OCD is scary and it can make you question everything you know about yourself. But, that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. When you’re wondering what causes OCD to get worse, it may feel like there are tons of generalized answers out there that may or may not apply to you.
Some of them seem relevant and, yet, that doesn’t change the effect of OCD on you or your life. We’ve compiled a list of six possible triggers that may worsen your OCD. However, these triggers are generalized and can feel vague.
That’s why it’s important to use this list as a type of litmus test. Rather than assuming the triggers listed below are either completely useful or completely useless, consider them as a space for self-reflection.
Allow them to challenge you to begin identifying patterns in your OCD that help you start to predict when you’re going to experience anxiety problems, obsessive fears, and compulsive rituals.
This post is all about what causes OCD to get worse.
What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is characterized by symptoms like obsessions and compulsions (see the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for specific criteria).
It is classified under anxiety disorders due to the intense feelings of anxiety associated with OCD episodes. If you have OCD, you may frequently encounter unwanted thoughts, known as obsessions.
These obsessions lead to compulsive behaviors, which are actions you feel driven to perform in response to the obsessive thoughts. For individuals with OCD, these repetitive behaviors aim to mitigate the anxiety and distress caused by common obsessions and intrusive thoughts.
Interestingly, compulsions often have no logical connection to the obsessions and rarely affect them. This lack of connection is a common feature of OCD and contributes to its debilitating nature.
For example, you might obsess about harming your family with a kitchen knife, even if you live far away from them. As a result, you might feel compelled to lock and unlock your door thirty times each morning.
Symptoms of OCD include persistent, intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors intended to reduce the anxiety they provoke. This compulsive behavior is typically time-consuming and significantly disrupts daily life.
WHAT CAUSES OCD TO GET WORSE:
1. You have to navigate young adulthood
Early adulthood comes with a lot of new, unforeseen stressors. When you are just starting and figuring out how you fit into adulthood, you may feel overwhelmed by the amount of problems you face without any real, obvious solutions.
This can exacerbate your OCD, which means you deal with the stress and anxiety of adulthood on top of the OCD symptoms you already experience from living daily life. For some, OCD provides a sense of control in a chaotic world.
Your brain convinces you that those horrible, negative thoughts may be true or come to fruition unless you complete this ritual act or compulsion to decrease the anxiety from that thought.
While you might not be able to control rude clients or your professor’s grading methods, your anxiety might convince you that engaging in a compulsive act can help you regain some control.
It’s tempting to believe it, especially when the thoughts you’re having are scary enough that you’d do anything to avoid them coming true. OCD can become a vicious cycle: you feel anxious about something in your life then you experience an intrusive thought related to it.
Finally, you perform a compulsion to prevent the thought from coming true, even though the thought was likely unrealistic to begin with.
2. Your body goes through hormonal changes
As usual, hormonal changes affect women more than men because women’s bodies go through lots of hormonal changes over the course of a month. Therefore, what a woman thinks she can handle today may change tomorrow because she begins a different stage of her menstrual cycle.
Plus, when women go through puberty, they may see their OCD symptoms begin in alignment with the hormonal changes happening to their bodies.
In other words, women have to think about the ways that the hormones in their bodies increase or decrease the amount of anxiety they feel, which is correlated with the appearance of OCD obsessions.
Estrogen, for example, is known to influence the amount of anxiety that women experience.
Estrogen is also the hormone that fluctuates with the menstrual cycle since it controls the thickness of the uterine lining, which means that it helps to determine when a fertilized egg can implant and when the uterine lining will be shed during a woman’s period.
Once you consider the fact that estrogen can increase or decrease anxiety and it also plays a central role in the menstrual cycle, it’s clear to see how deeply connected OCD and anxiety symptoms are with hormonal shifts through a woman’s menstrual cycle.
3. You engage in social events
Social anxiety exists and it exists apart from OCD. So, if you struggle with social anxiety, which is characterized by the persistent fear of social events because you might be humiliated or embarrassed, then that social anxiety can easily transfer over to your OCD experience.
When left unchecked, social anxiety can easily trigger OCD in social settings and in anticipation of being in a social setting. For example, if you are nervous about attending a work party in a few hours, you may experience an intrusive thought.
Maybe your intrusive thought is something about saying something insulting or acting obnoxiously in front of your coworkers. So, you take the outfit off that you’re wearing and put it back on several times.
You do that until thought goes away or you feel confident that the way you put your outfit on the most recent time is good enough. As always, everyone experiences OCD differently, so it’s not fair to generalize what OCD sufferers experience.
It also can be hard to provide examples of OCD obsessions and common compulsions because it’s possible no one has experienced anything like the examples we provide.
However, what matters in this example is making the connection between an OCD struggle and anything that causes the worsening of OCD symptoms. That’s how you can learn what causes OCD for you and what triggers to watch out for.
The goal is to have these tools even if you don’t have an OCD therapist to help you work through it.
Rather than chalking up your OCD episodes around social events as nothing more than a common OCD experience, get curious about possible triggers like social anxiety that can increase severe cases of OCD.
4. You experience any number of traumatic events
While researchers don’t know the exact cause of OCD, it’s worth noting the moments when your experience with OCD is more extreme than others. Note abnormalities and harder moments to start tracking patterns when your OCD gets easier or more difficult.
That way, you can begin predicting those patterns for your own sanity and mental health. Having said that, your OCD is based on the anxiety you already feel. Nowadays, anxiety is one of the most common mental illnesses that people experience.
So, it makes sense that, with anxiety being so prevalent and stressful life events also being so prevalent, you’d be at a higher risk for experiencing anxiety frequently and that anxiety transforming into OCD as well.
If you already struggle with OCD and you’re aware of that, then that means you also struggle with anxiety, which informs the way you experience your OCD.
In other words, you likely experience anxiety frequently. We live in a stressful, anxiety-inducing world that causes us to experience stressful events all of the time.
The problem is that our brains rarely can tell the difference between what feels like “life or death” and what actually is “life or death.” Therefore, our brains increase our anxiety by overreacting.
In some cases, reacting accurately to the trauma of the situation we’re experiencing. It’s natural, for people with OCD, that OCD will also pop up during those traumatic moments.
5. You engage in substance abuse
It’s common for individuals with mental health disorders to turn to substance use as a way to cope with overwhelming thoughts. It makes sense and, sometimes, it feels like substance use is the only real way to cope with your thoughts.
Unfortunately, when someone starts using substances to avoid dealing with their emotions, the use can become more harmful than beneficial. It can shift from something recreational that you do every now and then to something you feel like you need to do to get through the day.
When you notice that happen, that’s the moment when substance abuse can become a real possibility. Here, we’re not specifically discussing addiction, which can be more complex than merely trying to numb feelings, though that is a common cause.
Instead, we want to highlight how substance use can unintentionally worsen OCD symptoms. One factor to consider is the type of substance being used, as some are more likely to induce anxiety rather than alleviate it.
Another factor is how you feel once the effects of the substance wear off. Increased anxiety from actions taken while under the influence can trigger OCD. The relationship between mental illness and substance use is complex, meaning it’s not always harmful to use a substance to cope.
However, it’s crucial to continuously evaluate how this relationship benefits you and how it impacts your daily functioning. As exhausting as it may seem to always be on the lookout for signs of substance abuse, it’s worth the time and effort it takes.
6. You experience conflict with your family members
The term “family problems” covers a wide range of issues, so you likely have a specific situation in mind when you hear it. It could be an argument with a parent, your child getting upset with you, or your partner who forgot to wash the dishes when they said they would do it last night.
Family issues, big or small, can affect you because you’re human and your family likely plays a huge role in your life. The goal is to feel like an individual within your family, as many therapists would likely argue.
That way, when problems arise within your family, they don’t affect you like you’re experiencing them directly, especially when you aren’t experiencing them directly.
However, this is challenging and not always feasible, especially when dealing with OCD triggers while trying to maintain individuality within both your family of origin and the new family you are building.
You may experience anxiety due to a lack of communication within your family, leaving you uncertain about when you might be triggering someone unknowingly. Arguments with your partner can also trigger compulsions.
Most people have a lot of complicated, difficult emotions and triggers related to their family. OCD adds an extra layer of stress and complexity to managing these dynamics.
The Next Step
You’ve already taken the first step by reading this post and learning about what might cause your OCD to get worse.
As always, when dealing with a mental health condition, we recommend visiting mental health professionals who can help you work through the specifics of your situation.
With professional help, you and your healthcare provider can decide on effective treatments that work with your situation. Once you formulate a treatment plan, questions like “What causes my OCD to get worse?” will naturally come up.
That way, you can make sure you’re getting help with your symptoms right now that will last into the future too. We understand that therapy is not accessible to everyone.
But, we always encourage you to look into it when dealing with a mental illness. Mental illnesses can be debilitating and make you feel powerless. That’s why we want to remind you that you’re not alone, you are capable of managing your symptoms, and you are capable of feeling better.
