When most people think of Obsessive-compulsive disorderyou can imagine behaviors you have seen on television, such as washing your hands repeatedly, turning on and off light switches and sorting small objects over and over again.
But the disorder manifests in many other ways. Some patients become obsessed thinking that they could hurt someone, while others become obsessed with certain aspects of their personal relationships.
Comedian Maria Bamford, for example, has called her TOC “Unwanted thoughts syndrome.” In the program The Late Show with Stephen Colberthe shared a story about how he could not stop having horrible thoughts about his family members.
In social networks, people describe many types of obsessions and compulsions: “Toc de Relio”, “Sexual orientation OCT” or “Emotional contamination.” It is not different diagnoses, but different expressions of the same disorder, similar to how people with phobias may suffer from different fears, said Carolyn Rodriguez, an expert in OCD and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine.
Understanding these distinctions can help doctors to design a precise treatment plan, he added. And it is also important that the public understands them. Otherwise, people who have the disorder could not even recognize that they suffer from it, Rodriguez said.
Those who are afraid to harm others might think: “Maybe I’m a murderer,” he added. “If I tell someone these things, they will put me in jail.” This is what you have to know about the various ways in which the TOC manifests.
First, what is the TOC?
The TOC consists of a set of obsessions and compulsions that cause great anguish and affect people’s quality of life.
Obsessions may include unwanted intrusive thoughts, images or impulses that dominate the mind.
Compulsions are the repetitive actions that people perform in response to their obsessions to try to feel better.
These TOC symptoms can take a long time and last at least one hour a day, according to the diagnostic manual used by mental health professionals.
If someone worries excessively that they will set the house on fire by leaving the stove accidentally on, for example, they can check again and again that the knobs are in the off position.
It is estimated that around 2.3 percent of American adults have suffered Toc at some point in their lives, According to the National Institute of Mental Health. Women are more likely to receive a diagnosis than men.
More research is needed to better understand the origins of the TOC, which is believed to have genetic and environmental causes.
What are the different types of TOC?
Although all people suffering from the disorder have obsessions and compulsions, “the TOC among patients is almost never the same,” said Jeremy Tyler, co -director of outpatient psychiatry of the Perelman Faculty of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.
People with TOC may differ in many aspects, such as the presence or absence of ICTs (involuntary and repetitive movements or vocalizations). Patients also vary in their degree of “Insight”, Which is the level of awareness of their condition, as well as in the way they feel when their symptoms are triggered.
Another aspect in which patients differ is in the content of their obsessions and compulsions.
Concern for pollution, the need for symmetry or order, prohibited thoughts or taboos and the fear of harming others or oneself are common issues, said Helen Blair Simpson, a professor of psychiatry and researcher at OC at Columbia University.
THE INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR THE TOC It also lists other issues, such as sexual thoughts, fixations in relationships, concerns related to responsibility (such as being responsible for something terrible to happen) or fears related to perfectionism (as showing excessive concern for making mistakes).
Patients and therapists have put tags to some of these issues in online forums, coining terms such as “Toc of symmetry and order” and “Toc of perfectionism”. Creating names for the different expressions of Toc can help those who suffer from feeling less alone, Rodríguez said.
Often, there may be more than one issue at the same time, and the content of a person’s obsession or compulsion can change throughout the disease, experts said.
How is the TOC treated?
Toc is usually treated with a antidepressant, with exposure therapy with response preventionor with both. The therapy consists in asking patients to experience their stress and anxiety without compulsion in response. Therapists will also encourage patients to allow their obsessions to emerge instead of trying to continuously move them away.
It is especially important that the therapists know the “type” of a person when they carry out exposure therapy with response prevention, because they can make sure that their patients are exposed to the precise types of situations that usually arouse their obsessions, Tyler said.
“As a floor with people; I hold knives with people,” he said. It may sound “crazy,” he added, but in the process, patients learn that what they fear most is not likely to happen.