Root cause of obsessive compulsive disorder

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a very painful condition. It can vary in intensity from a minor thought disturbance all the way to where the person is actually immobilized and enslaved by the OCD condition, unable to live life. Here is what you need to know to quickly get a handle on this problem should you or a family member suffer from it. And again, as I've said, do not stop taking any medication that you may be taking under a doctor's order just because you are getting this information and insight. My hope is that as you better understand and follow my suggestions over time you may find that the OCD urge and symptoms drain away like a swamp.

When I have counseled people with OCD I help them to identify which of two basic forms of OCD they have. I'm not talking DSM or medically here, but rather through a more holistic and causal approach. OCD can be observed as being about either a genuine threat or concern, or a theoretical threat or concern. Here is what I mean. Someone who, for example, checks the stove a hundred times to make sure it is off is in the category of what I call "legitimate cause OCD." In other words, the penalty of leaving a stove on and then leaving the house is real, as a fire could result. This is in contrast to the second type of OCD which is the "feeling something must be done or something bad might happen" or "theoretical cause OCD." People who have to arrange things certain ways, obsessively count, have elaborate rituals and so forth are examples of this second type. They have the "feeling" that something "must" be done or "something bad may happen" but they often do not know what it is and have no actual proof of this worry of theirs.

If you have the first form of OCD this is what I advise you to do. Create a bureaucratic system in order to do the legitimate amount of reasonable "checking" that you need to do to ensure the facts of the situation. Let us use the checking stove example. Get a pad of paper and place it on the counter next to the stove. When you use the stove, write on the pad the date and time that you turned on the stove. You might even want to write down what you were cooking. Place this information in the first of two columns. Label the second column "turned off information." When you are done cooking and you turn off the stove enter the date and time that you turned it off on the pad of paper in the second column. If you really have the condition badly causing high anxiety I suggest a third column on the pad. Five minutes after you have turned off the stove and entered the data in the second column confirming that you turned it off, come back to the stove and observe that the heat from the burner has dissipated, in other words, it has started to cool off so you can observe the reality of the fact you turned off the burner. Enter this information in the third column "confirm that burner is off and is cooled off."

Now, next to the door you use when you leave your home or apartment, place a second pad of paper. Call this your "confirmation information" pad and use it whenever you exit your home. Here is how it would work. You are going to go to your job after having fixed breakfast. You have entered all your on-off-confirm information on your kitchen pad when you prepared and finished breakfast. Now as you are about to leave for the day, walk into the kitchen with your confirmation pad and write on it "date time leaving for work and confirmed that stove is off, cooled, time entered" on your pad. You can then do one of two things. You can either leave the pad by the door or, if OCD bothers you during the day, you can take that pad with you. When you have the worry that you did not check the stove you simply refer to your pad and know that you did. You know you didn't imagine checking. You know you did not forget to check. And you know that the stove did not remain active even after turning it off because you have the third column where you confirm that you turned it off and it cooled. All that is recorded in your portable pad, should you choose to take it with you to work or on your errand or trip.

This method is a GREAT relief if you suffer from the "legitimate concern" form of OCD. I went through a detailed example and I hope you can apply it to your own situation. The turn off the stove one is a common one and it's helpful as a model to all sorts of OCD legitimate concern types of traps of behavior. I'm not going to list all the types of scenarios because I don't want to give anyone new ideas of what to worry about ha ha (affectionate joking here). Seriously, you can design your own system using my model and it is truly fool proof.

The second type of OCD is more complicated but is eminently curable and I'll discuss what to do in my next post on this subject.

I hope this helps!