OCD is not a quirk about clean desks. It is thoughts you never asked for and rituals that eat your hours, and the average person waits over a decade for someone to name it correctly. Care is available in Fairfax and by telehealth across Virginia.
Book an Appointment →One in forty adults lives with OCD, and most look nothing like the stereotype. The most common presentations are internal: taboo intrusive thoughts about harm, sexuality, contamination, religion, or morality, paired with mental rituals such as reviewing, counting, silent praying, and endless reassurance-seeking. This form, often called Pure O, is routinely misread as anxiety or depression and treated with approaches that never touch it. Many patients have never told anyone the actual content of their thoughts, because the thoughts are exactly the kind of thing you cannot say out loud.
You can say them here. Clinicians trained in OCD know that intrusive thoughts are ego-dystonic: they horrify you precisely because they violate your values, and that horror is diagnostic of OCD, not of danger. For many patients, hearing that their most frightening thought is a textbook symptom is the single most relieving sentence in their treatment.
Treatment follows the evidence: SSRIs at OCD-appropriate doses, which run higher and take longer than depression dosing, with augmentation when response is partial; and coordination with exposure and response prevention (ERP), the gold-standard therapy, through Virginia ERP specialists Alice helps you find. Appointments are in person in Fairfax or by telehealth anywhere in Virginia, in English or Tiếng Việt.
Harm, sexual, religious, and moral obsessions with invisible rituals. The most missed form of OCD, and a core focus of this practice.
The classic forms still deserve modern care: correctly dosed medication and ERP coordination, not advice to relax.
If years of anxiety treatment never quite fit, an OCD-informed re-evaluation often explains why.
Untreated OCD is exhausting, and depression commonly follows. Both get treated, in the right order.
Related: OCD overview · Pure O: when rituals are invisible · Anxiety treatment across Virginia · Medication management in Virginia
No. OCD-trained clinicians know the difference between intrusive thoughts and intent; the distress you feel about the thoughts is itself evidence of OCD. You can finally say the unsayable and be met with a diagnosis, not alarm.
Very often because it was dosed for depression. OCD typically requires higher doses for ten to twelve weeks before a trial can be judged. A medication review is frequently where real OCD treatment begins.
Alice provides evaluation, medication management, and supportive care, and coordinates with ERP specialists rather than duplicating them. She will help you find an ERP therapist in Virginia and keep the two halves of treatment aligned.
Yes. Evaluation and medication management transfer fully to video, and even ERP is now commonly delivered virtually with strong evidence behind it.
OCD care in Fairfax & by telehealth across Virginia. No referral needed.
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