OCD Therapy For Men
OCD Treatment in Overland Park, KS
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a bully that attacks what you care about most.
It’s time for you to fight back.
What is OCD?
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a diagnosable mental health condition. People with OCD experience intrusive thoughts, mental images, or urges. These “obsessions” can be very distressing and often go against a person’s morals.
To cope with these thoughts, mental images, or urges, people with OCD will use “compulsions” to reduce their discomfort. Compulsions can take up a great deal of time and ultimately make OCD worse.
OCD can take many different forms. Some of the most common OCD themes are:
Contamination
Perfectionism or things being “just right”
Harm to self or others
Scrupulosity
Relationship OCD
Sensorimotor
Sexual harm
None of these obsessions are a reflection of your character. Instead, it’s OCD attacking what you care about most.
OCD Treatment
The best way to treat OCD is with a therapy called “exposure and response prevention” (ERP). It is one of the only evidence-based treatments for OCD.
Other types of therapy only exacerbate OCD. ERP helps you confront your obsessions head on and breaks the OCD loop.
While other types of therapy may claim to treat OCD, someone seeking OCD treatment should be wary of these claims. Time and time again, research supports ERP as the gold standard for OCD treatment.
What happens in ERP?
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One of the most important parts of OCD treatment is establishing a relationship built on mutual trust and respect.
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We need to find the areas of your life that OCD is attacking. Together, we’ll identify the themes of your obsessions, as well as the compulsions you use to control them.
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After identifying your obsessions and compulsions, we’ll create a list of exposures for you to participate in. You’ll practice these exposures both in and out of session until your brain “habituates,” leading to a reduction in anxiety.
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If you have more questions about OCD, check out this article I wrote.