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OCD Therapy in Seaford, DE
Have Your Obsessions And Compulsions Become Too Overwhelming?
Are you struggling with unwanted, intrusive thoughts and images that keep playing over and over in your head?
Do you continually engage in ritualized behaviors in order to manage your intrusive thoughts and keep your fears at bay?
For the first time, are you wondering if your symptoms are related to OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder)?
Maybe you’ve struggled for as long as you can remember with fears of contamination, harm-related anxieties about hurting yourself (or others), or mental compulsions like checking or counting things excessively. Perhaps you feel deeply ashamed or embarrassed about your fears, so you’ve never told anyone. Yet deep down, you realize that your obsessions and compulsions are interfering with your daily life, and you know that you can’t keep going on without support.
Living With OCD Is Exhausting And Can Impact Every Area Of Your Life
You probably know that your thoughts or obsessions are irrational—but that doesn’t change anything. The urge to engage in your compulsions simply feels uncontrollable. You might spend hours each day washing your hands, checking the doors and locks, or reviewing the order of your personal belongings until they are “just right.” Perhaps you go to great lengths to seek reassurance from others to make sure you didn’t say or do anything hurtful.
Regardless of how your OCD presents itself, your life is disrupted by the obsessive-compulsive cycle—causing you to lose sleep, miss out on social events, and suffer from a diminished sense of self-esteem. Simply put, life with OCD can quickly get exhausting.
Thankfully, there is another way to live. As a therapist who specializes in helping people overcome OCD, I’m confident that I can empower you to develop self-compassion, change the way you relate to negative thoughts and emotions, and take back your life.
Reach Out With Any Questions!
OCD Is One Of The Most Widely Misunderstood Mental Health Conditions
Roughly three million adults in the US have OCD, yet when you consider how many cases are undiagnosed, the actual number is probably much higher. After all, many people aren’t aware that they have OCD. In popular culture, OCD is often narrowly portrayed as an obsession with neatness and cleanliness. As a result, many people assume their symptoms can’t possibly be OCD because their behavior doesn’t fit into this narrow box.
The truth is that OCD is not a personality quirk, but a serious condition with many subtypes. Just a few of these include:
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Contamination OCD (fear of germs and diseases)
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Existential OCD (persistent, intrusive thoughts about the meaning of life)
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Harm OCD (fear of hurting others or yourself)
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Checking OCD (constantly checking for mistakes or perfection)
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Counting OCD (An obsession with numbers and order)
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Relationship OCD (persistent, obsessive questions about one’s relationships)
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Pedophilia OCD (fear of hurting a minor even when there is no intention to)
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Religion and spirituality OCD (fear of failing morally or offending a higher power)
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Purely obsessional OCD (internal compulsions like praying, reviewing, or mental checking)
Understanding what subtype of obsessive compulsive disorder you have can help you understand that there is nothing wrong with you and that it’s possible—with the right treatment—to get control of your symptoms.
OCD Often Goes Hand In Hand With Intense Self-Blame And Shame
Many people with OCD think that they are at fault for their symptoms. They believe that they just have to avoid their triggers and everything will be okay, which leads to intense self-blame and frustration.
Unfortunately, many mental health counselors who don’t understand OCD reinforce this mindset, teaching clients to just “breathe through it” or meditate their way out of their obsessions. The truth is that these exercises can actually make OCD worse, strengthening the obsessive-compulsive cycle over time and making it harder to overcome.
What’s needed is something deeper, an approach that allows clients to safely confront their fears in a way that empowers them to disrupt the feedback loop of OCD.
Therapy Is A Chance To Change Your Relationship With OCD
With the right support, it is possible to create a life that belongs to you, not OCD! The freedom, peace, and fun that you want in your life is attainable with the help of a therapist who is trained in Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), which is considered the gold standard of OCD treatment. ERP is very effective and has a 65 to 80 percent success rate among OCD clients. Through the use of this remarkable approach, I’ve been able to help many people break the obsessive-compulsive cycle, and I want the same for you!
What To Expect In OCD Counseling Sessions
In the beginning of therapy, I’ll do a general intake focused on understanding the big picture of your life and your struggles with OCD. You’ll complete a detailed assessment called the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), which asks questions about your specific obsessions and compulsions. I’ll also provide psychoeducation about the nature of OCD and help you normalize any aspects of the disorder that you feel ashamed or embarrassed about.
Once I have a clear picture of your OCD, we’ll determine long-term goals by creating a hierarchy of fears and looking at how we’ll approach each one. We’ll also explore what life may look like for you when OCD no longer has such control over you, reflecting on your goals, values, and purpose in life, which will keep you focused on the healing process.
How The Exposure And Response Prevention Process Works
ERP aims to disrupt the cycle of OCD by having you face your fears rather than avoid them. Yet it does so in a safe, methodical way, ensuring that you have the skills to succeed. You’ll start by facing a small version of your fears and then gradually work your way up to facing your biggest fears. With each new exposure, I’ll help you practice resisting your compulsions and reducing your anxiety.
Along the way, I may utilize principles from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a mindfulness-based approach to counseling. The goal of ACT is to increase your ability to be present and accept uncomfortable thoughts and emotions without letting them define you. Through a combination of ACT and ERP, it becomes easier to focus on living a life in alignment with your purpose and values, even when there are obstacles.
As a counselor, there’s nothing more exciting than watching clients remove OCD from the driver’s seat of their life and place themselves back in it. With my help and support, I’m confident that you, too, will experience the same thing!
You May Have Some Questions About OCD Therapy…
Previous therapists didn’t understand my OCD. How will this be different?
OCD is commonly misunderstood and misdiagnosed—even among therapists. If they don’t have the right training, some of them approach OCD in a way that often makes the symptoms worse! As someone who is trained and experienced in treating OCD, I use interventions that specifically target the obsessive-compulsive cycle as well as the shame, self-criticism, and embarrassment that go with it.
The theme or subtype of my OCD switches over time. Does this mean I don’t have OCD?
It’s actually quite common for OCD themes to shift over time—that’s OCD’s way of trying to stay in control. Usually, OCD attaches itself to the things you value most. Perhaps your OCD started out with counting compulsions during childhood, but as you got older and dating became more important, it morphed into relationship OCD. The good news is that, no matter what your struggles with OCD look like, the ERP approach to therapy is still effective!
Will OCD therapy sessions be confidential?
Yes, they are! I know you value your privacy, and I do, too. The great thing about being a solo practitioner is that I’m not beholden to a large practice with lots of staff seeing your personal details. Whether you have questions about scheduling, insurance billing, or anything else, it’s me and only me that you’ll have to talk to. I also don’t use AI for clinical documentation, so you don’t have to worry about AI-related privacy concerns, either.
Break Free From The Obsessive-Compulsive Cycle
If you’ve been suffering from OCD and you’re looking for a specialist who really gets it, I believe you’ve come to the right place. My compassionate, evidence-based approach to therapy can help you break the chains of the obsessive-compulsive cycle and live life on your terms, not OCD’s demands. To learn more about how OCD therapy can help, you can connect with me via the contact page. You will hear back from me within one business day. I look forward to hearing from you!
Serving clients virtually in Maryland and in-person in Seaford, Delaware.