Behind the Rituals: What OCD Really Is

When people think of OCD, the image that often comes to mind is someone who loves a clean kitchen, or who lines up their pens in colour order. Maybe someone who double-checks the door is locked.

Actual OCD is something else entirely. It’s not quirky or cute. It’s terrifying. Exhausting. It hijacks your mind and your body. It’s the panic you feel when you know the thought doesn’t make sense, and you still can’t let it go. It’s doing rituals that make no logical sense because not doing them feels unbearable.

What is OCD?

OCD is a cycle made up of two main parts: obsessions and compulsions.

Obsessions are the intrusive thoughts that crash into your brain, uninvited and unwanted. They can be scary, disturbing, or totally irrational. They show up as “What if I pushed someone in front of a train?” or “What if I’m attracted to children?” or “What if I’m a terrible person and don’t know it?”.

These are not “overthinking” or everyday worries. They can even completely go against someone's values, which is what makes them so terrifying. The thoughts don’t just appear; they stick. The more you try to dismiss them, the louder and more insistent they become.

Internally, it’s like the fire alarm is going off, but you can’t find the fire.

That’s where compulsions come in.

Compulsions are the things you do (physically or mentally) to try and make the fear go away. They might look like checking the stove ten times, repeating a phrase in your head, tapping your fingers in a certain pattern, washing until your hands are raw, avoiding certain numbers or thoughts or places.

And for a moment, just a moment, the panic fades. You did the thing, and nothing terrible happened. No one died. Your body lets out a tiny exhale.

Until the next thought hits. Because the compulsion temporarily reduces the fear, the brain stores that as a success. The next time the obsession appears, it cues the compulsion more quickly. The loop strengthens over time.

OCD as a survival strategy

People sometimes wonder: 'Why not just stop? It’s completely irrational.'

OCD doesn’t respond to logic. Not because the person experiencing it is irrational, but because OCD isn’t rooted in reason. It’s rooted in fear.

At the heart of OCD is a brain operating in survival mode. When an intrusive thought appears, it’s experienced not just as a strange idea but as a threat. The amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for detecting danger, gets activated. And when that happens, the nervous system responds as if the danger is real and present.

This is one of the reasons why reasoning with an obsession rarely helps. A person can know that their fear isn’t likely, or even possible. They might remind themselves, “I would never harm anyone,” or “It’s just a thought.” But their body doesn’t believe it. Their nervous system is already reacting as if the thought were a signal of immediate danger.

In this state, the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for logic, planning, and rational thinking) is largely overridden. The brain is only interested in doing whatever it takes to feel safe again.

Trying to "just stop" doing the compulsion often leads to a spike in anxiety. The brain interprets the lack of ritual as increasing the danger, not decreasing it. And so the urge becomes more intense, or a new ritual emerges.

What’s important to understand is that this isn’t about willpower or weakness.

That’s why treatment for OCD isn’t focused on debating the thoughts or forcing behaviour change through logic. It’s about creating safety within the nervous system, and slowly retraining the brain to recognise that the feared outcomes aren’t actually dangerous.

What healing can look like

Healing OCD isn't about "thinking positive", shifting your mindset, or yelling at your brain to be quiet. It's not about winning an argument with yourself. It's about building something much deeper: safety, self-awareness, and trust in your body.

Step 1: Understanding what’s happening.

Understanding that OCD isn’t a personality flaw, but an overprotective amygdala doing its best to keep you safe, can reduce shame. Over time, you've created strategies that gave you a sense of safety, because that is all you could do.

That’s not a failure on your part. At the time, it was your only way to feel like you were not in danger.

Step 2: Building emotional awareness.

Learning to name your emotions, observe how they show up in your body, and rate your level of distress is going to be a key component.

To do this, introducing a routine of checking in with yourselves a least 3 times a day can help, and rating your anxiety/dissociation from 1 to 10. How do I feel first thing in the morning? At lunchtime? Before going to bed? How has that changed? How do I know I feel this emotion (i.e., what are the signals my body is sending me)?

With practice, you start building a relationship with your internal world and start listening to your body more.

Step 3: Finding ways to regulate your nervous system

When you feel more in touch with what's going on for you internally, you'll need tools to help you feel grounded. This might mean breathwork, movement, tapping, walking, or even just giving yourself a hug.

Try different techniques after having checked in with your body, and see what makes you feel more grounded. Is your distress level going from a 7 to a 5, for instance? Are the techniques different depending on whether you're stressed or dissociated? Introducing grounding techniques in the day-to-day can make a massive difference, but it takes active work.

Step 4: Facing the fear, gently.

Once you feel more able to regulate your distress, you can slowly start using these techniques for exposure therapy.

This involves gently and gradually facing the obsession without performing the compulsion, while using the regulation tools you’ve learned. For instance, you can start by delaying the compulsion by 5 seconds, during which you use your regulation techniques. Then 10. Then 30, then a minute.

Over time, your brain learns: this is uncomfortable, but not dangerous. The amygdala stops ringing the alarm so loudly. The fear gets quieter. And after a while, you're not delaying the compulsion anymore, you're only regulating.

Step 5: Addressing deeper roots.

For many people, OCD is also tied to unmet emotional needs, especially for safety, attunement, and reassurance.

This is where inner child work and trauma-informed therapy can be powerful. Healing isn’t just about stopping rituals. It’s about giving those scared inner parts what they never got before.

Where does OCD come from?

For many people, OCD develops as a complex mix of factors: genetic predisposition, temperament, and early life experiences.

If a child doesn’t feel consistently safe or emotionally held, especially between ages 0–3, their nervous system may get stuck in high alert. Because of how vulnerable and reliant we are on our caregivers, it doesn’t take some “big T” trauma for this to happen. A lack of attunement is enough.

Over time, this hyper-vigilance becomes a background hum of anxiety. The brain searches for an explanation: "Why am I feeling this way?" OCD steps in with a theory: “Maybe it’s because I didn’t do X. If I do it, maybe I’ll feel safe.”

So, compulsions become a way to create control where there is none. A false solution to an invisible threat.

A gentle reminder

Living with OCD can feel like being stuck on a hamster wheel with no way off. You deserve empathy, patience, and support on that journey. As much as is possible, try to give yourself some compassion. You deserve it.