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3 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

This is a good point Lost.  Just playing devil's advocate for a second, do you think that anybody can develop OCD if they do the wrong things with an intrusive thought? (Something I've wondered myself from time to time.)

I think overactive amygdalae are major players in the cause of OCD. Not the root cause because what made the amygdalae overreactive in the first place? Such an interesting thread :thankyousign:

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My two cents.

While there have been some studies purporting to show that OCD brains are different than other brains, the studies do not talk about which came first.

Let me explain. I am of the view, at this stage, that OCD is a thinking disorder. Those in the throes of OCD think in a disordered fashion. 

Now, do OCD sufferers have miswired brains and that causes OCD or do they get into a habit of disordered thinking and that changes the brain? 

It's not far fetched. We know with absolute certainty that if we can teach sufferers to think and behave differently, their OCD symptoms diminish. So maybe the disordered thinking in the first place is what causes physiological changes in the brain.

The only way i can see for that to be proven would be to take MRIs of a brain while suffering and then after recovery. 

And just to note, i consider myself fully recovered. No relapses in three years. No suffering. No compulsions. No disordered thinking.

Edited by PolarBear
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Interesting topic. I think it's both - it can have a medical cause but there are also thinking disorders and it seems to me that even if someone has OCD due to a medical cause they still need CBT to help get better. The reason why I think it's medical is the existence of PANS/PANDAS, children suddenly developing OCD after strep throat. And dogs can get it. I read about a dog who compulsively had to put a piece of dog food in each of the indentations in a cushion, another who had to have his food covered with a paper towel before eating. Poor things. :( I read of someone who had small intestine bacterial overgrowth I think and was given an antibiotic who suddenly could clean up her floor after years of not being able to. And of a young person who developed OCD after a bad episode with an energy drink (being really wired and jittery). But I agree with not waiting for a miracle cure and I know correcting the thinking issues and using CBT are really important. Unfortunately!

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I have always liked the idea from Jeffrey Schwartz that there is an interruption in the neurological system between the components of the frontal lobe of the brain that is the reason for obsessive and compulsive behaviour. 

He calls this "Brainlock"  and suggests intrusive thoughts "stick"  instead of naturally resolving. 

Why this should be, well that's another issue - but it fits well with my own experience of the illness. 

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12 hours ago, Skullpops said:

Following this thread with interest, I'm really curious as to how OCD occurs. 

I am too!

I’ve read so many books and seen so many therapists over the years, and a few have contradicted each other (one therapist about 15years ago said to me ignore any books that say it’s a chemical imbalance, and also that the OCD wouldn’t get any worse, but it did) but my therapist now makes perfect sense to me what she says, for the way I suffer from it. 

I am also interested in this thread, as in my family there’s definitely OCD traits in quite a few of us, so can it be a genetic problem? 

12 hours ago, lostinme said:

Hi BelAnna, interesting thread, 

I’m not sure?  but I don’t particularly see OCD as a medical condition, but rather the anxiety, depression caused by it possibly ? I would describe it as a thinking disorder, that’s what makes it’s so difficult to treat. That’s my personal view of course. 

I think I’m more inclined to agree here with Lost. In my family I can  see that anxiety plays a big part in all of us, and as a result distorts our thinking, so perhaps for us that’s it. We’ve also had certain traumatic events happen, that although we’ve all dealt with in different ways, it’s really encouraged that need for certainty even more. 

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7 minutes ago, Dragonfly said:

I am also interested in this thread, as in my family there’s definitely OCD traits in quite a few of us, so can it be a genetic problem? 

I believe it can be, there are various sufferers in my father's line - suggesting some carrying within the DNA. 

It's also interesting to me that our disorder revolves around some negative outcome. 

In treating the negative thinking aspect of other thinking distortions, such as black and white thinking, CBT uses rational responses - but OCD digs in deep so needs specific cognitive and behavioural work. 

However those of us with OCD will likely have some of the recognised anxiety-inducing thinking distortions - and if we aren't careful we may not spot - and separately treat - those. 

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By the way, how often do we read that sufferers would like to trade their brain in for a new model? 

This suggests they think there is something medically wrong with their brain; that it is malfunctioning for some specific, hopefully ultimately identifiable, reason. 

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I don't think the genetic link theory has been accepted by the scientists, but we know what we think don't we? 

Why would my sister and I both have OCD?  In our teens we lived completely separate busy lives, and so too in adulthood. 

Her OCD is a different theme, but we do know that it is essentially the same old OCD whatever the theme. 

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14 hours ago, lostinme said:

 

My thinking to how OCD occurs is paying attention to that very first intrusive thought and doubting your yourself in the first place, I believe if we hadn’t acknowledged that very first intrusive thought, things might have been totally different. 

I tend to agree with you there.  It's one of the reasons that awareness of OCD and education about the range and extent of how it manifests is so important so that sufferers & family are aware and can change those initial reactions.

I personally believe OCD to be a psychological condition rather than a medical one

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14 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

This is a good point Lost.  Just playing devil's advocate for a second, do you think that anybody can develop OCD if they do the wrong things with an intrusive thought? (Something I've wondered myself from time to time.)

I think they can and would say that this is what happened with me.  If I had known about OCD, what it was, what the thought actually meant (or indeed didn't mean), what I should & shouldn't do I think things would have been quite different.

I know it must be difficult or even impossible for people today to understand how in the 1970's there was zero information available.  No self-help books, no magazine articles, no T.V references, no internet or Google, no support groups.....it didn't even have a name, it was Anxiety Neurosis. It was 20 years before I was given a diagnosis & information.  Had it been different I'm sure my journey would have been different.  This is why it's so important that sufferers do their level best to implement the information that is now so readily available at the click of a mouse.  The condition is the same, it is every bit as painful, scary & debilitating as it ever was but the information is there, we have to use it

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59 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

My two cents.

While there have been some studies purporting to show that OCD brains are different than other brains, the studies do not talk about which came first.

Let me explain. I am of the view, at this stage, that OCD is a thinking disorder. Those in the throes of OCD think in a disordered fashion. 

Now, do OCD sufferers have miswired brains and that causes OCD or do they get into a habit of disordered thinking and that changes the brain? 

It's not far fetched. We know with absolute certainty that if we can teach sufferers to think and behave differently, their OCD symptoms diminish. So maybe the disordered thinking in the first place is what causes physiological changes in the brain.

The only way i can see for that to be proven would be to take MRIs of a brain while suffering and then after recovery. 

And just to note, i consider myself fully recovered. No relapses in three years. No suffering. No compulsions. No disordered thinking.

That's brilliant that you're completely better Polarbear.

Some of the brain changes could be a result of OCD rather than the cause of OCD. I guess you would need to conduct a longitudinal study of kids and see who develops OCD and what state their brains were in prior to onset.

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I don't think OCD is a physiological problem, therefore I don't think there is anything wrong with a sufferers brain that can be fixed. As has already been said the brain image scans merely show that OCD affects the brain, nothing more. Also, if there is a genetic link (which if there is i believe it will be linked to how we experience anxiety) then you are talking 100s of genes not a few. Then since the mechanism of what each gene does will have to be understood, it could take 100s of years to work out. So I'm inclined to think that therapy is the only answer. 

I think that OCD is a learned thinking problem (with perhaps some anxiety gene issues thrown in). I think that OCD sufferers have learnt rigid beliefs and not learnt how to cope with thoughts and feelings and before the onset of their OCD are using a way of thinking seemingly without any great cost. When their first intrusive thought occurs their thought breaks long held rigid beliefs and they can't use what techniques for thinking they have adopted so far, so the problem begins.

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7 minutes ago, Gemma7 said:

I don't think OCD is a physiological problem, therefore I don't think there is anything wrong with a sufferers brain that can be fixed. As has already been said the brain image scans merely show that OCD affects the brain, nothing more. Also, if there is a genetic link (which if there is i believe it will be linked to how we experience anxiety) then you are talking 100s of genes not a few. Then since the mechanism of what each gene does will have to be understood, it could take 100s of years to work out. So I'm inclined to think that therapy is the only answer. 

I think that OCD is a learned thinking problem (with perhaps some anxiety gene issues thrown in). I think that OCD sufferers have learnt rigid beliefs and not learnt how to cope with thoughts and feelings and before the onset of their OCD are using a way of thinking seemingly without any great cost. When their first intrusive thought occurs their thought breaks long held rigid beliefs and they can't use what techniques for thinking they have adopted so far, so the problem begins.

Pretty much as I think

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There are some studies that suggest that OCD sufferers have differences in the brain in areas involved in Executive Functions (google 'Executive Functions') and that their unaffected first degree relatives show some problems with 'Executive Functions' relative to controls who neither have OCD, nor first degree relatives with OCD. 

I think that it's less likely that we simply overreact to our thoughts than that our circular/repetitive/ruminative thinking is the result of problems in executive functions that are the result of underlying brain differences. However that does not explain why those 'unaffected' relatives of sufferers also have those differences but without OCD! Perhaps you need a faulty network within the brain rather than just the EF regions to be affected. Perhaps the limbic system/emotional system involvement results in OCD.

 

Edited by BelAnna
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7 minutes ago, BelAnna said:

There are some studies that suggest that OCD sufferers have differences in the brain in areas involved in Executive Functions (google 'Executive Functions') and that their unaffected first degree relatives show some problems with 'Executive Functions' relative to controls who neither have OCD, nor first degree relatives with OCD. 

But if we learn how to think from relatives and how we think can change our brain then this can be explained by environmental factors. And also as you rightly point out, the relatives with executive function issues don't have OCD. So that shows it doesn't cause OCD. 

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I don't think what causes tourettes is fully understood nor is PANDAS but my theory would be that these two things affect the environment that the brain is working under, and that that environment can be experienced without either. For example, if you experience high stress when you're young or you have PANDAS which lets say increases stress in the brain, PANDAS being the more extreme obviously, then you might react the same way to that stress, reduce your stress and then learn that behavior. 

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I'm not convinced that PANDAS causes OCD. For sure the kids that get it exhibit OCD-like symptoms but I'm not sure that it is OCD with intrusive thoughts that cause distress and compulsions meant to alleviate that distress. 

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4 hours ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

A really interesting conv.

If OCD is a thinking problem rather than a medical one, how do we explain the extremely high comorbidity with (eg.) tourettes, which definitely is neurological in original as far as I'm aware? Also PANDAs?

Just interested, not particularly sure either way :) 

Yes that's an interesting point Gingerbreadgirl, there have also been instances where people without OCD have suffered OCD following traumatic brain injury, particularly when the injury affects the frontal and temporal lobes! 

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18 hours ago, Wonderer said:

I personally believe that it is some sort of medical issue, I totally believe the brain is a physical organ that can be affected by illness just like any other organ in the body,  I definitely don’t think it’s just the reaction to an intrusive thought, because even though we say everybody has them and they just dismiss them, I do know a few people who have said they had a thought and they did question it, ruminated a bit, worried what it meant about them and then forgot about it, why didn’t their brains get stuck like ours tends to do? Thinking of it as a medical issue doesn’t encourage me to wait for a cure, I know what the treatment is for my illness so that’s what I do.xx

Yes I agree.

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8 hours ago, taurean said:

I don't think the genetic link theory has been accepted by the scientists, but we know what we think don't we? 

Why would my sister and I both have OCD?  In our teens we lived completely separate busy lives, and so too in adulthood. 

Her OCD is a different theme, but we do know that it is essentially the same old OCD whatever the theme. 

I've always found when I've asked psychiatrists ect if there's a genetic link they are always quick to deny it, yet want to know family background re mental illness when assessing a patient ?

My sister has OCD too, as does my daughter, and I suspect my Father and my uncle do too. 

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The Division of Clinical Psychology in their recent publications Guidelines on Language to Functional Psychiatric Diagnosis as well as Power, Threat and Meaning make it very clear that they reject the biomedical model. In both documents the writers indicate that there is no validity in psychiatric diagnoses. That mental distress is caused by ‘psychosocial factors’ such as loss, trauma, unemployment, poverty and other relational and societal factors. The publications have caused a debate but as many of us will be receiving therapy from clinical psychologists I think it is important to be aware of their thinking.

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3 hours ago, Angst said:

The Division of Clinical Psychology in their recent publications Guidelines on Language to Functional Psychiatric Diagnosis as well as Power, Threat and Meaning make it very clear that they reject the biomedical model. In both documents the writers indicate that there is no validity in psychiatric diagnoses. That mental distress is caused by ‘psychosocial factors’ such as loss, trauma, unemployment, poverty and other relational and societal factors. The publications have caused a debate but as many of us will be receiving therapy from clinical psychologists I think it is important to be aware of their thinking.

That's interesting Angst. I just looked up the 'Guidelines on Language to Functional Psychiatric Diagnosis' and now understand why my previous Clinical Psychologist used to insist on writing letters stating that I showed 'Obsessive Compulsive Behaviours' and I had to keep asking her to change it to 'Obsessive Compulsive Disorder' (her description completely ignored the intrusive thoughts and I felt minimized the condition). The non-medical (non-labelling, simply describing-distressing-behaviours-and-their-purpose- in-our-lives) approach taken by a sub-section of Clinical Psychologists is not the approach taken by Psychiatrists.

I will take a look at 'power, threat and meaning' too!

 

 

 

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