Compulsive Behavior

If you or someone you love engages in self-injurious behavior, a mental illness could be the underlying cause. Finding the right help to stop self-harming and addressing any influential factors like mental illness or substance abuse is necessary since the individual lacks the impulse control to effectively stop themselves from continuing this behavior and hurting themselves.

Learned helplessness usually has a role to play in most individuals’ dependency. Either learned helplessness was a causative force in the inception of their dependency, or they developed learned helplessness in the process of failing to quit and perpetuating it. Whichever way learned helplessness affects your dependency, the good news is that it can be unlearned given the right tools.

We spend so much time as a society talking about the negatives that come with psychological conditions – but despite the grief they can cause us from time to time, there are some positives that we can focus on, too. Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is marked by characteristics of obsessions (intrusive thoughts) and compulsions (urges); in many cases, OCD can hold a person back in their relationships, work and other pursuits. However, there are some positives that we can find with OCD, and these positives may help us gain a sense of reclaiming over our story.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) affects nearly 2.2 million adults in the United States each year. A person with OCD may have obsessions and compulsions that they feel the urge to repeat over and over. Obsessions take the form of repeated thoughts, urges, or mental images that cause anxiety, and compulsions are repetitive behaviors that a person feels compelled to do in response to an obsession. This could take the form of washing, knocking, checking, arranging, cleaning, counting, and much more. Symptoms of OCD may fluctuate over time, lessening in severity or becoming more distressful for a person. OCD can easily affect all aspects of one’s day and can become very stressful. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to be very effective in the treatment of OCD. With CBT, a person can learn more about the ways their beliefs have shaped their perceptions on things and how they’ve acted upon those beliefs to determine if those beliefs are helping or harming their quality of life. We all have beliefs that prevent us from doing certain activities, but a person with OCD has a secondary level of thoughts that create further anxiety and obsession. A study conducted by researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles and published in the journal Translational Psychiatry found that CBT presented a significant increase in connectivity between 8 different brain networks, including the cerebellum, caudate nucleus, putamen, and the dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices. This means that CBT seems to help a person compensate for their OCD by helping them to develop new cognitive and behavioral strategies towards it. A lot of people with OCD are not aware they have it until a situation arises that brings the symptoms to light, a person mentions it, or they are diagnosed. If you have been struggling with obsessive thoughts and compulsions, treatment is available. CBT isn’t the only form of effective treatment, either. There are several others that have proven to help people. Make the decision to seek out a reputable treatment center today so that you can take control over your OCD.

The International OCD Foundation defines obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as “a mental health disorder that affects people of all ages and all walks of life, and occurs when a person gets caught in a cycle of obsessions or compulsions”. Obsessions, which often take the form of intrusive thoughts, can cause extreme distress in individuals. The symptoms of OCD can cause much anxiety and panic over real or imagined events, but thankfully there are forms of treatment that have proved to help many people with this disorder. There are several evidence-based treatments for those with OCD: