OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER (OCD)

Obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, is wildly misunderstood. It’s almost considered a badge of honor to say “I’m a little bit OCD” because someone finds themselves touching doorknobs or making sure the light is off even though they checked before. You hear people claiming all the time that they have OCD because of some small change in behaviors.

But real obsessive compulsive disorder is much more challenging. Someone with OCD doesn’t just have small eccentricities that they do once in a while. Those with OCD often have regular, persistent, severe anxiety or shame producing thoughts that they cannot seem to avoid or forget. In some cases, they may need to perform a behavior (a compulsion) to experience relief from that severe anxiety. That is what living with OCD is truly like.

Treatment for Your OCD in Long Island

OCD is a self-sustaining anxiety disorder. Studies have shown that the more you try to push thoughts away (known as “thought suppression”) the more likely you are to think about them. When someone struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder, they have often try to push the anxiety producing thoughts away only to find that they come back more often and stronger. This leads to even more anxiety.

Yet obsessive compulsive disorder also responds well to treatment. Through a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and individualized treatment programs, we can create a customized plan that will help you control both components of obsessive compulsive disorder:

• Obsessions – Together, we’ll work to help you discover why the thoughts are causing you so much anxiety, and what you can do to make sure the thoughts come less frequently and cause less anxiety when they occur.
• Compulsions – We’ll work on creating non-repetitive, healthy coping mechanisms that will make it easier for you to control your anxiety without your compulsive behavior, as well as ways to cope with the stress you experience when you do let a compulsion overcome you.

With the right OCD treatment in Long Island, we can make sure that you are making progress towards taking back your life from your anxiety symptoms. We have worked as anxiety therapists in New York for many years and would love an opportunity to talk to you and discuss what we can do.

Please give us a call today at (516) 732-0273 and let’s schedule a time to meet, connect, and start talking about what your treatment will entail.

For more information on my service areas, including Rockville Centre, Garden City, and Roslyn Heights, please visit our contact page.