TOC: Learn more about the types of TOC
Types of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
OCD can be diagnosed when the obsessions and compulsions:
- consume too much time in people's lives
- Cause significant distress and anguish and interfere with daily functioning at home, school, or work, including social activities, family life, and relationships
OCD signs and symptoms
- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- pure obsession
- Perinatal / postnatal OCD
- TOC for children and adolescents
- Body dysmorphic disorder (dysmorphophobia)
- Hypochondria / Pathophobia
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Panic disorder
- Phobias
- Trichotillomania (hair pulling disorder)
- Vomiting
- Self-harm / cut, scratch, burn
This is not an exhaustive list and obsessions and compulsions can take many forms.
Types of compulsions
- Count
- Check
- Pray
- Order objects in a specific way
- Hair pulling - Trichotillomania
- Self-harm, cut, scratch, burn, etc.,
- accumulate, store
- Repeat
- mental rituals
- wash and clean
- Continuous health checks
Types of obsessions
- Irrational thoughts of harming others, especially loved ones, as well as fear of being a pedophile or murderer, etc. (also very common after having a baby)
- Fear of contamination
- accumulate, store
- Gender and sexual orientation
- Religious ideas, thoughts
- Symmetry and accuracy
- Health and disease
Eating disorders that are forms of OCD
- Binge eating / binge eating
- Bulimia
- Vomiting syndrome
- Self-harm with or without binge eating
body dysmorphophobia
Also known as body dysmorphic disorder, can also be referred to as dreaded ugliness disorder. It is an obsessive disorder in which a person is preoccupied with a perceived flaw in their physical appearance and usually does a number of things like:
- Check how they look
- Be reassured about their appearance
- Triturate/scrape his skin to make it smooth or just right
- Repeated care of hair, eyebrows or makeup to "feel" just right
- Avoid mirrors to avoid being triggered by their reflection
How many people are affected?
Many studies report that between 1 and 5% of the general population have OCD and it is equal for men and women, but we believe it is closer to 15% to 21% (Nardone and Portelli , 2015, Gibson 2016, JS Abramowitz, Taylor, & McKay, 2009; Foa, 2010; Karno, Golding, Sorenson, & Burnam, 1988), although the disorder is more commonly seen in boys than girls.
Other psychological disorders associated with OCD include major depression (Doron, Moulding, Kyrios, & Nedeljkovic, 2008), as well as additional phobias, panic attacks, generalized anxiety disorders, and severe work, social, and family consequences.
When Common Sense Goes Wrong
“The human mind is so flexible that we can drive ourselves crazy and by its own reason. - G. Lichtenberg.
The logic behind obsessive compulsive disorder is that something that is rationally okay to do can become irrational and unhealthy just by the number of times it is ritually repeated. This repetition eventually becomes infuriating and it is at this point that a person can go from logical to seemingly illogical.
It might be healthy to be careful if you wash after using the toilet, but it's pointless to wash for hours afterwards due to an irrepressible doubt that you've touched something dirty and then after you being washed for a long time, you feel that you have not washed enough and therefore have to wash again. Or, before going to bed, it is certainly healthy to check the doors, faucets, gas, etc., but it is certainly absurd to wake up several times during the night and recheck everything. It may be healthy to think that you'll do well on a test, but it becomes insane when you start ritualizing specific behaviors that should be repeated over and over for reassurance.
Apparently illogical behavior
OCD behavior can be defined as an overwhelming compulsion to perform behaviors or thoughts in a repetitive, ritualized way in an attempt to reduce anxiety or fear, or achieve a specific feeling of pleasure. People with this serious problem will require effective clinical treatment.
The Mental Trap of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
If we analyze the mental prison represented by the obsessive compulsive disorder, we have observed that the attempt to seek comfort to manage a fear or the irrepressible tendency to feel a specific sensation, structures a very rigid and persistent problem.
Types of rituals in OCD
Rituals made to fix something
Example :
- Obsession: to be contaminated
- Compulsion: excessive cleaning
Rituals made to prevent something
Example :
- Obsession: to be wrong, to forget
- Compulsion: Excessive Checking
Rituals that ensure everything goes well
Example :
- Obsession: misfortune, sacrilege
- Compulsion: conjuring rituals
Rituals made to achieve a specific sensation
Example :
- Obsession: symmetry, exactness
- Compulsion: arrangement, order
5 positions from which OCD develops:
1 - A doubt
It begins with a doubt that triggers a series of protective rituals that repair or prevent the problem of fear.
Example: I wore a green shirt to this test so I have to wear it again to pass again. Through this process, the irrational becomes rational through the irrational process. Evidence is also created for belief.
2 - A rigid belief, ideology, morality or superstition
For example, I should say a prayer for being so mean to that person. Take a shower to relieve myself of sexual urges. I have to make prayers every day to receive God's blessing (propitiatory). I have to read the horoscope before I meet this guy, etc. Vomiting or bulimia is also created in this process.
3 - When something rational becomes irrational
This process is created when someone thinks a lot to try to foresee all the consequences of a decision. This process, although based on a reality, becomes totally irrational when used to the maximum. Instead of helping, it creates an inability to act.
4 - A preventive phobia based on health
This is usually triggered to prevent something from happening, such as illness or infection to others, family, or us. In this process, the preventive process turns into a real phobia.
5 - Trauma
In this case, we see people doing things to calm down from trauma. It is very important to let them through the trauma so that the compulsions can be completely eliminated.
Gold Standard International Clinical Treatment
One of the reasons we have been so successful in developing a Gold Standard treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder is because of our study not only of the logic and mental processes that take place in obsessive compulsive disorder, but because that we looked at the logic and structure and purpose of each of the different types of rituals that a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder may perform.
The rituals themselves have a very specific structure and basically have their own motivation. For example, some rituals we observed are performed to fix something that has already happened in the past (reparative ritual), others are performed to prevent something from happening in the future, such as washing hands or the prevention of contamination (preventive rituals) others can be done to make sure everything goes well, the rituals that are performed by football players, artists and students, etc., we call them ( propitiatory rituals). Although this may seem insignificant to non-specialists in our field, it is of the utmost importance to us, because if we can identify the underlying logic of the ritual, we can make our work much more scientific and much more focused. .
Rituals and sensations
Rituals can be performed to generate a specific feeling of pleasure or to reduce a feeling such as fear or pain and again this is extremely important information for the clinician to use as it will help them build a brief and effective highly targeted intervention.
Depending on the structure of the ritual, an essential and unique aspect of the BST is to have designed several counter-rituals specifically prescribed to adapt to the different typologies of compulsive symptomatology (Gibson and Portelli, 2015,2014; Nardone and Portelli 2005 , 2013, 2014).
