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Best Fit Counseling & PsychiatryAnn Arbor, Michigan
Are We the Right Fit?
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Are intrusive thoughts and rituals taking more space than you want them to?

There is specialized support for taking your life back from OCD.

With evidence-based treatment, you can learn to respond differently to obsessions and compulsions.

Are We the Right Fit?

Common Symptoms of OCD

  • Intrusive, unwanted thoughts that cause distress or anxiety
  • Repetitive behaviors or mental rituals, like checking, counting, or washing
  • Rituals that take up significant time or interfere with daily life
  • Avoidance of situations that trigger obsessions
  • Rising anxiety when a ritual is interrupted or prevented

OCD doesn't respond best to "more therapy." It responds to a specific therapy: Exposure and Response Prevention.

How we treat OCD

ERP Therapy, With Psychiatric Support When Needed

Counseling

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), the gold-standard, evidence-based treatment for OCD, delivered by therapists trained in this specific approach.

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Psychiatry

Medication management, including OCD-specific dosing strategies, for patients who need additional support alongside therapy.

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A common misconception

OCD Is Not About Liking Things Clean or Organized

Obsessions are recurrent, unwanted thoughts, urges, or images that cause real distress, not thoughts someone chooses to have. Compulsions are the repetitive behaviors or mental acts a person feels driven to perform to relieve that distress, even when they know the fear is excessive or irrational. Contamination and cleaning is only one of several common themes, alongside harm, symmetry, unwanted taboo thoughts, and checking. Casually saying "I'm so OCD" trivializes a condition that can take over an hour a day and significantly disrupt daily life.

Understanding OCD

Watch: What Is OCD?

Yale Medicine's Dr. Christopher Pittenger explains what's happening in the brain during OCD, and how treatment works.

Frequently asked questions

OCD Treatment, Explained

Exposure and Response Prevention involves gradually and deliberately facing feared thoughts or situations while resisting the urge to perform the usual compulsion. That combination breaks the anxiety-reinforcement cycle in a way general talk therapy without an exposure component typically doesn't. Most patients see significant symptom reduction with ERP.
Not always. ERP alone is effective for many people. SSRIs are the first-line medication option and are often combined with ERP for moderate to severe cases, sometimes at higher doses and for longer trial periods than typically used for depression.
That's a common presentation sometimes called "Pure O," where compulsions look like rumination, mental review, or reassurance-seeking rather than visible rituals. It's still OCD, and it still responds well to ERP delivered by a therapist trained in this specific approach.
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