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While both Harm OCD and desire to harm someone involve thoughts relating to harm, distinct features can help differentiate between the two.

Fear is one of the six basic human emotions, with a clear evolutionary purpose: to help us respond to danger and survive. In Exposure Therapy, providers create a safe environment to intentionally “expose” their clients to objects, activities, or situations they fear.

How do I know if I have self-harm OCD or if I actually want to kill myself? This is a significant differentiation to make because it can have treatment-impacting and even life-threatening consequences.

Whether we hear the term from a client, another provider, or our own classification of someone’s symptoms, “compulsions” tend carry with them some level of assumption – that this might just be OCD.

Harm inducing types of thoughts, images and urges are typically referred to as Harm OCD and they can cause significant distress and anxiety in sufferers.

Panic isn’t what you think it is. It’s not an attack at all, and that’s a misleading name for it. It’s you having an internal reaction of fear – your heart rate changes, your muscles tense up, your stomach feels bad, you have scary thoughts of calamities, and so on.

The headlines and the CDC report are indeed alarming, but they should serve as a wakeup call to all of us. Yes, we should think seriously about why we are seeing a steep decline in the mental health of teenage girls, but we have to come together now as parents, family, friends, educators, clinicians, providers, and as a society to support, enhance and establish more preventive measures for our youth.

For Jill, it was useful to know that the house wouldn’t burn down if she stopped checking; but it was more important to learn that she would still be a worthwhile human being even if it did.   

A Q&A with ADAA Member Karen Cassiday, PhD, ACT answering community questions on overcoming agoraphobia.