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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: set of unwanted thoughts (P3)

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: set of unwanted thoughts (P3)

Edited by: TOP DOCTORS® at 10/10/2023

People with OCD may have one or more cognitive characteristics in their behavior, from exaggerating the odds and the possibility of an impossible event occurring, to perfectionism

Liz Basañez

Cognitive Behavioral Psychologist

Cognitive characteristics of OCD

Risk - Danger

• People with OCD often overestimate the risk in relation to the real danger so that things or situations "are often dangerous until proven otherwise."

• As a result of this sense of danger they automatically and unconsciously feel that they will not be able to cope with it and that they require something external to rescue them from a dangerous situation, so they make compulsions or avoid an event altogether.

 

Doubt - Uncertainty - Indecision

 

• The extreme need for certainty and guarantees causes a great difficulty to make decisions to the person, who usually thinks that he has bad memory when it is not so. They also find it hard to categorize and discriminate hierarchically the situations of daily life.

Severity - Probability

• If something happens, it is not bad, it is TERRIBLE.

• Confusion between the possible and the probable.

• They often question and pose extraordinary situations, such as a helicopter falling right where it is, and are convinced that their fear is possible and 100% likely.

Perfectionism

• Occasionally they put patterns and standards of great exigency in their activities, however, when they are not fulfilled they generate anguish, not anger as in the case of other psychological problems associated with perfectionism.

Guilt - Responsibility - Shame

• They have an excess of feelings of responsibility, guilt or shame about their thoughts and behaviors, even if they are not transcendental.

Rigidity - Morality

• Their attitudes and actions have a moralistic tone and are governed by rigid norms, whether religious, economic, sexual or, in general, what is considered right and wrong.

• Especially a TOC subtype called SCRUB.

Psychology in Miguel Hidalgo