OCD Help by Dr. Jonathan Grayson

Max in a post to this site asked what about convincing someone, with certainty, that they have OCD, since this would be comforting and reassuring. There are three problems with this approach. First, as I’ve noted elsewhere…

Patrick, I assume you read the post article here about obsessing about obsessing, so I will not repeat what was there.  This form of OCD is a difficult one to help a sufferer understand what to do and I apologize if this doesn’t seem clear.  In your post you ask if you should ruminate and [...]

Most of the time, the feared consequences don’t occur – your family doesn’t contract AIDS, you don’t turn into a serial killer, you don’t molest your children. For obsessing about obsessing the fear is the obsessions will never end and as a result life will be horrible because. And it’s true…

Exposure and response prevention (ERP) is the first line treatment for OCD, but no one should do it! I do believe that any sufferer with OCD who would like to be free of this problem would be well advised to choose…

The goal of ERP is NEVER to prove that anything is safe. The goal of treatment is deciding the you need to learn to live with uncertainty. The world is full of low and high probability dangers. You are at greater risk to be in a car accident than you are to suffer from your fears and yet you might risk death to see a movie…

In answer to your question, can scrupulosity be treated with exposure and response prevention? The short answer is yes. Like all OCD, the focus of treatment is learning to live with uncertainty…

Sarah, your comments about your writing problems cover a very common area of OCD for many sufferers. As you can imagine, many people have dropped out of school as the result of these issues. Some of the approaches you have tried, we would not expect to work.

Answer to a question about “Gay OCD” and the critical importance of acceptance. There is some discussion of what acceptance and denial are and how to work on obtaining them.

OCD is both a learned and biological disorder.  Medication may help with biology, but it doesn’t change learning. This is why meds alone usually result only in a 30-50% reduction in symptoms.  For some people, even if meds are working biologically, the learned part of OCD can mask the effects of medication.  The treatment for [...]

Nina’s OCD behavior, feeling compelled to stare at the private parts of others is not unusual and is an OCD behavior that we have seen before. Nina, you mention your fear that you will be caught by others and be humiliated…