What Is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

Find a therapist to treat OCD

Existential OCD is a designated sub-type of OCD.

It describes a disabling preoccupation with philosophical questions in a fruitless search for certainty.

Sometimes it may be seized on as a catch-all explanation for distress.

In such cases, it is more helpful to look at what is driving it.

Christina sparkles with enthusiasm for life. She is 27, working in a new job in a graphic design firm, which she loves. She loves her team. She loves the creativity that permeates the office, and she loves sparking and sharing ideas with those around her. She uses the word "love" a lot.

But all is not well because not everyone on the team is as enthusiastic as she is, and she suspects some resent her and gossip about her. She is terrified of being excluded because it has happened to her before — being cut out of friendship groups. Gravely she tells me that she has had periods of severe depression — and long periods of therapy — since the age of nine. That was when children she thought were friends were horrid to her at school. She became a people pleaser, as she termed it, desperate for acceptance, and yet the same thing happened again when she was 15 and girls in her friendship group rejected her, seemingly overnight.

This must have been truly awful. We........

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