The OCD experience is different for everyone. Whether you’re looking up what causes OCD to flare up for yourself or a loved one, it’s important to recognize that no two OCD episodes may be the same and everyone’s OCD triggers differ.
We have compiled a list of eight possible triggers so that you can begin developing a more holistic understanding of the underlying causes of OCD and what an OCD flare-up can look like.
As always, use this blog as a starting place to better understand OCD while bearing in mind that there is no substitute for personalized therapy.
This post is all about what causes OCD to flare up.
What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is defined by the presence of obsessions and compulsions (refer to the DSM-5-TR for detailed criteria). It’s categorized as an anxiety disorder because of the intense feelings of anxiety that accompany an OCD episode.
If you have OCD, you might often experience distressing thoughts, known as obsessions. These obsessions lead to compulsions and compulsive behaviors, which are actions you feel compelled to perform in response to the obsessive thoughts.
For those with OCD, these compulsions aim to prevent or reduce the anxiety and distress caused by the obsessions and unwanted thoughts. It’s worth noting that compulsions often lack a logical connection to the obsessive fears and rarely make an impact on them.
In other words, you may perform your compulsive rituals to reduce the anxiety that comes from your common obsessions, and it may have no impact at all, which is why OCD can be so debilitating.
For example, you might have an obsession with harming your family with a kitchen knife, even if you live far away from them. This illogical aspect is a common feature of OCD obsessions. As a result, you might feel the need to lock and unlock your door thirty times each morning.
Symptoms of OCD include persistent, intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors aimed at alleviating the anxiety they cause. This compulsive behavior is usually time-consuming and significantly interferes with daily life.
WHAT CAUSES OCD TO FLARE UP:
1. You experience a major life event, scary or not
Uncertainty is scary whether you struggle with a mental health condition or not. So, it’s not surprising that a major life event would create a higher risk for someone to experience unpleasant thoughts related to OCD.
In many ways, anything that causes you anxiety can also cause the onset of OCD. Therefore, any kind of anxiety about moving to a new home, starting a new job, enrolling in school, and more can initiate obsessive thoughts.
Want to avoid losing your job and not being able to afford your brand-new apartment? Your compulsion may be re-writing the same email twenty times before you send it. OCD thoughts can vary in how scary or violent they are.
For example, a new parent will likely experience lots of anxiety about caring for their child in the best way possible. This can lead to some terrifying obsessions, including incidentally hurting your child.
Keep in mind that a major life event does not need to be inherently scary or painful for obsessive thoughts to be scary and painful.
Starting college, for instance, is exciting and challenging in a good way. Yet, it could still trigger some terrifying obsessions that would otherwise not come up for that person.
2. You experience a natural disaster
While natural disasters may not happen regularly, they are still worth noting. When you endure a natural disaster and navigate the aftermath of it, you deal with the trauma of an event like that while also finding ways to cope with the obsessive fears that come with it, too.
In other words, people with OCD struggle with the trauma that most people would experience after a natural disaster or similar terrifying event. However, they also have to deal with the specific trigger that results from having endured that stressful event.
When you contextualize experiencing a natural disaster as someone with OCD, you begin to see the ways that someone with OCD will engage in new compulsive rituals that are likely to have no bearing on whether another natural disaster will occur or how disastrous it will be.
While the goal of this blog is to list what causes OCD to flare up, it’s also worth explaining the reasons why OCD can be so hard to live with and difficult to manage.
3. You move into a new home
Moving on its own is a major stressor. There are lots of extenuating factors that can increase stress around moving.
For example, you can be forced to move because of job availability, leave loved ones from moving into a new city, experience financial stress from purchasing a new home, experience anxiety from signing a lease for a high rent, and more.
Whenever someone with OCD experiences something unfamiliar or uncertain, they feel lots of anxiety that translates to obsessions and eventually compulsions. So, the experience of moving into a new home is a major trigger. People often experience anxiety as a result of insecurities.
Maybe they worry about handling new expenses, navigating a new city, or living with roommates. This is all compounded when their anxiety manifests as intrusive thoughts that then compel them to act in a certain way to keep their fears from becoming true.
The key to understanding OCD is that, while compulsions can relieve anxiety, the relief is not long-lasting. Plus, it reacts to existing anxiety rather than focusing on response prevention.
In other words, by following through with a compulsive act, someone with OCD is in some ways reinforcing their intrusive thoughts rather than using coping skills to work through their intrusive thoughts and build up a form of resistance.
With that said, we want to make it clear that OCD is difficult to manage and response prevention takes practice. So, no one should feel guilty for struggling to manage their OCD, especially when they’re attempting to manage it without professional help.
4. You engage in substance abuse
It’s common for people with mental health disorders to engage in substance use. Substance use is a way to cope with scary, overwhelming thoughts.
Unfortunately, once someone begins using substances to avoid dealing with their thoughts or emotions, their use may start causing more harm than benefit. For the moment, we are not discussing addiction specifically.
Addiction can be much more complicated than someone trying to numb their feelings, even though that is a common cause. Instead, we want to address the way that substance use can inadvertently make OCD symptoms worse.
One consideration is the type of substance you’re using. Some substances are more likely to induce anxiety than numb it. Another consideration is how you feel once you stop using the substance and its effects wear off.
You may experience increased anxiety as a result of how you acted when you were under the influence of a substance, which in turn triggers your OCD.
There is a complicated relationship between mental illness and substance use. That means that it’s not always bad to use a substance to help you cope.
However, it’s important to always ask yourself what the relationship is like if it’s benefitting you, and how it affects your ability to function on a daily basis.
5. You experience an increase in family problems
The category of “family problems” encompasses lots of different issues, yet you likely already have something in mind when thinking about it. Maybe you’re arguing with a parent, your kids are upset with you, or your partner forgot to wash the dishes overnight.
Big or small, family issues can affect you. The goal is for us to feel like an individual within our family so that the problems our family members experience don’t have as big of an effect on us. But, let’s be honest.
That’s hard and it’s not always possible, especially if you’re dealing with your OCD getting triggered at the same time you’re trying to be more of an individual within your family of origin and the new family you’re building.
You may experience anxiety because of a lack of communication within your family and, thus, wonder when you’re triggering someone in your family and don’t know it. Maybe you experience anxiety when you and your partner are arguing, which triggers a compulsion.
Most people have lots of emotions and triggers tied up with their family. OCD goes right on top of that, which makes it all the more stressful and complicated to manage.
6. You begin early adulthood
There are a lot of stressors as an adult. When you’re just starting out and figuring out your way in the world as an adult, you may feel like you’re hit with a million responsibilities and problems with few to no solutions. All of that can intensify your OCD.
For some, OCD feels like a way to get back some control in the world. You may not be able to control the amount of clients who are rude to you or the way that your professor grades, but your anxiety tells you that by engaging in a compulsive act, you can get some control back.
OCD can sometimes become a vicious cycle. You get anxiety from something in your life and experience an intrusive thought related to it.
Then, you experience a compulsion that makes you believe that intrusive thought won’t come to fruition even though that intrusive thought likely was never realistic.
