Patterns OCD information library
Understand the pattern, one question at a time.
Start with what you are trying to understand. Evidence-led guides explain the clinical ideas in plain language; personal essays are clearly marked as lived experience.
Understand intrusive thoughts, compulsions, avoidance, and the patterns that can make OCD difficult to recognize.
- What Happens During an OCD Assessment?
- OCD Avoidance: When Staying Away Becomes a Compulsion
- Do I Have OCD or Just Intrusive Thoughts? Understanding the Difference
Plain-language guides to the many subjects OCD can attach to, from contamination and checking to relationships and morality.
- Existential OCD: When Life's Biggest Questions Become a Loop
- Checking OCD: Why One More Check Never Feels Like Enough
- Contamination OCD: More Than a Fear of Germs
Learn how exposure and response prevention works, what its tools are for, and how treatment is structured.
- Compulsion Delay: Creating a Gap Between the Urge and the Ritual
- ERP vs CBT for OCD: Why the Distinction Matters
- How to Build an Exposure Hierarchy (With Worked Examples)
Evidence-led guidance for navigating recovery, setbacks, relationships, work, and ordinary life with OCD.
- OCD Guilt and Shame: Why a Feeling Is Not Evidence
- The Recovery That Happens Between Therapy Sessions
First-person essays from the person building Patterns about OCD, ERP, privacy, and life between therapy sessions.
- Is Patterns a CBT app? ERP, CBT, and what actually helped me
- What I actually wanted from an OCD app
- The loop, and how I loosen it