What Is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?
Everyone feels anxiety, fear, uncertainty, or worry at some time. These normal emotions and reactions help people protect themselves, stay safe, and solve problems. Usually these feelings don't last long and don't come too often.
But for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), these feelings are taken to extremes. It's as if the brain's filter for sorting out what's dangerous from what's not dangerous isn't working properly. Instead of keeping normal worry in perspective, there is a constant stream of uncertainty, doubt, or fear in the person's mind.
OCD is a type of anxiety disorder. People with OCD become preoccupied with whether something could be harmful, dangerous, wrong, or dirty — or with thoughts about bad stuff that might happen. With OCD, upsetting or scary thoughts or images, called obsessions, pop into a person's mind and are hard to shake. People with OCD may also worry about things being "out of order" or not "just right." They may worry about losing "useless" items, sometimes feeling the need to collect these items.
People with OCD feel strong urges to do certain things repeatedly — called rituals or compulsions — in order to banish the scary thoughts, or to try to ward off the bad thing they dread, or to make extra sure that things are safe or clean or right. By doing a ritual, someone with OCD is trying to feel absolutely certain that something bad won't happen.
Sometimes the obsessions and compulsions seem to be related to each other. For example, if a person with OCD has obsessions (worry thoughts) about germs and about getting sick, these might be accompanied by compulsions (urges and behaviors) to wash a lot, clean things, or try not to touch things that might be germy.
But sometimes the compulsions don't seem to have anything to do with the fear a person is trying to banish. Someone with OCD might get the idea that if things aren't arranged just so on a desk, someone they love could get sick or die. Many times, the rituals seem odd even to the person with OCD. For this reason, many people with OCD try to hide their symptoms from others.
Although people with OCD feel a brief sense of relief when they do a compulsion, the compulsions actually strengthen the OCD thoughts, encouraging them to return. The more someone does the compulsions, the stronger the illness becomes. When OCD is severe, the fear obsessions can be extremely distressing and rituals can take up hours of a person's day. But for someone with OCD, resisting the urge to do compulsions can be very difficult. heart
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