Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy the only method used to help cure these types of extreme OCD cases?
TS: Primarily and I’m certainly not a doctor and shouldn’t speak to this specifically but it is the primary mode of help here. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is really based on putting the patient face to face with their fears and bringing their anxiety down. Many of our doctors and therapists work on a 1-10 scale where they’ll be continually asking the patient on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest, ‘What is your anxiety level right now?’ For example, let’s say you have a fear of doorknobs. It’s really simplistic but let’s break it down. They would get you to a place where you would get close to a doorknob and ultimately you would hold on to that doorknob and your anxiety level would shoot through the roof with the idea being that the body cannot maintain that level of anxiety for that long. So if you hold onto that doorknob until your body naturally lets that anxiety level come down then you’re going to realize that you’ll find yourself at an 8 or a 7 or a 6 and you’re still hold
