What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Anxiety Disorders: Key Concepts, Insights, and Interventions by Martin N. Seif & Sally Winston

Author:Martin N. Seif & Sally Winston [Seif, Martin N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781134093106
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2014-05-08T22:00:00+00:00

OCD Can Masquerade as Other Disorders and “Issues”

OCD frequently looks like another disorder. People with OCD are often misdiagnosed as depressed, agoraphobic, relationship-phobic, paranoid, and a host of other conditions. In Chapter 11 (“Classic Pitfalls”), we will examine some of the more common syndromes—such as pathological doubt—that have significant OCD components.

Here is an example of OCD looking like a relationship issue.

A young woman was referred for therapy for her “anxiety” by her marriage counselor who had had a most frustrating experience attempting to help a young couple work out an issue in their marriage. It was clear to the counselor that the couple were well matched and loved each other, but about once a week they were up all night in long painful discussions trying to decide whether or not to separate. What distressed this young woman was that on a quite regular basis, she found herself thinking about a past boyfriend and wondering how her life would have been had she married him. She recognized that he was mean to her, she had felt relief after breaking up with him, and he had recent legal problems, but nevertheless his image popped into her head and thoughts of him arose while lovemaking with her husband, and at random other times. The more she rejected these thoughts and images, the more often they arose. Both she and her husband tearfully interpreted this to mean that she had serious doubts about the marriage despite the fact that neither could identify any problems between them. After all, why would she be struggling with these thoughts? The only other issue the husband could identify was that she spent too much time cleaning the kitchen. Upon closer questioning, it became clear that she had a “thing” about raw chicken and if she thought or suspected or imagined that raw chicken had touched the counter, she had to wash down the whole counter, and then the floor and sometimes all the dishes that could have come into contact with the counter.

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