Specialized Mental Health Care for OCD
OCD is frequently misunderstood or mistaken for simple perfectionism, which means many people go years without the right kind of help. I use exposure and response prevention alongside other modalities to work with obsessive thoughts, compulsions, and the exhausting mental loops that come with them, including the intrusive thoughts that show up during the perinatal period.
Signs You May Need Support with OCD
You have thoughts that feel deeply unlike you, and the fact that they horrify you is exactly what makes them stick.
You check, wash, count, arrange, pray, confess, or mentally review, and the relief lasts a few minutes before the doubt returns larger than before.
You ask for reassurance from partners, parents, doctors, or the internet, and you have noticed you need it more often than you used to.
You have quietly rearranged your life around avoidance, declining certain situations, driving certain routes, or refusing to be alone with certain people.
You are chasing a feeling of "just right" and cannot move on until you find it.
You spend an hour or more a day inside your own head running loops, and you are exhausted in a way that sleep does not fix.
Your doubt attaches to whatever you care about most, whether that is your relationship, your morality, your health, your sexuality, or your child.
You have been in therapy before for anxiety and it either did not help or made things worse, which often happens when OCD is treated with talk therapy alone.
Our Approach to OCD Treatment
Exposure and response prevention, the gold standard treatment for OCD, delivered by a clinician trained specifically in it rather than in general anxiety work.
Careful assessment first, mapping your obsessions, compulsions, avoidance, and reassurance-seeking, including the mental compulsions that are easy to miss.
A collaborative hierarchy that you help build, so you always know what is coming and you are never ambushed.
Response prevention planning that addresses the covert rituals, meaning the mental reviewing, self-reassurance, and checking that no one else can see.
Acceptance and commitment therapy woven in, so the work is not only about tolerating discomfort but about getting your life back on the terms you actually want.
Optional family and partner work to reduce accommodation, since loved ones usually participate in the rituals without realizing they are reinforcing them.
Treatment for the OCD subtypes that are most often missed or misdiagnosed, including harm, scrupulosity, relationship, sensorimotor, and perinatal presentations.
Relapse prevention, so you leave with the skills to recognize a flare early and respond to it yourself.