Everything You Need to Know About OCD and OCD Treatments in Orange County
The person portrayed as someone with OCD often gripes over how everything must be just so when it comes to how their things are arranged, and how there shouldn’t be even a tiny speck of dirt anywhere. Individuals with OCD are also often portrayed as extreme germaphobes on media.
The thing about OCD is that it manifests in many different forms, and sometimes it’s difficult to determine whether a person has OCD or not. To help you understand, we’re going to discuss some common misconceptions about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and what OCD treatments in Orange County are available for someone with OCD.
What are the common misconceptions about OCD?
One of the first things that you should do when seeking treatment for OCD, or if you’re looking for more information about OCD is to understand that a lot of what we know about OCD from the media is false or inaccurate. Clearing up these misconceptions is the first step to becoming more aware of OCD, what it means to live with this disorder, and how to help someone with OCD.
OCD means being a neat freak
This is the most common misconception about OCD that is prevalent in our media. Whenever you see someone with OCD in movies or TV, they’re usually very obsessed with arranging their things or making sure that everything is immaculately clean.
In fact, it has come to the point where OCD has been reduced to a personality quirk in plenty of online communities, where it isn’t uncommon to hear people say, “I’m so OCD!”. This simplifies OCD and is one of the core causes for the lack of awareness of how deep OCD can go in people.
The thing about OCD is that it is a heterogeneous disorder, which means that how it manifests itself varies depending on the person. At its core, OCD is rooted in high levels of anxiety, which lead to the person with OCD performing certain actions over and over again to help ease that anxiety.
OCD is made up of “obsessions”, which are the fears that the person with OCD has, and “compulsions” or rituals, which are the actions that the individual performs in order to help alleviate these fears.
Only a small percentage of people with OCD manifest obsessive cleaning as their rituals. Other types of rituals found in individuals with OCD include tapping objects, counting, and excessive hand-washing. The main thing to note about people who suffer from OCD is that these rituals get in the way of their activities of daily living, which is one of the core identifiers of OCD, along with the aforementioned obsessions and compulsions.
You can treat OCD by simply telling the person to “calm down”
It is true that OCD is rooted in anxiety, but like anxiety, it is not so easily fixed that all you have to do is tell the person suffering from it to “calm down”. To somebody who has no first-hand experience with OCD, the solution might seem simple to you, after all, you can simply stop tapping things or stop washing your hands.
For people who have OCD, it’s not as clear-cut as this. You must never simplify OCD or make fun of people who have OCD as this oversimplifies the magnitude of what people with this particular disorder go through.
In order to help individuals with OCD, there are several OCD treatments in Orange County that can be utilized to help alleviate the symptoms of OCD. At Tracy Kuhar Counseling, we offer a range of different therapy methods that are designed to help treat OCD.
What are some OCD Treatments in Orange County?
There is more to therapy than someone lying down on a couch and having a therapist ask them over and over again, “how does that make you feel?”. There are plenty of ways to approach psychological treatment and at Tracy Kuhar Counseling, we offer various forms of therapy to find the perfect one that suits you.
Behavioral therapy
Behavioral therapy is a form of psychological treatment that involves helping the client get rid of certain unwanted behavior and reinforce wanted behavior. The core idea behind behavioral therapy is that compared to other forms of therapy, it is action-based. Because OCD involves performing persistent actions that interfere with an individual’s daily life, behavioral therapy is a good approach to treating OCD.
Exposure and Response Prevention
One of the most popular treatment options for OCD is Exposure and Response Prevention, which is a form of behavioral therapy. This type of therapy involves exposing the client to the trigger that causes anxiety and obsession. The client is then prevented from carrying out their rituals.
These sessions are repeated until it gets to the point where the person is longer worried about their compulsions. However, as simple as this explanation seems, it’s important to understand that treatment can take as many as 20 sessions for it to work.
Cognitive therapy
Cognitive therapy is a more mind-focused form of therapy. When cognitive therapy is used to treat OCD, it places an emphasis on treating the obsessions that influence the compulsion to perform the ritual. Cognitive therapy focuses on examining these thoughts, helps the person suffering from OCD understand why they think this way, and helps change this thought process into something less debilitating.
There are plenty of available OCD treatments in Orange County. However, it’s very important to understand that seeking out treatment for OCD is the first step, but you’re going to have to work with your therapist to make sure that your treatment is effective. At Tracy Kuhar Counseling, our wide range of therapy solutions can be tailored to fit your specific case. We emphasize a client-first approach, where the needs of the client are the main priority of any therapy method.
If you or a loved one is suffering from OCD or any kind of mental disorder, feel free to reach out to us at 949-300-8004 or reach out to us through our website, and we can help you get started today!
