OCD fact worth repeating: having an... | Georgia Telehealth Therapy

You know the feeling? You're um standing near a high balcony ledge just taking in the view and suddenly your brain whispers, "What if you just jumped?" Yes, exactly. Or maybe you're like chopping vegetables for dinner, having a perfectly normal evening, and your mind flashes this horrific vivid image of you turning the knife on your own hand. Oh yeah, the classic kitchen knife scenario, right? And for most of us, those moments are just, you know, a weird glitch, like a strange psychological hiccup, right? You just shake your head and go back to the onions. Exactly. You brush it off. But what happens when your brain simply won't let you brush it off? When it just gets

stuck. Yeah. What happens when fighting that thought becomes the exact thing that traps you? It's a terrifying loop. Really, it is. And that's what we are getting into today. Welcome to a new deep dive. Today's mission is unpacking a really fascinating set of clinical notes provided by coping and healing counseling or CHC. They're a specialized telealth practice, right? Yeah. Serving patients all across the state of Georgia actually. And we're using their notes to explore the deeply misunderstood world of OCD and intrusive thoughts. It's such an important topic. It really is. The central paradox we'll be exploring with you today is why fighting your own thoughts actually makes them louder, which is so counterintuitive. I know.

The way I was visualizing this while reading through the sources, it's like trying to hold a giant beach ball underwater. Oh, that's a perfect way to look at it, right? Because you know that exact physical sensation. You push it down beneath the surface. You're using like all your upper body strength to keep it out of sight. And the water pressure is just fighting you the whole time. Exactly. The further down you push it, the more the pressure builds until eventually your arms just get exhausted, your grip slips, and bam. The beach ball violently pops back up and hits you right in the face. Exactly. In the face. And that's exactly what trying to suppress a

thought feels like. It really is. And what's fascinating here is that today isn't just about defining a mental health condition. We're exploring the intricate, completely counterintuitive ways our nervous system responds to fear and control. So before we can understand why fighting these thoughts doesn't work, I feel like we have to look at what these thoughts actually are. Yeah. We have to clear up the biggest misconception about OCD right out of the gate. Because it's not just about, you know, wanting a tidy desk. Not at all. I mean, the sources lay out a stark reality here. Having an intrusive thought does not mean you want to act on it, right? Which is huge. It's the defining

feature. In clinical OCD, the thoughts are what we call egodistonic, meaning they don't align with who you are. Exactly. The notes give some really intense examples, like loving, devoted parents having graphic thoughts about harming their own kids. That's just gut-wrenching. It is. Or um religious people being bombarded with intensely blasphemous images in a place of worship or highly compassionate people having urges to commit violent acts. Okay, wait. Let's unpack this for a second cuz I think this is where a lot of people get tripped up. If a seemingly gentle person has a graphic, violent thought like over and over, doesn't that secretly mean there's some dark violent part of their personality hiding in there? Like

a repressed desire? Yeah, exactly. Like they actually want to do it deep down. No, not at all. And the clinical notes explicitly debunk that old sort of Freudian idea. Oh, interesting. Yeah. OCD is essentially a doubt disorder. The content of the obsession is the exact opposite of who the person is. The exact opposite, right? Because it specifically attacks whatever the person cares about the absolute most. So if you value your kids above everything, the OCD latches right onto that to generate the maximum possible fear. If your faith is your anchor, it attacks your faith. Wow. So the fact that the thought causes so much distress is basically proof that you're not that terrible thing. Precisely.

If a truly violent person has a violent thought, they don't panic. They might even like it, right? They don't care. Exactly. But for someone with OCD, the intense anxiety is the brain's misguided way of saying this thought is incredibly dangerous to our core values. Sound the alarm. That makes so much sense. And honestly, once we establish how terrifying and out of character these thoughts are, it perfectly explains why people try so hard to push them away. Absolutely. It's a primal survival instinct. Right. If a horrific image pops into your head, your first instinct is to scream, "No, get out." But that natural instinct leads straight into the trap. The beach ball trap. Yes. The central

paradox here is that suppression makes the obsessions much stronger. Because if I tell you, don't think about a pink elephant. You're instantly picturing a pink elephant. Your brain has to monitor itself to make sure you aren't thinking about it, which means you're actively thinking about it, right? And so people try to cope with this agonizing anxiety. And the notes talk about reassurance seeking and rituals which are the compulsions in obsessivempulsive disorder, right? Like checking a lock 10 times or mentally repeating a phrase to neutralize a bad thought or asking your partner constantly, "Are you sure I didn't hit someone with my car today?" And doing those things gives you this brief tiny wave of relief,

right? Very brief. The anxiety drops for a moment, but there's a massive long-term cost. Yeah, it reminds me of Okay, imagine feeding a stray raccoon that wanders onto your porch. Oh, I like this analogy. Right. So, this raccoon is scratching at your door. It's making noise. It's stressing you out. So, you just toss it some food to make it go away right now. And it takes the food and leaves. Exactly. You get your peace and quiet. But what did you actually just do? You guarantee that the raccoon will come back tomorrow and next time it's bringing friends. That is so accurate because if we connect this to the bigger picture to the nervous system, that's

exactly how the brain learns. Every time you perform a ritual or ask for reassurance, you are confirming to your brain that the intrusive thought was actually a real physical danger. You're feeding the raccoon. Exactly. You're validating the fear. You're teaching your amygdala that the only reason you survived that thought is because you checked the lock 10 times. Wow. So doing the ritual actually makes the next obsession even harder to resist. It reinforces the entire cycle. Okay. So if fighting the thoughts fails and doing rituals to soothe the anxiety fails, how does someone actually break out of this loop? That brings us to the gold standard of treatment mentioned in the CHC notes. It's called ERP,

exposure and response prevention therapy. Right? And it works by teaching the nervous system that the feared thought can just be present without the person doing the ritual or seeking the reassurance. Wait, wait, I need to stop you there because on paper that sounds like actual torture. It's incredibly challenging. Yes. I mean, you're intentionally triggering someone's worst nightmare and then telling them they can't do the one thing that makes them feel safe, right? You take away their coping mechanism. How does that not just cause a massive panic attack? Well, it's done very gradually by a trained specialist. The goal is habituation. Think of a faulty fire alarm in your house. Okay, the alarm is blaring. It's

deafening. Your instinct is to run outside. In ERP, the therapist basically helps you sit on the couch and just read a book while the alarm screams. Just sit there. Just sit there. You don't run out. You don't perform the ritual. And by doing nothing, you physically prove to your brain that there is no fire. Eventually, the alarm just resets. The brain realizes it was a false alarm. Exactly. But the sources do add some important medical context here. For a lot of people, ERP alone is too much at first because the alarm is just too loud, right? So SSRI's antid-depressants at higher doses combined with weekly ERP sessions actually produce the strongest, most durable outcomes because

the medication turns down the volume of the alarm just enough for them to sit on the couch. Exactly. It gives them the cognitive breathing room to do the therapy. And the success rate is incredible. The note said 70 to 80%, right? Yeah. 70 to 80% of people who complete ERP see significant life-changing relief. Patients describe it as a quieting of the mental noise. Wow. But wait, so what does this all mean for the end goal? The goal isn't to stop the scary thoughts from happening at all. The goal is just to sit there and tolerate the uncertainty. Yes. And I know that sounds terrifying, but it's the only way out. You have to undergo this

massive philosophical shift, right? You have to learn to tolerate uncertainty rather than constantly chasing an impossible certainty. You will never be 100% sure of anything and trying to be sure is the trap. That's that's huge. Just accepting that uncertainty. But I guess knowing the cure is incredible, but it only really matters if people can recognize they need it, right? And actually access the care. Exactly. So, let's clear up a few more myths from the sources. We established it's not about being tidy, right? And the notes also stress that not everyone is a little OCD. Oh, that phrase, right? People say that all the time. Everyone has intrusive thoughts, sure, but not everyone has the clinical

pattern, right? And as we said, the thoughts themselves are not dangerous. So, when is it time to actually seek help? The notes are really clear on this. If the thoughts are taking up more than an hour of your day, an hour a day. Wow. Yeah. Or if your rituals are interfering with your work, your relationships, or if you're avoiding triggers, like refusing to drive because you're afraid you'll run someone over, that's when you need a professional. Absolutely. And this brings us to the logistics laid out in the notes from Coping and Healing Counseling or CHC because finding an ERP specialist is notoriously difficult. It really is. But CHC is a 100% teleaalth IPA compliant practice

and they have over 15 licensed therapists, LCSSWS, LPC's, LMFTs serving all 159 counties in Georgia. All 159 counties. That's incredible reach, right? Here's where it gets really interesting. By utilizing teleaalth across the entire state, they're taking this highly specialized ERP treatment and making it accessible to like a teenager in a rural county just as easily as an adult in the city. It completely levels the playing field. Yeah. And they treat teens from 13 up through adults. They do individual couples, family therapy, even life coaching. Because OCD rarely happens in a vacuum. Exactly. They also specialize in anxiety, depression, trauma, and PTSD, grief, relationship issues, stress, the whole spectrum. The financial info they provided is crucial,

too, because specialized care is usually so expensive out of pocket. Oh, this blew my mind. Medicaid has a 0 co-ay with them. Zero dollars for ERP. That is unheard of. Seriously. And for other insuranceances like Etna, Sigma, Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Healthcare, and Humanana, it's just $35 to $40 a session. That breaks down such a massive barrier to care. It really does. If people want to reach out, the contact details in the notes are their phone number, 404832102, or their website, gttherapy.com. You can also email support at gttherapy.com. And don't they have a screening tool? Yes, a free two-minute screening at cheat theapy.com committmental health tests. That's a great place to start if you're

listening and thinking, wait, is this what I've been experiencing? Definitely. So, just to kind of wrap up the journey we've taken today through these notes. Yeah, it's been a lot of ground covered. It really has. We moved from the terrifying paradox of fighting our own thoughts, the whole beach ball analogy, to understanding that OCD is actually a doubt disorder that attacks what we love most. Exactly. And finally, we learned how retraining the brain with ERP and using accessible resources like CHC can quite literally quiet that mental noise. It's life-saving work. And you know, I think there's a final lingering thought here that really stretches beyond just clinical OCD. Oh, what's that? Well, if learning to

tolerate uncertainty and letting go of control is the ultimate key to quieting the severe clinical mental noise of OCD. Yeah. How much daily peace might the rest of us find if we stopped trying to tightly control every stray anxious thought that wanders into our own heads? Oh wow. Just letting the thought be there without fighting it. Right. Stop feeding the raccoon. Stop feeding the raccoon. I love that. That is definitely something to mull over. Well, thank you for joining us on this deep dive. That was a great conversation. It really was. We will catch you all on the next one.