Obsession has its origins in the tendency to mentally repeat cognitive patterns relating to behaviors to be followed in relation to specific requested performances (an exam, a job interview, a meeting with a person who attracts us). This is a way to reduce the tension associated with the event and, at the same time, improve one’s reading of the surrounding world and one’s ability to provide efficient behavioral responses. This is why, for those suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), even a simple contact with the handle of a public toilet is enough to trigger a series of uncontrolled thoughts which, in this specific case, are rooted in such an irrational fear of germs that push the individual to wash their hands up to 50 times a day for fear of contamination. In people suffering from OCD everything goes out of control – confirms the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Giancarlo Cerveri – and the presence of compulsions, or ritual behaviors which often present a semantic assonance with obsessions and are often a source of disability, is frequent and more easily recognizable for those who live with the subject in question.
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November 16, 2023 | 07:20
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