relief at what price?
It is well known that the non clinical population, that is people without OCD, experience intrusive ideas that are similar in content to OCD obsessions. As noted above, one difference is that the non clinical population does not experience as many intrusions and does not feel the accompanying high level of distress that a person with OCD feels. It is speculated that stress, both positive (e.g. buying a new house) and negative (e.g. loosing a job) can increase the frequency of intrusive obsessions. Since a person with OCD experiences an elevated level of emotions, which typically takes the form of anxiety, but can also be guilt or anger, they naturally respond to their anxiety by trying to remedy the situation through escaping it in the present or avoiding it in the future. Human beings are hard wired to respond to danger and threat with the well documented fight or flight response. This is critical for the sufferer to understand because many people with OCD think that something is wron
