Therapy for OCD & Panic Attacks

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is made of two parts – obsessions and compulsions.  Obsessions are uncontrollable, recurring thoughts or impulses that trigger intense anxiety.  Compulsions are repetitive behaviors or rituals that a person with OCD feels the urge to do following an obsession in order to have a temporary relief or feeling of safety.  

Panic Disorder develops when someone experiences a panic attack, has excessive anxiety about having another panic attack and starts to change their life around to avoid the possibility of having another.  

OCD and Panic Disorder are two separate struggles, but they have some things in common.  They both involve an intense, often debilitating amount of anxiety that causes the person to continue using the short-term fixes of attempting to control or avoid the anxiety.  The control and avoidance never work and just add more intensity and pressure - a vicious cycle.

To illustrate what I mean by this, let’s use a metaphor.  Let’s imagine you walk into your kitchen one day and are surprised to find a little tiger cub.  After you get done playing with it, you realize it must be hungry and give it some scraps from the leftovers in the fridge.  

As you continue to do this day after day, the little cub is growing bigger and bigger.  A growing tiger means growing size of meals. The scraps no longer suffice and big steaks are the only thing that will satisfy it.

This pet that used to meow when hungry now growls loudly at meal time.  The once cute pet has turned into an uncontrollable beast that will tear you apart if it doesn’t get what it wants.  Your struggle with anxiety can be compared to this imaginary pet tiger.  

Every time you give into your anxiety by avoiding upsetting thoughts and feelings, you are unintentionally feeding it, empowering it to grow stronger, and letting it have more control over you.  If the anxiety-tiger growls ferociously, telling you to feed it whatever it wants or it will eat you, the logical thing to do is feed it and feed it fast. Yet, there is a part of you that knows that this is not going to end well, that this is not a workable long-term strategy.

Both OCD & Panic Disorder are not typically helped significantly from traditional talk therapy but instead often respond well to evidenced-based therapy.  More modern approaches that incorporate cognitive behavioral elements tend to be quite helpful and can put the tiger in its place.  

If this is something you’d like to work on, then I might be a good match for you.  If you want to reach out to me, I’d be happy to talk with you about therapy and set up a time to talk in my office in Hood River.

You can read much more about both OCD and Panic Disorder here --Anxiety is Not The Enemy