Your Anxiety Toolkit - Practical Skills for Anxiety, Panic & Depression
Jun 19, 2026 · 10 min · 7 segments
In this episode, I explain one of the most overlooked aspects of OCD: mental compulsions. While many people recognize compulsions as visible behaviors like checking, washing, or arranging things…
Everyone understands that OCD compulsions are things like washing your hands, jumping over cracks, lining things up straight.
However, there is a whole other category of compulsions that we have to make sure we understand if we're going to treat OCD effectively, and they are called mental compulsions.
There are compulsions and behaviors we do physically, actions, things we can do throughout the day that you could visually see someone doing, but there are a whole lot of compulsions people are doing that you would never know, and they're doing them in their head.
Now, in today's video, I am going to help you recognize mental compulsions in OCD and help you to understand how to catch them and what to do once you have caught them in their tracks.
I'm an OCD specialist, and I am on a mission to help as many people as I can.
This is a very, very misunderstood condition, and the good news is, once you actually understand the condition, you can actually go and get better and live your life and not be overwhelmed by these intrusive, repetitive thoughts and not be spending your whole day doing these compulsions.
Read the full transcript.
Create an account to read the whole episode, search across every transcript, and follow the shows you care about.
Everyone understands that OCD compulsions are things like washing your hands, jumping over cracks, lining things up straight.
However, there is a whole other category of compulsions that we have to make sure we understand if we're going to treat OCD effectively, and they are called mental compulsions.
There are compulsions and behaviors we do physically, actions, things we can do throughout the day that you could visually see someone doing, but there are a whole lot of compulsions people are doing that you would never know, and they're doing them in their head.
Now, in today's video, I am going to help you recognize mental compulsions in OCD and help you to understand how to catch them and what to do once you have caught them in their tracks.
I'm an OCD specialist, and I am on a mission to help as many people as I can.
This is a very, very misunderstood condition, and the good news is, once you actually understand the condition, you can actually go and get better and live your life and not be overwhelmed by these intrusive, repetitive thoughts and not be spending your whole day doing these compulsions.