It’s understandable if you aren’t sure how to classify or diagnose the distress you’re experiencing.

To differentiate between an anxiety disorder and OCD, our experienced clinicians can provide a diagnostic evaluation. By providing open, honest answers to diagnostic questions, you can help us determine what you’re experiencing and what treatment options will help you the most. 

OCD, BFRB, and BDD often begin in childhood, so it can feel like these disorders are actually part of your personality. These disorders are also often not responsive to treatments for other mental health disorders, so it can feel like they’re permanent. This can lead to shame and distress about who you are as a person.

You are separate from your OCD, BFRB, or BDD, and with the right treatment approach, you can begin to see where the disorder ends, and where your values and goals begin. 

Feeling embarrassed and ashamed of your symptoms is very common with OCD, BFRB, or BDD. 

We became therapists to help people. Acceptance, understanding, and empowering patients to make positive changes in their lives are all at the root of why we show up to work each day. 

We consider it our responsibility to create a therapy environment where you feel welcome and safe. You won’t be talked down to, judged, or treated like you’re less-than here. We are glad you’re here, proud of you for seeking help, and ready to support you. 

ComB is a treatment approach that explores what triggers and reinforces your BFRB. With your therapist, you’ll examine your behavior patterns, figuring out what leads to the repetitive behaviors, and what makes them performable.From there, you’ll choose how you want to change your behaviors. For example, if you regularly pick your cuticles while you’re in work meetings, you might start using a fidget pen. You might incorporate habit reversal training (HRT) by balling up your hands into fists every time you start picking. You may also add slow breathing exercises during meetings to reduce your stress and thus reduce your picking. ComB is very personalized, using a variety of therapy approaches to help you discontinue repetitive, damaging behaviors and replace them with actions that work for you.

ERP allows us an opportunity to face our fears so we can practice resisting the urge to engage in a compulsion. This helps us break out of the OCD cycle, having more confidence in ourselves.With your therapist, you will start by getting to know your OCD, identifying the obsessions, compulsions, and faulty beliefs that support your OCD. You will then engage in strategic exposures, (or as we like to call them experiments) to see what happens when we break OCD's rules. Through these exposures, you will create corrective experiences that disprove OCD's faulty beliefs and empower you over your OCD.Exposures can vary based on what triggers your OCD, and response prevention can be tailored to address your specific compulsions. Delays, redirection techniques, mindfulness-based coping strategies, visualization, non-response, rewards, and more can be part of your ERP process. With time, you’ll develop more distress tolerance, you’ll be able to tackle your more distressing OCD triggers, and you’ll have more choice on what you’ll do when intrusive thoughts pop into your head.

Relapsing happens, and part of our treatment plan will include what to do when you relapse.

Therapy at Houston OCD and Anxiety is set up to help you develop coping skills that will serve you throughout your life. Our therapy goals include reducing shame, giving you options, and creating opportunities to rise to life’s challenges. 

Sometimes, that means managing a relapse. You aren’t a failure, you haven’t done anything wrong, and because you were strong enough to start therapy in the first place, you know what to do, and you know how to reach out for support. 

There are a lot of reasons why previous therapeutic experiences may not have been effective in treating your OCD. In fact, it takes most people about 7 years to receive a diagnosis of OCD (Dell’Osso et al, 2019). Studies show that more than 80% of individuals with OCD do not receive quality, effective treatment for OCD. If you feel like you have not experienced therapeutic relief, you are not alone!

You are more likely to have therapeutic success when you work with a practitioner (like those at Houston OCD and Anxiety) who is experienced in using evidence-based treatments like ERP, ComB, HRT, ACT, or CBT for BDD to treat disorders like OCD, BFRB, or BDD.

One of the hallmarks of OCD is distressing thoughts, and sometimes those thoughts include social taboos, dangerous behaviors, or disgusting experiences.

We know this is a common symptom of OCD, and we do not judge or punish patients for experiencing symptoms. Your therapy sessions are free of judgment, and they’re also confidential.

We also know that a big part of why you’re seeking help is that you don’t like these thoughts. They’re called “ego dystonic”; they don’t align with who you are and who you want to be. You are not your intrusive thoughts.

It can feel very scary to consider letting go of compulsive behaviors. They are, after all, an attempt to soothe distress, and when you consider stopping them, it can feel totally overwhelming at first. Why would you want to risk being totally overwhelmed?

Throughout the therapy process, you’ll learn about your own strengths and capacity to handle distress, and instead of being guided by fear and compulsion, you’ll use your own values and goals to guide your actions. 

Therapy can help you build a new skill set for coping to replace compulsive behaviors, and you’ll have the support of your therapist to guide and cheer you on every step of the way.

To put it simply, we don't know. Research is still exploring this question, seeking to understand the impact biological, genetic, and environmental factors have on OCD and related disorders. 

What we do know is that there are highly effective treatments that can help you break free from these disorders and regain control of your life.