Is OCD an Anxiety Disorder?

If a mental health issue causes anxiety, does that make it an anxiety disorder? Not necessarily. Take obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Often associated with extreme orderliness, OCD is far more than that. One of its hallmark symptoms is the anxiety caused by the obsessions. 

The anxiety caused by OCD can feel much like anxiety caused by, well, anything. But they are not the same. We’ll discuss some of the differences below, but for now, consider that anxiety arising from OCD obsessions leads people to partake in OCD compulsions. Anxiety outside of OCD causes distress but not compulsions. Let’s explore some other distinctions.

What Are Anxiety Disorders?

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health condition in the world, but they come in several forms. These can include social anxiety and panic disorders, but most frequently, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is the culprit. As the name implies, GAD involves chronic worry about a wide range of concerns. Symptoms typically include a sense of doom or dread, irritability that can transform into angry outbursts, and physical signs like rapid heart rate, excessive sweating, and gastrointestinal issues.

How Does Anxiety Manifest in Someone With OCD?

OCD features intrusive thoughts that are often deeply distressing and concerning. A person might feel certain they forgot to turn off the oven before leaving the house. As you might imagine, this causes severe anxiety. For this reason, OCD was deemed an anxiety disorder until 2013. When research continued to show very different functionality and specific brain chemistry signs, OCD was officially designated as a separate diagnosis.

How Can Someone Know If They Have OCD or an Anxiety Disorder?

As touched on above, the key difference is the perceived need to perform compulsions to counteract anxiety-inducing obsessions. People with anxiety disorders may worry about turning off the oven, but they do not feel driven to negate that fear via compulsive rituals. Therefore, again, the primary difference lies in how the feeling of worry is addressed.

Additional differences include:

• People with anxiety most often worry about events that can actually happen. Someone with OCD  can have very unrealistic obsessions. 

• Unlike OCD, GAD usually manifests with physical symptoms.

Can You Have Both Disorders? 

As many as 9 out of 10 people with OCD also struggle with at least one other mental health condition. Often, that means an anxiety disorder of some kind. This reality is a big reason to consult a professional. To ensure effective treatment, there must be clarity as to exactly what you’re dealing with. Since anxiety is far more common than OCD, if you have both, it’s crucial to make sure that OCD does not get lost in the mix.

Differences in Treatment 

Once a mental health professional has clarified a diagnosis, a treatment plan will be designed. Talk therapy is a proven option for anxiety disorders but is generally not effective for OCD. The gold standard for OCD is exposure and response prevention (ERP). This approach slowly exposes the client to triggers and eases them into a step-by-step protocol to reduce the feeling of needing a compulsion. 

In some instances, ERP can also be effective for GAD, but more often, other modalities such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and psychodynamic therapies are the go-to choices. Medication can sometimes reduce symptoms for either disorder — even if they are co-morbid.

Ask For Help

As you’ve surely discerned by now, differentiating between disorders can be a trickier process than it first appears. If you’re experiencing symptoms that could be GAD, OCD, or both, it’s not a good idea to try self-diagnosing (or shrugging them off entirely). I urge you to get in touch to learn more about the possibilities. 

Learn more about OCD Treatment…

What is ERP for OCD?

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is too often misunderstood. Many folks use the abbreviation OCD as shorthand for anyone who is very organized or hygiene-focused. But it’s so much more than that. As the name suggests, OCD involves a cycle of obsessions and compulsions. The obsessions are anxiety-causing thoughts and fears. In response, someone with OCD will perform rituals meant to prevent danger from happening. These are the compulsions — some of which may involve the aforementioned bent toward order or cleanliness.

OCD’s intrusive sequence of events can interfere with daily functioning, thus making this a very serious disorder. Fortunately, exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy has become an effective form of treatment for people with OCD.

What is ERP for OCD?

The “exposure” part of ERP is precisely what you’d imagine it is. In other words, ERP is not about avoiding obsessions but, rather, facing them and changing part two: your “response.” This is a realistic approach because distress and its triggers can never be deleted from anyone’s life. What matters most is how we react to these inevitable trials.

Yes, it can feel challenging at first to provoke intrusive thoughts, but ERP’s long-term effect is worth the initial discomfort. 

How It Works

Of course, every person is different, and every manifestation of OCD is unique. Thus, ERP will be adapted on a case-by-case basis. Be that as it may, we can still explore one form of ERP. 

You’re exposed to a trigger and, therefore, feel a powerful need to perform a compulsion to neutralize it. For the sake of this description, let’s say the compulsion needs to be performed immediately, and it involves 6 or 7 parts. Here are some steps you can take via ERP:

• Delay the first step. Challenge the immediacy by taking time (maybe ten seconds, maybe ten minutes) before taking any action. This may feel scary, but just control yourself before allowing the compulsion to take control. Over time, you will want to lengthen the duration of the delay. This weakens the power of the cycle and transfers some of that power back to you.

• Perform the compulsion, but remove one of the five steps. So yes, you still submitted to the compulsion, but not without removing a little more of its control.

From there, with your therapist’s support, you can incrementally increase the delay time while slowly removing other phases of the compulsion. Over a time frame that feels right for you, ERP will eat away at the OCD cycle until you can experience an intrusive thought but not perform the compulsion.

This is not a guarantee or a “miracle cure.” You may slide at times and go back to restart at an earlier point. What matters is that ERP causes improvement, which, in turn, infuses the entire process with hope. ERP, combined with other therapies or possibly medication, can be a game-changer for someone with OCD.

How ERP is Used

Initially, ERP is done in a clinical setting. Your therapist may use pictures or videos to expose you to a known trigger gently. As things progress and you improve in maintaining control, it may become your responsibility to envision common obsessions (with a visual cue). With the therapist nearby, you will then practice the steps of ERP. Next comes homework, e.g., the client is guided on how to practice ERP coping skills outside the therapy setting.

Thanks to ERP, you can learn more about OCD and more about what it takes to control it. OCD has no known cure but approaches like ERP offer hope when it comes to managing the symptoms and regaining control of your day-to-day life. 

Learn more about OCD Treatment.