OCD Therapy
When your brain won't let you rest
It's not about hand-washing and light switches. Not really. Those are just the visible bits. The real prison is the one in your head: the intrusive thoughts that won't stop, the rituals you have to complete or something terrible will happen, the certainty that if you don't stay vigilant, disaster is waiting.
You know it doesn't make sense. You've tried to resist the compulsions. But the anxiety that floods in when you don't complete them is unbearable, so you keep doing it. And the relief only lasts until the next time.
Most OCD treatment focuses on exposure and response prevention. Face the fear, resist the compulsion. This can work for symptoms, but it doesn't always address why the symptoms are there in the first place.
OCD usually develops when someone feels profoundly out of control. The rituals create the illusion that you can keep disaster at bay if you just do everything exactly right. The intrusive thoughts? Often the things you're most terrified of, the feelings you can't allow yourself to have.
Psychodynamic therapy is interested in what you're trying to control and why you need such rigid defences. Often underneath the obsessions is something unbearable: anger you're not allowed to feel, impulses that terrify you, a world that felt unsafe before you had words for it.
We meet weekly or twice-weekly and explore what the OCD is doing for you. Not the obvious - keeping you safe - but the deeper function.
Maybe the rituals give you something predictable in an unpredictable world. Maybe they keep you too busy to feel what you don't want to feel. Maybe they're a kind of penance for thoughts or feelings you believe are unacceptable.
This work is slow. It's not about stripping away your defences before you're ready. It's about understanding why you need them so tightly wound, then gradually building tolerance for uncertainty, for imperfection, for being human.