55 - OCD - WHAT IS OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER? WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS? HOW TO DEAL WITH IT?

Foreign. Hi, I'm Dr. Carol Darca, author, psychologist, and founder of Reconnect Trauma Treatment center in Los Angeles. We're going to talk about OCD today. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It is unfortunately one of the most searched disorders on the Internet. So I've decided to briefly talk about it, about what it is, what it looks like, what it's not, and the causes and what to do about it. Obsessive Compulsive disorder is really sort of a pattern of unwanted thoughts and fear that lead to doing repetitive behaviors. And those repetitive behaviors are called compulsive behaviors. So these obsessions and compulsive behaviors actually really has to interfere with your life. So it's not just like occasionally worrying about something, but it's just that you're finding yourself thinking about something in an obsessive way over and over again, right? In a loop. And then you do things to prevent things. I mean, a lot of them are actually, to the person who doesn't have OCD will seem very irrational, but to the person who has ocd, it feels like out of control. They have them, they can't stop them. Sometimes they know it's irrational. But the fact of not being able to stop is really what actually defines the ocd. So it has specific themes. I'm going to read them and see if you are able to relate to any of them, because that's basically the criteria of it. The fear of contamination or dirt. Doubting and having difficulty tolerating uncertainty. Needing things orderly and symmetrical and aggressive or horrific thoughts about either losing control, harming yourself or harming others, or unwanted thoughts, things that would be sort of completely out of your character, like either religious or in sexual nature. Well, I was very struck, especially by the first one that I mentioned to you guys, the fear of contamination or dirt. Because during the pandemic, unfortunately, the people who have had already been struggling with OCD are now showing much worse symptoms. Even people who don't have ocd, of course, are now terrified of, you know, of getting virus. But OCD people unfortunately suffered much more during this period. So my heart really goes up to all of you guys. And having worked with a lot of OCD clients, I know how difficult this is. And so here's some typical signs of. Of the compulsive, because I said there's the thought, but then there's the behavior, right? The action of doing something. So these compulsions are typically stuff like hand washing until it's like, like three or five times. Usually it has like a Number right. And like your skin becomes raw even it, it hurts your hands. Checking doors repeatedly to make sure it's closed. Checking the stove to make sure it's turned off or there's no gas leaking kind of thing. Counting certain patterns or putting the pillows or certain things in like in a specific order or when you're walking, making sure that you always counting the same way the steps or you're not touching certain parts of the floor or arranging your closet or your books or everything in a specific way. And at the moment that's out of the way, what happens is it creates a fear in the person or something bad is going to happen. So it could be something as unusual as oh, if I don't put the pillows in the right way today, my family member is going to get sick. Of course, to the logical mind this doesn't make sense. But the obsession, the OCD is actually a disorder in the brain, makes the person believe that. Therefore they do everything to make sure that the pillows are put in the right way. It's a really debilitating disorder. So I want to clarify. You might have, if you have anxiety, you might have some obsessive thoughts like you might be worried about your boss is going to fire you or your husband is going to cheat on you, you know, that kind of a thing. Those are not necessarily ocd. Those tend to be more anxiety oriented and, or even childhood stuff oriented. But I'm talking about more sort of the examples that I gave about especially the, the fear of the containment the, the virus or the dirt and that kind of a thing. So they don't exactly know how a person develops ocd. But two theories come from the most important one is actually a genetic. They usually see sort of a genetic factors. If you have a parent with an ocd, unfortunately you are highly likely to have it and or high likely to transfer it to your child. Even if they are trying to hide it, it's somehow, you know, in the blood. Now a lot of people believe it could be like bad parenting and, or trauma, but research shows that this is not a direct link. This is quite of a surprise to a lot of people. Trauma does affect the person, but in order for OCD to develop it has to be somebody who had already the genetic factors. So if you have the genetic factors but you have an amazing childhood, really healthy, your OCD might never develop or might have a slight development to it. But if you have the genetic factors and you had a really bad childhood where especially you felt completely out of control because OCD has A lot to do with wanting control and gaining control. Right? You were physically abused or sexually abused or neglected, etc, you might be much more prone to having these symptoms, unfortunately. So I say that because a lot of the disorders in the past, poor parents, were always blamed on poor parenting. Every disorder that existed in childhood, people went straight into that. So what can you do? I'm going to be honest here, here. And maybe you might think I'm biased because I'm a therapist, but the best solutions of OCD is therapy because there's a lot of details of how to actually deal with each behavior and compulsion that somebody trained in ocd, please find. Somebody trained in OCD can help you come up with a specific plan of how to actually resist the urge of doing things in a compulsive way. Medication is a, is another amazing way to actually deal with ocd because research and brain scans show that there's really a different part of your brain that lights up extra, extra lights up when you have ocd. So it's almost this repetitive thing because a part of your brain is overly functioning, so there's a chemical imbalance. And the right medication written, prescribed by a psychiatrist can help actually for your brain to get into proper action and not get stuck. It's like this broken record thing that happens in the brain. So yes, the right medication along with the OCD therapy can help. Let's say you are not able to do any of them, then you want to see what you can do on your own. So I'll give you a few tips for that as well. Let's see. First of all, decrease the level of stress that you're in. The more stress you have, the more your OCD symptoms will increase. 2. Know what OCD is and know that it's a brain disorder. Which means when you have an urge or when you're hearing a thought that's kind of saying things like, again, if you don't put the glass in the right place, your parent will die. Let yourself know in that moment that, oh, that's my OCD brain telling me that. So in other words, it's just like it's misfunctioning, it's not real. It's making me feel like it's real, but it's actually not real. Therefore you learn to not pay attention to it. I'd like to give you guys an analogy. One of my favorite movie, the Beautiful Mind was about a real story of a professor, a brilliant professor who was struggling with schizophrenia. Unfortunately, if you watched a movie in the beginning of the movie when he's a professor at the university, right? So he's climbing up the stairs to go to his classroom. He has a friend next to him walking with him and they're having a conversation. So all the way to maybe half of the movie as audience, we believe this is a real person, the professor's real friend. Well, the truth comes later on that actually it was his schizophrenia and he was having sort of hallucinations of another person. And of course this person was saying a lot of negative things. Eventually he came to understand his diagnosis. He was on meds and everything. And at the end of the movie you see him making much more peace, having made much more peace with his diagnosis. As he's walking up the stairs, he has this imaginary person walking. He hears the person. But here's the difference. This time he doesn't turn to him and he doesn't pay attention to him. And OCD is like that. So you'll hear the words, the negative thing telling you do that or somebody will die. You go, okay, it's just my brain tricking me and I'm not going to pay attention to it. Of course it's easier said than done. But this is the core belief in working with OCD is really to be able to help yourself by knowing that your brain is functioning in a detrimental way. So resisting your urge, self care, keeping calm environment, sleeping well, eating well, exercising regularly to increase your serotonin, which helps with your mood, will be all very, very helpful things for you. I highly recommend, this will be my last point, to remove yourself from any mind altering substances such as drugs and alcohol. They can really increase. They could sometimes provide a short term relief, but unfortunately in the long term they do cause much more harm. Thank you for watching. Again, if you are looking for support, you can always call us at Reconnect Trauma Treatment center or at our new clinic, Reconnect Trauma Recovery Clinic in Pacific Palisades. We have great programs to help with your mental health needs. And remember, trauma equals disconnect, healing equals reconnect. Stay connected.