Purpose 🎯

Help clients identify how compulsions and avoidance maintain OCD symptoms over time.

Let’s Talk About It 🗣️

Choose a recent OCD episode and map the cycle:

1. Identify a recent trigger.
2. Record the obsession, image, urge, or doubt.
3. Identify the distress or uncertainty that followed.
4. Identify what the client did behaviorally or mentally.
5. Identify the immediate relief or perceived benefit.
6. Identify the longer-term cost.
7. Identify one response that could be practiced differently.

Ask:

• What did OCD want you to solve or prevent?
• What did the compulsion seem to give you in the short term?
• What did the compulsion cost you over time?

If the Conversation Gets Stuck 💡

• What happened right before the distress increased?
• What did you do to feel certain, safe, or “done”?
• Did the relief last, or did OCD return with another question?

Telehealth / Whiteboard Version ⚖️

Draw a circular diagram with the sections Trigger, Obsession, Distress, Compulsion/Avoidance, Relief, Cost, and Alternative Response. Fill in one real example together.

Why This Works 🌱

Mapping the OCD cycle helps clients see how compulsions can provide short-term relief while strengthening the cycle of obsession, uncertainty, and ritualizing.

Clinical Pearl 🧠

Focus on the function of the response rather than debating whether the obsession is true.

Documentation Language 📝

Therapist utilized an OCD cycle mapping intervention to assist client in identifying triggers, obsessions, distress responses, compulsive behaviors, short-term relief, and longer-term maintenance patterns.

Clinical Focus: OCD Psychoeducation, Cycle Awareness, Compulsion Identification