Triggered

Exploring the psychological landscape of OCD

Fletcher Wortmann

College Choice Must Be More Than Just a “Best College” Ranking

For some students, college can be an incubator for mental-health issues. Make sure the college you choose is prepared to prevent, anticipate, and respond.

How to Stop Compulsively Confessing OCD Intrusive Thoughts

Confessing intrusive thoughts is a uniquely pernicious OCD ritual, but once the practice is identified, it can be relatively straightforward to address.

Confessing Intrusive Thoughts

The idea that forces that may reside within us beyond our control is too threatening to be entertained, not just by a child.

5 Practices for Healthier Internet Use

With every click, we wager our time, attention, and mental well-being for a jackpot of intermittent neural rewards. Here are five ways to better manage our engagement.

Righteous Bullying: How Online Harassment Corrodes the Soul

On the internet, any crime can be brought to trial in the court of public opinion. But maybe you need to sit this one out. Here's why.

There Is No Red Pill

People who brag about being red-pilled may be twisting their perception of reality to reinforce their preconceived notions and flatter their egos.

The Obsessive Struggle with Intrusive Thoughts in OCD

The lived experience of OCD with intrusive thoughts. It finds purchase in the unthinkable. It never spares you from a thought that’s too uniquely or intimately disturbing.

Tips for Writing With and About Mental Illness

Facing a blank page is a formidable obstacle for any writer, and mental illness can make writing significantly more challenging, but it can be managed.

How Being Creative Can Help in the Battle Against OCD

Breaking through OCD to access creativity doesn’t just allow us to tap a valuable cognitive resource, it can also generate novel strategies for fighting OCD itself.

The Impact of Social Networking on Relationships and Mental Health

Why do our online relationships often feel both hazily artificial and cringe-inducingly intimate at the same time?

Why Telling Yourself "Not to Worry" Doesn't Work

When you tell yourself not to worry, you aren’t likely to silence the thought — you're engaging the worry in conversation, inviting it to explain itself further.

Are All Our Friends Imaginary?

We project our peers and ourselves into a sitcom reality, where everyone stays together forever, where disagreements can always be resolved in 24 minutes.

OCD and QAnon: The Obsessive Appeal of Conspiracy Theories

Once conspiracy theories get in your head, they quickly become self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing. These patterns of thinking are tricky to escape.

Healing from the Politics of Resentment

Americans have spent almost half a decade honing the weapons and armor needed for psychological warfare; these swords won’t easily be made into plowshares.

“Big Mouth” on Netflix Animates OCD Rituals

“Big Mouth” examines puberty through a sort of locker-room magical realism. In Season 4, Andrew Globerman’s anxiety symptoms return as repetitive OCD rituals.

Netflix’s "Big Mouth" Animates Sexual Intrusive Thoughts

The show "Big Mouth" vividly animates obsessive anxiety about sexual thoughts. It could help some OCD sufferers confront and come to terms with their own intrusive thoughts.

The Psychology of Orpheus: Why Do We Look Back?

With so many varying interpretations, one wonders: Why did Orpheus really look back? And what, if anything, can we learn from his tragedy?

Tossing and Turning: OCD and Sleep

Trying to force yourself to surrender to sleep is a frustrating and likely fruitless endeavor. There are ways to reclaim your nights from OCD.

Hope vs. Despair: Which Wolf Survives?

We can’t simply command automatic or unwanted thoughts to disappear, but we can choose which to consciously encourage and which to dismiss.

How to Deal With Election Anxiety

The year 2020 is proving to be uniquely stressful; we can’t afford to waste our mental resources on activities that make us miserable without generating personal or common good.

Suffering From Election Anxiety?

This election is precisely the kind of inevitable and yet impossible-to-grapple-with “threat” that can baffle our normal problem-solving strategies and lead to obsessive worry.

The "Secret Order" of Obsessive Thoughts

Why do we still pursue the thoughts, behaviors, and actions that we know are irrational and maladaptive, and perhaps the products of a mental health disorder?

OCD and Compulsive Procrastination

Did you know OCD can inhibit your ability to clean your house? Certain symptoms feed directly into procrastination but it's possible to break the cycle.

Anxiety Is Not the Opposite of Courage: OCD, ERP, and RFT

Reframing difficult thoughts can dilute their power by associating them with absurd or disinterested ideas.

“Super OCD”: The Problem With Mental Health Tropes

Mental illness is a difficult subject to portray accurately in fiction, but that doesn't prevent unqualified writers and artists from trying.

Creature Comforts: How Stress Rewards Unhealthy Adaptations

Stress can actually make it harder for us to brainstorm creative strategies that might resolve a problem or accomplish something.

How the 24/7 News Cycle Feeds Obsession and Compulsion

The trick is to balance the benefits of staying informed with the diminishing returns from compulsively seeking out more information.

Managing Your OCD While Dealing With Covid

OCD treatment, through ERP therapy, requires sufferers to confront danger and risk harm without protecting themselves. The coronavirus epidemic has flipped all this upside-down.

Horror Exposure and OCD

When you encounter a creative realization of your nightmares—in a comic, a book, a film, or perhaps in a piece you’ve created—you open space for new contexts and understandings.

Talking to Myself

When you’re thinking—when you’re literally talking to yourself—who is the listener?  And what—or who—is talking back?

  • Previous
  • Page 1 (current)
  • Next