point of dryness and raw skin for fear of spreading disease to others) that will categorize something as OCD.”
imagine this
How We Can Help You
Whether you are dealing with OCD with compulsions or OCD without compulsions, we can help.
Imagine feeling in control of your life again. You now know how to identify and handle intrusive thoughts and to stop engaging in time-consuming and agonizing rituals and compulsions. You embrace uncertainty. You have your life back. And maybe, your life is now something you never knew existed for yourself, a life where thoughts are fleeting, if the theme of thoughts that once triggered you exist at all, and it stops there. No rumination. Confidence in yourself. Confidence that you are a good, moral, and kind person. Confidence that you can move on from a loop that you were once stuck in. Confidence in your values and what actually matters in your life. Your decision fatigue is over. You don’t plan your life around your triggers. You just live your life.
We will teach you:
how to tolerate and embrace uncertainty
how to make decisions and behave based on your values, all while feeling confident saying no to OCD
how to stop time-consuming compulsions and rituals
how to differentiate between you and your OCD
Set up your free 15-20 minute good-fit discovery phone call today.
Common Questions
Do you work with children and teens? What ages do you work with regarding OCD?
Absolutely, we work with children ages 6+, teens, young adults, and adults.
Please reference our team page to further learn what ages each therapist works with. Throughout care with children and teens, our therapists at OAO value including parents in the process. It is important that we educate our parents to carry over the work your child is learning in therapy. We are meeting with your child once per week or once every other week, and your child will see success with your help at home between appointments. We are here to support your child and the whole family. We may encourage regular parent-only sessions and/or family sessions, depending on the needs of your child.
I've heard Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT) are evidence-based treatments for OCD. What do you use to treat OCD?
It is important, when looking for an OCD therapist, to know if they understand and specialize in Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and/or Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT). We are passionate about connecting our community to therapists who truly understand ERP or OCD cognitive behavior therapy, even if you do not end up becoming a client at our practice.
Our therapists are all proficient in and treat with Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Click HERE for a free resource on the breakdown of ERP, CBT, and ACT. Inference-Based CBT is also offered by our team. Click HERE learn about the differences between ERP and I-CBT.
"I am nervous to do exposures; it seems scary." Can you help me understand how this helps?
Of course. We are here to validate that therapy for OCD can be hard work. We all feel uncomfortable purposely facing our fears, and we want you to validate that for you or your child. Challenging ourselves can feel scary. You are being so brave in asking for help. When we face our fears, our brains begin to learn that we are not in danger when triggered by our fears. We will quite literally rewire our brains to perceive threats and anxiety triggers differently through something called neuroplasticity. And over our time in therapy together, you will feel safer around things, people, places, sensations in your body, and situations that once produced unbearable anxiety. This is a snapshot of how exposure and response prevention helps.
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Are you ready?
If you are seeking OCD online treatment in Arizona or in person in Phoeniz AZ, please book your free 15-20 minute ‘good-fit discovery’ phone call today.