OCD therapy that treats the doubt, not just the thoughts.

OCD is a cycle of intrusive thoughts, images or urges (obsessions) and the things you do to get relief from them (compulsions). Compulsions can be visible, like checking or cleaning, or entirely mental, like reviewing, praying, seeking reassurance or trying to cancel a thought. The relief is short-lived, which keeps the cycle going.

It often shows up in forms people do not recognize as OCD: fears of harming someone, relationship doubts, moral or religious scrupulosity, health fears, or "Pure O," where the compulsions happen in your head.

Exposure and response prevention is the first-line treatment for OCD. Together we build a list of feared situations from easiest to hardest. You practice facing them gradually while resisting the compulsion, so your brain learns that you can tolerate the doubt without fixing it. Reassurance tends to make OCD stronger, so part of the work is learning to stop seeking it.

Some people need more intensive ERP than weekly sessions allow. In that case I coordinate with NOCD for the exposure work and keep seeing you for everything around it: the shame, the history, other diagnoses such as ADHD or trauma, and the rest of your life.

I assess OCD in adults, often alongside ADHD or autism, since they overlap. Read about assessments.