To answer the first part of your question, OCD, or obsessive compulsive disorder, does not necessarily get worse with age, but it is an illness that lasts a long time. You can recover from OCD. But as time goes on, most people with OCD have a relapse- in other words, most people with OCD, once they recover, will have full-blown OCD symptoms again in the future.
To answer the second part of your question, OCD goes away in only a small percentage of those who suffer from it. But even if you recover from it and the symptoms go away, most people who are in recovery from OCD have a return of OCD symptoms in the future.
Here’s the main answer to this question: OCD is a mental illness which lasts for a long time, and for the small percentage of people with OCD who recover, most of them will have a relapse, or a return of full-blown symptoms.
This is why it is important to understand fully why your OCD symptoms are occurring, and how you can intervene to stop the progression of your OCD symptoms. You can control your OCD symptoms by understanding your triggers, and the irrational thoughts that automatically come about (obsessions). Then you can see how this causes anxiety, and then you can see how you resort to maladaptive behaviors (compulsions) in an effort to reduce the anxiety. Unfortunately, the compulsions only temporarily reduce the anxiety, and then you are forced to continue with the compulsions every time your obsessions come back. You then spend most of your time in this never-ending loop of OCD. You can short-circuit this negative, vicious cycle of OCD by not resorting to your compulsions, and finding alternative ways of dealing with the anxiety. For more information and help on OCD, please click here.
photo credit: OrganicXO Hate when this happens… #wakingup #ocd… via photopin (license)
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