Compulsive behaviours are repetitive, uncontrollable, ritualized behaviours that some people feel compelled to perform, even if they aren’t pleasurable or make sense. The thoughts that come with them are often just as hard to live with.
You may relate if:
These may not all apply, but many people experience some combination of the following:
Common types of compulsive behaviours:
- Excessive double-checking of things, such as locks, appliances, and switches
- Repeatedly checking in on loved ones to make sure they’re safe
- Counting, tapping, repeating certain words, or doing other senseless things to reduce anxiety
- Spending a lot of time washing or cleaning
- Ordering or arranging things “just so”
- Praying excessively or engaging in rituals triggered by religious fear
- Accumulating “junk” such as old newspapers or empty food containers, also known as “hoarding”
Common types of intrusive thoughts:
- Fear of being contaminated by germs or dirt or contaminating others
- Fear of losing control and harming yourself or others
- Intrusive sexually explicit or violent thoughts and images
- Excessive focus on religious or moral ideas
- Fear of losing or not having things you might need
- Order and symmetry: the idea that everything must line up “just right”
- Superstitions; excessive attention to something considered lucky or unlucky
Understanding OCD
Compulsive behaviours are repetitive, uncontrollable, ritualized behaviours that some people feel compelled to perform, even if they aren’t pleasurable or make sense. Frequently, people with compulsive behaviour disorders recognize that these behaviours are irrational or unpleasant but are unable to stop performing them. These behaviours may be accompanied by intrusive and unwanted repetitive thoughts as well.
Often times, these behaviours will briefly alleviate anxiety, just to have the cycle start all over again. Sometimes people with compulsive behaviours can feel hopeless, like they will never be able to stop their actions. Others may turn to drugs or alcohol to alleviate some of the anxiety or shame around their actions.
Sometimes people who engage in compulsive behaviours feel alone or ashamed, like they’re the only ones with this problem. Compulsive thoughts and behaviours are relatively common and can be well managed and effectively managed. There are lots of ways to help, and people can absolutely learn to control intrusive thoughts and cease unwanted behaviours.
Counselling can help you understand:
- how intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviours become linked in a repeating cycle
- why behaviours may briefly relieve anxiety but reinforce the pattern over time
- how triggers and urges develop and continue
- how new ways of responding can reduce the intensity of thoughts and behaviours
By understanding the cycle of intrusive thoughts and behaviours, you can begin to respond differently and feel more in control.
How Counselling Can Help
OCD counselling can help clients:
- Identify and understand the ritualized behaviours and/or intrusive thoughts
- Learn to resist the urges to perform the behaviours or think the thoughts
- Anticipate and combat triggers for urges
- Challenge obsessive thoughts and eliminate them
- Make lifestyle changes to help resist lapses and maintain progress
- Set up a support system to aid in the struggle
OCD counselling can help you move from feeling stuck in the cycle to experiencing more freedom, flexibility, and control in your daily life.
Our Therapeutic Approaches
We draw on a range of evidence-based approaches, grounded in a flexible, collaborative, and client-centred way of working that adapts to what is most helpful for you.
This allows us to shape our work around your needs, experiences, and goals, drawing from different therapeutic modalities as needed. Learn more about our approach to care.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
ERP is the most-studied treatment for OCD, and for good reason. It works by having you face the feared thought or situation on purpose, in small steps, without doing the compulsion. The anxiety rises, then it settles. With repetition, the urge loses its grip.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
CBT looks at the beliefs underneath the cycle — the prediction that something bad will happen if you don’t act, and the sense that the thought itself is dangerous. Once those beliefs come into view, they get easier to test.
ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)
ACT teaches you to hold intrusive thoughts more lightly. You don’t have to argue with them or believe them. You can let them be there while you do what matters.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
DBT is mostly about skills. For OCD, the most useful one is the skill of staying with discomfort — riding out an urge instead of acting on it.
Mindfulness-Based Therapy
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy treats your relationship with thoughts as the thing to change, not the thoughts themselves. Through structured practice, you start to notice the thought arrive, observe it, and let it go without doing anything about it. The thoughts may still come. They just take up less space.
Assessment & Diagnostic Support
We offer structured assessments to help clarify patterns, support diagnosis where appropriate, and guide treatment planning.
You don’t have to manage these distressing patterns on your own.
Support is available to help you understand what’s happening and begin making meaningful changes.
We can help you get started.
Meet Some Our Counsellors Who Work With OCD
Jean-Luc Roy
Viktoriia Brzhezytska
Over the last 13 years of her practice, Viktoriia has learned to develop safe and trustful relationships with clients that she strongly believes is a foundation of good therapy. She primarily draws on CBT and Schema therapy .
Christine Crocker
Christine has been providing services to families, couples and individuals since 2007. She believes relationships are central to the health and well-being of individuals, families and communities, and that each person is encouraged to understand their unique situation and reach for attainable goals as they work toward making changes needed for a better life.
Amy Wolgemuth
Jaqueline Brodbin
Lindsey McColl
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Frequently Asked Questions About OCD Counselling
Not at all. If intrusive thoughts or compulsive behaviours are taking up real space in your life, that’s enough. Some of the work is figuring out what you’re actually dealing with — and whether OCD is even the right word for it.
Almost certainly not. Most people have intrusive thoughts, including disturbing ones. They pop up uninvited and don’t mean anything about you. What makes OCD different is the distress these thoughts cause and the rituals you do to manage them. Counselling works with both pieces.
Some approaches for OCD do involve facing feared situations — ERP is the main one. But the pace is yours. We don’t push past what you can tolerate. The goal is building capacity gradually, not flooding you all at once.
No, and trying to usually backfires. Cold turkey doesn’t work well with compulsions. The work happens in stages — building tolerance for the discomfort first, then gradually reducing the compulsions as the anxiety becomes easier to sit with.
Pure-O is real, and it’s underrecognized. The compulsions are still there, they’re just internal — mental rituals, repeating phrases in your head, mentally checking, seeking reassurance from others, avoiding certain thoughts altogether. We work with this form too.