Assessment of Harm Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Program
We work with individuals by carefully assessing their Harm Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Symptoms. We do this by asking carefully selected questions and having patients’ complete questionnaires to help us understand what other OCD manifestations (other subtypes, like checking or contamination) may be present. After we have completed the assessment, we provide education about Harm OCD. We will help you understand what harm obsessions are, how your urges can be misunderstood, and how your behaviours to reduce the anxiety (otherwise known as compulsions) only further bring on more intrusive thoughts around harm. We work on explaining to you the OCD cycle and how a psychological term negative reinforcement keeps the Harm OCD bothersome and ever so present. In other words, the more you reduce the anxiety and try to rid yourself of the thoughts or feelings, the more they come back even more the next time.
Our program will help you understand a little more about why you have Harm OCD thoughts. After all, that’s what you are most concerned about. What we help our patients understand is that we are animals after all and violence protected us in the past. Violent thoughts are normal and they are very much an evolutionary response. Theories are presented to help create understanding about harm thoughts and how many of us have them, but we all react differently to them. We educate on cognitive distortions and how they contribute to rumination (thinking about a thought over and over again). What is of most importance is that thinking about violence, doesn’t mean you are violent. Violent thoughts are thoughts are events that occur in the mind, not bad choices you are making with bad intentions (Hershfield 2018) In fact, people with OCD are less likely to commit an act of violence than anyone else (Hersfield 2018).
We also spend some time talking about what is not Harm OCD.
Important points from this article:
OCD is treatable and quite common.
Compulsions are anything you do to reduce the anxiety (avoidance, behaviours, and self-talk).
There are explanations as to why we have violent thoughts.
Thinking violent thoughts, doesn’t mean you will act on it.