Dr. Thompson

Medically Reviewed by Dr. Thompson

Last Updated on:
January 13, 2025

Call Us Now!

Find Mental Health Treatment Today! Overcome everything that is holding you back!

At Arbor Wellness, our OCD Treatment in Nashville can help you understand, identify, and recover from the symptoms of OCD.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a mental health condition that is characterized by recurrent uncontrollable thoughts and patterns of behaviors. 

People with OCD feel an urge to repeat these thoughts or behaviors again and again and are often powerless to stop themselves. 

Often, these behaviors can manifest as things like repeated hand washing, cleaning, or checking on things, and typically interfere with their ability to live a normal life. It can even impact their ability to do their jobs or to have a normal social life. 

At Arbor Wellness, our we offer OCD Treatment as part of our Nashville mental health programs.

You are not alone. You deserve to get help.

Arbor Wellness is an industry leader in mental health treatment. Our team of top medical experts specialize in dual diagnosis treatment and are committed to ensuring that each patient is treated as an individual. Call us today, we’re available 24/7.

What is OCD?

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a mental health disorder that is characterized by recurrent uncontrollable thoughts and patterns of behaviors. 

People with OCD experience obsessive thoughts and engage in compulsive behaviors and often feel powerless to stop themselves. 

This condition typically interferes with their ability to live a normal life, including working, socializing, and having personal relationships. In turn, this causes a person to feel anxiety, which contributes to exacerbating the symptoms of OCD. 

Someone with OCD recognizes that what they experience isn’t “normal” or healthy. They often spend hours a day engaging in rituals and feeling great stress that they cannot stop themselves. Attending OCD treatment in Nashville helps people learn to manage their symptoms and experience less anxiety.

Common Symptoms of OCD

The symptoms of OCD can be divided into to different categories: obsessions (reoccurring thoughts) and compulsions (behaviors). People suffering from this condition may have symptoms of obsessions, compulsions, or both.

Obsessions are frequent, uncontrollable thoughts, urges, or metal images that cause anxiety and yet won’t go away. Common obsessions include: 

  • Fear of getting contaminated like body fluids, germs, dirt and environmental contaminants
  • Unwanted and disturbing sexual thoughts like forbidden and perverse sexual images and thoughts and thoughts about aggressive sexual behavior 
  • Fear of harming others
  • Obsessions about perfectionism like keeping an exact order or needing to know or remember things 

Compulsions are repetitive behaviors that a person feels compelled to do. Quite often, compulsions arise as a way for people with OCD to try and counteract or neutralize their obsessions. Most people realize that compulsions consume a lot of their time and only give them temporary relief, but are helpless to stop as they try to make their obsessions go away. Compulsions can often interfere with a person’s ability to live a normal daily life. Common compulsions include: 

  • Checking things repeatedly that you did not harm others and checking nothing bad has happened
  • Repeating behaviors like rewriting and rereading

For many people, OCD is not the only mental health condition that they suffer from. Many see OCD as neurodivergant.

It is estimated that 90% also suffer from additional disorders, most commonly:

What Causes OCD?

What causes OCD? 

The exact causes of obsessive-compulsive disorder are not yet fully understood. It is believed that this condition can be the result of environmental factors, neurological factors, and even genetics. In fact, for families with a history of OCD, there is a 25% chance that additional family members will also develop symptoms. Some studies have found a connection between childhood trauma, whereas others have found that certain areas of the brain have abnormal structures in those with OCD. Research is still being conducted to solidify these possible causes in the hopes of developing even more effective treatment options.