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ObsessionsAn unwanted, intrusive thought, image, or urge that keeps returning and causes distress.Read more → create an alarm; compulsionsA repetitive action or mental act carried out to relieve the anxiety caused by an obsession.Read more → briefly silence it. That short relief teaches the brain to sound the alarm again. Treatment breaks the loop by meeting the trigger without performing the ritual.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder involves recurrent intrusive thoughts, images or urges and repetitive acts or mental rituals performed to reduce distress or prevent a feared event. Cognitive behavioural therapy with exposure and response prevention deliberately approaches feared cues while resisting compulsionsA repetitive action or mental act carried out to relieve the anxiety caused by an obsession.Read more →. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are also effective; treatment intensity depends on functional impairment.

Look for intrusive contamination, harm, symmetry or taboo thoughts followed by checking, washing, ordering, counting, mental rituals or reassurance seeking that consumes time or impairs function.

• Obsession, intrusive, unwanted thought, image or urge.
• Compulsion, repetitive behaviour or mental act intended to reduce distress.
• Psychosis, a fixed belief is usually experienced as true rather than as an intrusive mental event.
• Obsessive-compulsive personality traits, enduring orderliness or perfectionism without the same obsessionAn unwanted, intrusive thought, image, or urge that keeps returning and causes distress.Read more →-compulsionA repetitive action or mental act carried out to relieve the anxiety caused by an obsession.Read more → cycle.

Trap, calling ordinary preferences obsessionsAn unwanted, intrusive thought, image, or urge that keeps returning and causes distress.Read more →. Resolution: OCDObsessive-compulsive disorder, a condition of unwanted repeated thoughts and the actions done to relieve them.Read more → symptoms are intrusive, distressing or disabling.

Trap, offering reassurance as treatment. Resolution: repeated reassurance can become part of the compulsionA repetitive action or mental act carried out to relieve the anxiety caused by an obsession.Read more → cycle.

Trap, using an antidepressant response timeline from depression. Resolution: NICE notes that OCDObsessive-compulsive disorder, a condition of unwanted repeated thoughts and the actions done to relieve them.Read more → benefit may take up to 12 weeks.

Name the intrusive event, identify the neutralising ritual, then grade functional impairment. Match the intervention to the maintaining loop and severity rather than to the surface theme.