OCD Help by Dr. Jonathan Grayson

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…

Jonathan Grayson
June 9th, 2009 at 11:08 am · Edit
It is true that many who don’t understand OCD have some difficulty with the idea of treatment. Part of the answer is to check out my blog about normal people don’t know what they are doing. The standards of what they actually think and do are [...]

Exposure and response prevention (ERP) is hard work and it can be terrifying.  We always say that both ritualizing and treatment are difficult and that the only difference is that treatment leads to an end of rituals and avoiding treatment leads to endless rituals.  Nevertheless, ERP is painful and what can you do when you [...]

Canadian with OCD tells us the s/he feels overwhelmed at times and seeks reassurance from others or attempts to reassure her/himself  about self harm.  S/he also notes that listening to the exposure script activates his/her fears.   I know it is really hard to do exposure, but remember, almost all OCD involves trying to attain 100 [...]

OCD is both a learned and biological disorder. Given this, medications play an important role, but you need to remember that medication affects biology and not the learned parts of OCD. Because of this, medication alone usually results in a 30-50% reduction in symptoms and sometimes the learned parts of the problem are so powerful, [...]

Please feel free to ask questions about OCD and OCD treatment here. The questions should be of general interest to everyone and not personal questions particular to your situation…

OCD sufferers often wish they could use the standards that the ‘normal” population uses for living.  There are a few problems with this. One major problem is that “normal” people don’t have consistent standards.  For example, I was giving a lecture to college students and began the lecture by pouring a can of Pringles potato chips on [...]

Dr. Grayson can be contacted at:
The Anxiety and OCD Treatment Center of Philadelphia
1616 Walnut Street, Suite 714
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Phone: 215-735-7588
Website: www.ocdphiladelphia.com

Bi- Weekly blogs and articles by Dr. Jonathan Grayson and his colleages about OCD, including:
Types of OCD and how to cope with them;
Creating scripts for OCD;
Discovering your OCD treatment motivators;
and more…