The dangers of suicidal OCD and how to recognise it

Summary

Breaking the Rules: A Clinician's Guide to Treating OCD

Episode Summary: The Dangers of Suicidal OCD and How to Recognise It

Hosts: Dr. Celin Gelgec and Dr. Victoria (Tori) Miller
Date: June 23, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles the challenging and often misunderstood area of Suicidal OCD (also called Suicide-themed OCD) and how clinicians can differentiate it from genuine suicidal ideation or intent. Dr. Gelgec and Dr. Miller dive deep into the clinical nuances of recognizing, assessing, and treating this subtype of OCD. They emphasize compassionate, non-alarmist risk management, the importance of context, and a flexible, client-centered treatment approach.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding Suicidal OCD: A Taboo but Crucial Topic

• Suicidal OCD is frequently misunderstood or under-discussed due to stigma and fear.

• It often presents as ego-dystonic, intrusive thoughts about dying by suicide—not out of a wish to die, but out of fear of losing control.

• Clinicians must balance the seriousness of suicide risk with an accurate diagnostic understanding.

  "It's not helpful to our clients if we're panicking because they've brought up suicide, and if we go into lockdown, high risk management mode. But we also don't want to be flippant. Navigating that is complex… and so I felt like it was due time to unpack this a little."
  — Dr. Miller (03:27)

2. Clinical Examples and Presentations

• Suicidal OCD can manifest as avoidance of balconies, knives, or train stations—not because of intent, but out of terror of acting impulsively (“What if I lose control and do it?”).

• Sometimes it’s driven by overwhelming guilt or shame (fear: “If I never stop feeling this bad, one day I might see no other option.”).

  "She won't allow herself to go on a balcony… just in case… ‘How can I be sure I won't throw myself off the edge?’"
  — Dr. Miller (04:47)

• Some clients develop compulsions as emotional safeguards (e.g., compulsive confession, checking for meaning/happiness, mental reviews).

  "She's doing this sort of compulsive checking, like, how happy was I today? …as a way of preventing ever one day… needing to die by choice."
  — Dr. Miller (07:23)

3. Differentiating Suicidal OCD from Suicidal Ideation (Depression)

• Suicidal OCD: Ego-dystonic thoughts ("I don't want to die, but I'm terrified of the thought I might"), characterized by high anxiety, avoidance, and uncertainty.

• Suicidal Ideation: Linked to depressive symptoms, hopelessness, and exhaustion ("I can't see a way out, maybe it's the only choice left"), sometimes ambivalent but with loss of hope/connection.

• The importance of context, mood, and motivational factors—what’s driving the thought?

  "I'll ask questions like, can you give me a little bit of context? …How has your mood been lately?"
  — Dr. Gelgec (10:24)

  "Listening for context, mood, circumstance, previous experiences, and hopelessness… versus anxiety and avoidance."
  — Dr. Gelgec (11:33)

4. Assessment: “Be Alert but Not Alarmed” (10:24)

• Adopt a curious, validating stance.
• Assess frequency and triggers of thoughts, emotional tone, and accompanying behaviors.
• Recognize that the boundary between OCD and depressive symptoms can blur over time.

5. Treatment: Tailoring the Response

• If OCD-driven:

  • Psychoeducation about ego-dystonic thoughts.
  • Reassurance and explanatory guidance.
  • Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP): Deliberate exposure to triggering situations (balconies, train stations) or content (media, writing scripts, listening to the "Suicide Song").
  • Address compulsions (mental checking, avoidance, researching, seeking reassurance).
  • Caution against compulsive “emotion checking” to see if thoughts have turned into genuine suicidal intent.

  "It's the application of ERP, which is to invite the thoughts, spend time with the thoughts, reduce the mindfulness around emotions that are evoked… and then reduce the compulsions associated with it."
  — Dr. Miller (16:21)

• If depression-driven/suicidal ideation present:

  • Conduct a full risk assessment.
  • Assess for depressive disorder.
  • Consider pausing or adapting ERP to address depression (CBT, medication, behavioral activation).
  • Utilize support systems: psychiatry, group therapy, family, inpatient/outpatient programs.

  "If they don't already, think about what other avenues you could explore for treatment… group therapy, psychiatry, inpatient admissions, outpatient programs."
  — Dr. Gelgec (20:55)

• Blended/complex cases:

  • Recognize when persistent OCD may lead to genuine depression and suicidal ideation—requires adaptation and holistic care.

6. Holistic, Person-Centered Care

• Don't treat OCD in isolation; examine environmental, relational, and contextual factors.

• Flexibility is key—strict, manualized approaches may neglect the person's broader challenges and resources.

  "We're treating a whole person, not exclusively OCD… ERP is the framework we use, not the rule."
  — Dr. Miller (22:54)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On balancing clinical responsibility:

  "Be alert but not alarmed."
  — Dr. Gelgec (10:24)

• On treatment flexibility:

  "ERP is the framework that we use, not the rule."
  — Dr. Miller (23:41)

• On the complexity of client experiences:

  "We don't blame the plant for not thriving… we look at the environment."
  — Dr. Gelgec (22:16)

• On compulsion examples:

  "People can call helplines compulsively… avoid content about suicide, turn up to emergency, spend a lot of time on ChatGPT…"
  — Dr. Miller (15:53)

• On using media and urban legends as exposure:

  "There was this episode… about a Romanian composer who wrote a… 'Suicide Song.' Urban legend… but you can listen to it on Spotify."
  — Dr. Miller (17:55)

• On the danger of missing key context:

  "Sometimes you'll have a client who has suicidal obsessions in an OCD context… but because they've been dealing with it so long, might develop depression, and then it might be something that starts to creep in in terms of actually, there's so much despair here… we need to consider, like, take into more consideration."
  — Dr. Gelgec (12:08)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:34 – Suicide as a leading cause of death; warning on episode content
• 02:09 – Why suicidal OCD is hard to talk about (stigma, misinterpretation)
• 04:14–07:23 – Examples of suicidal OCD vs. depressive ideation
• 09:18–10:24 – OCD and secondary depression; complexities in assessment
• 10:24–12:08 – Assessing context, mood, and client experience
• 13:53 – Educating clients to recognize when thoughts shift from OCD to depressive ideation
• 15:16 – Compulsions in suicidal OCD
• 16:21–18:29 – Practical ERP exposures and use of “Suicide Song” as an example
• 20:53–22:17 – Adapting treatment for depression, support options, and environmental assessment
• 22:54 – Treating the whole person, not just the OCD

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Key Takeaways

• Clinicians must carefully and compassionately discern between suicidal obsessions in OCD and active suicidal ideation, as both require a tailored and nuanced approach.
• Context, emotional tone, and client motivation are critical in risk assessment and treatment planning.
• Exposure and Response Prevention is effective for suicidal OCD but must be accompanied by psychoeducation, careful monitoring, and sensitivity to comorbid depression.
• Address the whole person—including environment and life context—not just symptom checklists or manualized treatments.

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For Further Support

If you or your clients are struggling with these issues, reach out to local healthcare providers or, in Australia, Lifeline at 13 11 14.

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Transcript

[A]

This is Breaking the Rules, a show for mental health professionals designed to help you build confidence in treating obsessive compulsive disorder. I'm Dr. Celine Galgett and I'm a clinical psychologist who works extensively with OCD.

[B]

And I'm Dr. Victoria Miller, but you can call me Tori. And I'm a clinical psychologist who works with young people, including those with ocd. Through our shared professional experience, we've found that effective treatment of OCD requires commitment, creativity, and the recognition that things can sometimes get a little messy.

[A]

They sure can. We want to empower clinicians to be able to work with their patients in new ways to treat OCD with confidence. Hello and welcome back to our next skills episode of the Breaking the Rules podcast show. Today's episode carries a trigger warning because we are talking about suicide and suicidal type ocd. Suicide remains the leading cause of death in Australia for people aged between 15 to 44 years. And it's something we always need to take seriously. A question to consider. What happens when suicide comes up in the context of ocd? How do we differentiate between suicidal ideation and obsessive intrusive suicidal thoughts?

[B]

In this episode, you'll hear us talk about how to work with your clients when they present with thoughts about suicide. We talk about how important it is to always take our clients seriously when they talk about suicide, but how to also carefully consider and discern whether someone with OCD is presenting with suicidal ideation consistent with with wishes to die or suicidal ocd. That is, they don't want to die, but fear they might impulsively act on their thoughts. This is a challenging part of the work we do, but it's so important. So let's get started.

[A]

Hi, Tori.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

How are you today?

[B]

I'm pretty good.

[A]

What are we talking about today?

[B]

Suicide type ocd. I'm glad we're talking about this one.

[A]

Yeah, me too.

[B]

Yeah, so I'm presuming that people know that there is a subtype called suicidal ocd, but maybe not. Maybe not.

[A]

It's one of the taboo ones, right?

[B]

Yeah, it is. Well, look, the reason that I wanted to bring it up is because I've got quite a few clients who present quite explicitly with this subtype and it causes them a huge amount of distress. But also I find that when I drill down with a lot of my clients, even if they're not presenting really explicitly with suicidal type ocd, when I do some drilling, drilling down about what it is, what the worry beliefs are, that we can often get to a place where the thing that they're afraid of is suicide and this sort of sense of responsibility that they sort of have to prevent themselves from dying by suicide one day. And it is such a huge fear for a lot of people, but they're so afraid to talk about it because they're really worried that it'll be misinterpreted as being suicidal and having suicidal ideation. And I know that clinicians often fret because, you know, managing risk in our clinical practice is a huge responsibility and one that we have to take really seriously. And we know that people with OCD experience depressive episodes, they can experience suicidal ideation, and that they can be people with moderate to high risk. But that is also different from suicide type subtype ocd. And that that can feel so tricky for clinicians. And I felt like this topic was so important because it's not helpful to our clients if we're panicking because they've brought up suicide, and if we go into lockdown, high risk management mode. But also, we don't want to be flippant about someone, a client, telling that they have suicidal thoughts and just assuming that because they have ocd, that it's the OCD subtype and they're not responding appropriately. But navigating that is complex both for our clients and for ourselves as clinicians. And so I felt like it was sort of due time to unpack this a little. What are your thoughts?

[A]

Yeah, no, no, I absolutely love it. And you've articulated it so beautifully and also explained what it is in a nutshell, if you didn't clue in to Tori's wonderful experience of it. What we're dealing with is people who experience ego dystonic, intrusive thoughts about one day dying by suicide, usually fueled by a sense of, what if I lose control and I do it? Do you kind of see that in the.

[B]

Well, yes, definitely. So definitely for some clients, like, that's one that I'm thinking about where we're talking about this quite a lot at the moment, where, you know, like, she won't allow herself to go on a balcony or anything just in case he had that sense of, like, how can I be sure that I won't throw myself off the edge? But I think of another young person where it was sort of almost a fear of the emotions and these intense feelings of guilt and shame that he was experiencing because of harm thoughts. And because of that, his fear was that if he didn't get on top of his emotions through doing compulsions, that the emotions would and the guilt would be so great, would live within him so great. So his compulsion was to confess. So he had all of these guilt and shame about not being a good enough person. And he was so worried that he wouldn't be able to handle that guilt, and that if the guilt never went away and he was ultimately not able to handle it, eventually he would have no choice to kill himself because he would feel so terrible and wretched. And he knows for sure that he couldn't live that way. But he wanted to live. So he wanted to prevent himself from ever getting to a point where his emotions got so intense that he would contemplate suicide. So therefore, he had to do the compulsions to protect himself from feeling that level of guilt and shame.

[A]

Yeah, that is. Actually, I had a supervisee who was talking about something similar where it's these situations where I need to prevent my mental health from deteriorating. So I don't then take this action because I actually want to live. I don't want to die.

[B]

So I think that there are a couple of reasons why it emerges, and I think probably the most common one is that sense of. Yeah, like, the. You know, the losing control. Like, what if I drove off the road? What if I jumped off a bridge? What if I took a knife to my throat? What if I.

[A]

What if I drove into the tree?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I think I had clients in the past where they'd be shaving and they'd be like, what if I slit my throat? Or, you know, with the blade, or I had a client once who had all those thoughts, like, you know, when they were driving, when they were on a bridge, when they were wherever, anywhere that would put them at risk. At the train station. What if I jumped in front of the train? You know, all these things. The other one I was thinking of as we were kind of formulating it was being curious around is, does it feel like a sense of responsibility? Like, I have this responsibility to make sure I'm okay so this doesn't happen because I want to live my life. Do you know what I mean? Like, yeah. So we kind of lent into that a little bit, which I thought was really interesting.

[B]

Yeah. And kind of that existential theme again.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So, like, it's such a through line for so many OCD themes with that sense of I need to live a good enough life, like, I need to enjoy my days. One of my clients really tracks her happiness and her joy because she's really worried that if she's not living a meaningful enough life and if she's not really Immersing herself in everything and feeling joy, joyful, that ultimately she'll reach a point where she feels so much regret that she hasn't lived a good life, that she'll feel like she has to believe she has to take her life. And so, you know, so she's making sure every day she's doing this sort of compulsive checking, like, how happy was I today? And. And how meaningful was my day today? As a way of preventing ever one day. Yeah. Needing to die by choice. And so, of course, this experience is really different. So you use the term before ego dystonic versus ego syntonic. We're talking about people who, when they have suicidal ideation. We're talking about our clients who are exhausted and burnt out and have lost a connection with hope. And they are despairing and extremely distressed and their mood is extremely low. And they are not sure that it's worth the fight anymore or that they have any value or worth in the world. Perhaps it'd be better if they weren't there, that they're too burdensome on their families and that they're thinking about taking their life because they're thinking that it would be the right choice to make. Maybe it's not completely egosyntonic. It might be that there's still some ambivalence there, that they're not sure if they do or they don't. And they sort of do, but they also sort of don't, or they don't.

[A]

Know a way out. They can't see the way out and they think it's the only choice left.

[B]

Yeah, that's right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we see this in. In clients who have ocd, because OCD can be a beast. And a lot of people feel really functionally impaired by it and feel like they're just not living. And that thought that the life that they're living is not worth it. And so we know that people can, with ocd, can present in crisis and.

[A]

With suicidal ideation, with secondary depression because of the circumstances, because of what OCD is taking away from them. You know, in terms of a life, because it's not a life someone wants to live when they've got ocd.

[B]

And so what do we do, Celine? I mean, when someone raises this, I wonder if we could maybe think about it from the perspective of maybe someone who doesn't have a lot of experience managing risk, who may not have sat in the room with many clients before who have talked about feeling or having suicidal thoughts, about how they would go about teasing that out Assessing it with compassion, but without alarm, you know?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's always a phrase that you use that I love. Be alert but not alarmed. I love it when. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I often do is honestly just be curious. When a client brings anything up, I try to be respectfully curious. I'll ask questions like, you know, can you give me a little bit of context? How often does that come up for you? And you know, lots of validating statements as well in terms of saying things like that. I can imagine how scary that would feel or uncertain that would feel. And really also just getting a sense of is this feeling a bit like depression? So I'll also kind of ask questions around mood. How has your mood been lately? What have some thoughts been like that have been coming up? I think context is really important too, because I was standing on the train station and just had this thought about what if I jumped in front of it and it freaked me out versus I've been feeling really flat lately. And you know, I've been trying treatment and it feels so hard and it's just I don't know what to do anymore. And I've been fighting this for so long and I just feel exhausted. And I was standing at the train station and I thought maybe it would just be easier to jump in front of it.

[B]

That's a beautiful example of the difference.

[A]

So I think we need to listen when our clients are talking to us for things like context, mood, circumstance, previous experiences, and that idea of hopelessness coming in, despair coming in, versus anxiety and avoidance and all those other behaviors that we see when people are more freaked out by it as opposed to ambivalent and unsure, but maybe leaning more towards it, if that makes sense.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

So hopefully that example of what it might sound like when your clients are talking to you is a helpful way of distinguishing. And look, it's not always that clear cut either. Like Tori mentioned before, sometimes you'll have a client too who has suicidal obsessions in an OCD context and will avoid and it's ego dystonic and all that sort of stuff, but because they've been dealing with it so long, might develop depression and then it might be something that starts to creep in in terms of actually there's so much despair here and hopelessness and mood is so low that I'm experiencing suicidal ideation. And it's something we need to consider, like, take into more consideration. So what do we do when it comes up? As I mentioned before, we be curious about it. We try and assess for it what are we dealing with here? And then respond accordingly. You know, if it feels more like ocd, then providing some psychoeducation to your client and explaining what it is, and lots of reassurance, which we can do in the beginning, which fits in with that psychoeducation side of things. And then working around, how can we address this from an ERP perspective? But also something that I do, I don't know if you. I'm sure you do this as well, is educating clients around when it starts to turn and become proper suicidal ideation. And the reason for that is because you don't want your clients to dismiss it either because if they're genuinely experiencing low mood or other things are creeping in and it's actual suicidal ideation, not OCD type, then they need to not dismiss that within themselves and it needs to be addressed. Hey, Tori.

[B]

Hi, Celine.

[A]

Did you know that we run our own courses here at Melbourne Wellbeing Group?

[B]

I did know that. In fact, it's one of my favourite things we do here because it's a great way to help psychologists and other clinicians learn more about ocd, which means.

[A]

We get to help more people. So if you're a clinician who works in mental health and you're interested in learning from us, then get in touch.

[B]

For more information, head to www.melbournewellbeinggroup.com and click on the webinars and Books tab.

[A]

Alrighty, back to the show.

[B]

Ultimately, in the long run, if they can help, if they can see and discern that emotional difference between themselves, you know, the questioning of, oh, why did I have that thought versus I'm feeling so awful. It helps them think about and gain insight into what steps they need to take as well.

[A]

I think what you have to be mindful of and something I always come to clients with in terms of terms and conditions apply, is if they are experiencing suicidal type OCD thoughts, then making sure they're not symptom, checking emotion, checking everything, checking to see if it slits under into suicidal ideation. Because. Yeah, that's not helpful.

[B]

No, that's exactly that. So, yeah, because the compulsions can be. If we talk about what to do about it, they're, you know, like we talk about. There can be any kind of compulsions, right? Like there can be mental compulsions, so checking or mental rituals. There can be, yeah, Mood diaries. There can be compulsive researching. How can I tell if I'm suicidal? People can call helplines compulsively talking through their emotions. Am I safe Am I safe? People can turn up to the emergency department. People can avoid. Stay away from balconies, knives, train stations, anywhere that frightens them.

[A]

Spend a lot of time on ChatGPT.

[B]

Yes, absolutely. People can avoid content like TV series or podcasts or movies that include content about suicide. They can be anything. And so let's say we have done our curious questioning, we've spent time with our client, and we have discerned that, yeah, it falls into the ego dystonic OCD category that the client can identify that ultimately, yeah, they don't want to die. This is. They're panicked by the fact that these thoughts actually exist and they're frightened by them and that you can, you know, you can see the pattern of obsessions and compulsions. It's the application of erp, which is to invite the thoughts, spend time with the thoughts, reduce the mindfulness around any emotions that are evoked in response to the thoughts, and then reducing the compulsions associated with it. And so this can be watching films or television that have this theme in could be resisting the urge to research. It could be spending time where, you know, you do it. Graded exposure, a balcony, a train station. You drive the car and deliberately invite the thought. I could drive into that tree, write stories to do script work and story writing about suicide. There's also, I discovered. There's this podcast that I started listening to around Halloween last year because I just felt like getting spooky, which is all about horror stories. It's really cool for the guy's voice is just like. He's so spooky. Whenever he. Yeah, so good. Whenever I feel like, you know, kind of going to that space. But there was this episode all about this thing, this Romanian composer who wrote a piano piece, I think, or a song called the Suicide Song. And there's this whole thing about how when this song came out a long, long time ago, how the song was so sad that it drove people.

[A]

Oh, my goodness.

[B]

And so there's this whole thing in history about how countries were banning the playing of this song on the radio and, you know, all of this stuff. And of course, like, it's a. You know, it's an urban legend. It's a. You know, like the song exists. Right. But, you know. But anyway, you can listen to it on Spotify.

[A]

There you go. Erp. Yeah, Period. Someone listened to it.

[B]

Yeah, I did. I did, yeah. While I was driving.

[A]

Oh, that's brave. You rebel.

[B]

And I think you can find it on YouTube as well.

[A]

I'm sure you can.

[B]

So you can Crazy to find, but.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

So like, there's actually lots of. Of content out there that you can find.

[A]

Yeah, so many, like TV shows and YouTube shorts and all that sort of stuff. Like there's heaps of stuff out there.

[B]

Absolutely. But let's say you've done your assessment and it doesn't goes the other way. It goes the other way. It seems more like it fits in a symptom of a depressive state. So then of course, you're providing treatment for depression. Right. So you've got a few choices there. I mean, of course you do a comprehensive risk assessment, just like is part of all of our training, just like you would for any client. And you also explore whether your client meets the criteria for depression. And then in that instance, it may be you need to make a clinical decision about whether pausing the ERP for a moment is the right choice to attend to the depression and whether someone needs support in relation to their mood and all of the different types of treatments. So whether that is seeking support from a psychiatrist, looking at medication options, doing CBT around unhelpful thoughts, or behavioral activation. Behavioral activation, getting in family support, support from partners, that sort of thing. Like, there's so many options. Right. But for some, you may not need to pause erp. You definitely would need to obviously treat the depression, but. But it may be that you also can do that and proceed with ERP at the same time. You may need to adapt it based on someone's capacity. So we know that when someone is quite depressed that their executive functioning is really severely impacted. So they may not have the creative energy, they may not have the physical energy to be going out and doing exposures. But if they're feeling disconnected from hope and feeling that ERP can't work, then it may be that actually pursuing ERP in smaller ways, these smaller bites actually might be really helpful so that you're both treating the depression and OCD at the same time and attending to the complexity around hope. But it may also mean that if you're at a point where you've been doing ERP for a while, it's really complicated. Your client is struggling with how long it's taking or how severe their symptoms are. If they don't already, think about what other avenues you could explore for treatment.

[A]

Yeah, like what else is going on for this client?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Group therapy, psychiatry, inpatient admissions, outpatient programs. There are so many things that you could explore in parallel to the individual work.

[A]

Yeah. And looking at other conditions too, that might be creeping in and slowing it down or adding fuel to the depression because it feels complex and. And really intense. Because you want to set your client up for success, you know, in terms of meeting them where they're at and coming back to what you're talking about. Earlier when you were saying make it bite sized, A question I often ask myself is, what's going on at home for this person? Are there environmental factors that are perpetuating things and are making things really hard to move forward? You know, it comes back to that saying that you might often see on socials when a plant is not doing well. You don't kind of. What's that thing? Like, you don't ask the plant what's going. Like you change the environment of the plant. Like you look at it. Do you know what I mean?

[B]

Yeah. I can relate to what you're talking about as a plant lover myself. You're right. Like you look at, is it too much sun? Is it too much water? Not enough water. Do they need to fertilize?

[A]

Do you need to put more minerals in the soil? Like what's going on in the environment? Soil change?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

Yeah. We don't blame the plant for not thriving.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In the environment. So I think, you know, when you're. Especially when you've been working with someone for a little while, we can kind of forget these things. Like, you might ask those questions during assessment and stuff like that, but not always hold it in mind. And it's something I always go back to is what's going on for this person at home, environmentally, or at work or anywhere else for that matter that's important to them, or they're spending a lot of time at relationships, all that sort of stuff that might be perpetuating some of this for them as well and making sure that we're addressing that along the way.

[B]

Yeah. And this comes back to what we are always talking about, that we're treating a whole person.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Not exclusively ocd. This is why I think that when we go hardcore into treating OCD with a very strict, rigid, manualized plan, I think we lose connection with the person and the person who is experiencing OCD and the complexity of what they're experiencing and also the richness of who they are as a whole person. And so we can't do this in a manualized way where you say in session one, we do this, and in session one, that is a guide that you can use. But there are always opportunities to go faster, to go slower, to pause, to. To be creative. And ERP is the framework that we use, not the rule.

[A]

And I think when you're doing things like inpatient programs or group therapy or short term intensives, sure it can be really great to kind of stick to that. But when you're doing one on one work with someone, I think imperative to be exactly what you described, you need to hold it as your framework, know that that's the ultimate goal. But at the same time, there are so many other things we need to hold in mind when working with our clients. For those exact reasons that you described, Tori. Like it's not people are not an island. They don't exist on their own. There are so many things that impact a person. So we need to absolutely hold those things in mind. And we have the luxury of doing that when we're working one on one. You don't have the luxury of doing that in group therapy or intensives or inpatient programs or anything like that, because you only have someone for a set amount of time. So you need to be structured and gung ho about ERP and all that sort of stuff. But when you're working one on one and you have that ability to do that and you have the time to do that that you can.

[B]

That's exactly right.

[A]

All right. All right, thanks everyone for listening. We hope you found that insightful. We'll catch you next time. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you love our podcast, please hit the subscribe button. And if you haven't noticed, we're now back to fortnightly episodes. Yay. So you'll start hearing from us more often. All right, catch you guys next time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye. If this episode was triggering and has raised any concerns for you, please seek help from your local healthcare provider. And if you're in Australia, you can also reach out to Lifeline on 13, 1114. You've been listening to Breaking the Rules, a show for mental health professionals designed to help you build confidence in treating obsessive compulsive disorder.

[B]

This podcast this podcast is brought to you by Melbourne Wellbeing Group, a psychology practice based in Melbourne with a special focus on treating OCD. To find out more, head to our website, melbournewellbeinggroup.comau all one word. That's melbournewellbeinggroup dot comau this podcast was.

[A]

Made with strategy and production support from Wavelength Creative. To make sure you don't miss an episode of Breaking the Rules, be sure to subscribe to or follow the show in your podcast app. And while you're there, leave us a five star review. It really helps others find the show. I'm Celine Galgett.

[B]

And I'm Tori Miller.

[A]

And we'll be back next episode with more reasons to convince you to get messy, have fun, and break the rules.