Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is often reduced to jokes about tidiness or double-checking a locked door, but the lived experience is far more distressing and far less voluntary. In this webinar, Lisa Skriver, Registered Psychologist at The Family Psychology Place, walks through what OCD actually is, who it affects, and — most importantly — what genuinely helps.

The Reality Behind OCD
OCD isn’t a personality quirk or a preference for order — it’s a diagnosable disorder built on two interlocking parts, and it affects a meaningful share of the population starting as early as adolescence.

• Obsessions: Unwanted thoughts, images, or urges — often centered on harm, forbidden or taboo topics, contamination, or symmetry — that create real anxiety and distress.
• Compulsions: Repetitive physical or mental behaviours a person feels driven to perform to relieve that distress, even when they know the behaviour doesn’t make sense.
• Who It Affects: An estimated 1.1% to 1.8% of the population, typically emerging in adolescence or early adulthood, with only slight variation between sexes.

Why Good Intentions Can Backfire
When someone we love is struggling, the instinct is to reassure them, help them avoid distress, or reason them out of the thought — but with OCD, these responses tend to strengthen the cycle rather than break it. Denial, logic, advice, reassurance, distraction, and accommodation can all inadvertently teach the brain that the obsession deserves attention, making the compulsion more entrenched rather than less.

What Actually Works
Effective treatment isn’t about arguing someone out of a thought — it’s about changing their relationship to it. The webinar covers the therapeutic approaches with real evidence behind them, along with how families can reinforce that work at home.

• Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP): Gradually facing feared situations, often built as a step-by-step “fear hierarchy,” without performing the compulsion.
• Cognitive Therapy: Identifying and reframing the thought patterns that fuel the anxiety.
• Mindfulness and ACT: Building tolerance for uncomfortable thoughts and urges rather than trying to eliminate them.
• Support at Home: Family and caregivers play a critical role by not participating in compulsions, encouraging treatment, and supporting ERP practice — celebrating progress rather than expecting perfection.

Whether you’re navigating OCD yourself or supporting someone who is, this session offers a clearer, more compassionate way to understand what’s happening — and a concrete path toward treatment that actually helps.