How is OCD Treated?

There is no single way OCD shows up, so treatment shouldn’t feel one-size-fits-all. I draw from several approaches depending on what is keeping you stuck and what we discover together in therapy.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) helps you gradually face the thoughts, situations, feelings, or uncertainties that trigger OCD while practicing something different: not performing the compulsion that usually follows. The goal isn’t to make you comfortable with everything. It’s to learn that discomfort and uncertainty don’t have to control what you do.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) takes this a step further by asking: If we stopped organizing your life around getting rid of anxiety, what would you want your life to be about? We work on making room for difficult internal experiences while moving toward your relationships, values, interests, and the parts of life OCD may have pushed aside.

Inference-Based CBT (I-CBT) looks at how OCD pulls you away from what is actually happening and into imagined possibilities—what could be true, what might have happened, or what something could mean. Together, we examine the reasoning process that turns a possibility into something that suddenly feels urgent and real.

OCD treatment usually begins by getting a clear picture of how your OCD works. Together, we identify the obsessions, triggers, compulsions, avoidance, reassurance seeking, and mental rituals that make up the cycle. Sometimes compulsions are obvious, like checking or washing. Other times they happen entirely in your head, like reviewing memories, analyzing thoughts, or trying to convince yourself that everything is okay.

From there, treatment becomes more active. You learn to recognize when OCD is pulling you into the cycle and begin practicing different ways of responding. This may include gradually facing feared situations without performing compulsions, reducing reassurance and avoidance, questioning the reasoning that makes an obsession feel believable, and learning to tolerate uncertainty without needing to resolve it.

Much of the work also happens between sessions. You may practice exposures, notice compulsions as they occur in everyday life, or intentionally make different choices when OCD asks you to check, analyze, avoid, or seek certainty.

Over time, the goal is for OCD to take up less space—not necessarily because every uncomfortable thought disappears, but because you become better at recognizing the cycle and choosing how you want to respond to it.

My Approach to OCD

My approach to OCD treatment is gentle, collaborative, and individualized. While OCD treatment sometimes asks us to move toward things that feel uncomfortable, I don’t believe therapy needs to feel like something being done to you. We work together to understand what feels challenging, what feels manageable, and when it may be helpful to push a little further.

I often use Subjective Units of Distress (SUDS) to help us put language to how difficult something feels in the moment. Rather than simply asking you to “face your fear,” we can better understand where you are, what feels realistically achievable, and how to build from there. The goal is to challenge OCD without losing sight of the person experiencing it.

I also integrate psychodynamic therapy to explore some of the deeper themes that may exist alongside OCD—relationships, identity, shame, self-worth, past experiences, and patterns that continue to show up in the present. OCD may be what brings you into therapy, but you are more than your OCD.

Finally, my work is influenced by Eastern philosophy and practices of acceptance. There is a paradox at the heart of anxiety: the harder we fight to completely eliminate uncertainty or discomfort, the more power we can give it. Therapy can become a place to practice something different—allowing uncertainty to exist without surrendering your life to it.

Ultimately, I want treatment to help you do more than manage symptoms. I want us to understand what keeps you stuck, loosen OCD’s grip, and help you build a life that feels meaningful even when certainty isn’t available.