I work with adults across all presentations of OCD: intrusive thoughts, checking, contamination fears, harm OCD, relationship OCD, religious OCD (scrupulosity), and Pure O. Whether you've been diagnosed or you suspect what you're experiencing might be OCD, therapy can help.
What OCD actually is
OCD has two main components. Obsessions are intrusive, unwanted thoughts, images, or urges that cause significant distress. Compulsions are repetitive behaviours or mental acts performed to neutralise that distress. The cycle is exhausting and self-reinforcing, the compulsion offers brief relief, which strengthens the urge to repeat it.
Research suggests OCD affects 2–3% of the population over a lifetime, but it often takes years to identify and seek help. One reason is that the content of obsessions can feel shameful or frightening to disclose. It's worth saying clearly: the distress your thoughts cause you is itself evidence of how seriously you hold your values. Intrusive thoughts are not a reflection of who you are.
How I work with OCD
My approach draws on three evidence-based modalities, adapted to what fits for you.
Inference-Based CBT (I-CBT) is a newer approach that looks at the reasoning process underneath the doubt. Rather than focusing only on managing the anxiety once a thought has taken hold, I-CBT examines why the thought got taken seriously in the first place. It's a different angle that many people find genuinely freeing.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps you change your relationship with intrusive thoughts rather than fighting them. The goal isn't to eliminate the thoughts, it's to take their power away, so they no longer dictate what you do or how you live.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the most extensively researched treatment for OCD. It involves gradually facing the situations or thoughts that trigger your obsessions while supporting you to resist performing compulsions. ERP is introduced thoughtfully and at your pace, never as a boot camp.
For a more detailed look at how these approaches work and what the research says, you can read my evidence-based guide to OCD therapy.
What therapy with me looks like
We don't begin with techniques. We begin by building a relationship in which you feel safe enough to talk about thoughts that may feel shameful, frightening, or difficult to say out loud. Many people have spent years hiding the content of their OCD. That ends here.
From there, we develop a shared understanding of how your OCD operates, what maintains it, and what your experience of it has been. You're the expert on your own life. I bring expertise in how OCD functions and what the research says about changing it.
Therapy never forces you to do anything you don't want to do. You set the pace. The goal isn't to white-knuckle your way through distress, it's to develop a fundamentally different relationship with your own mind.