Does your therapist have to be an OCD certified therapist? I feel like I am not having success with my thoughts and much as I would like

Thank you all for your comments..this helps so much!!!!

From what I've heard and experienced, having a therapist specifically trained for OCD really helps. They know the ins and outs of it

Thank you. I agree, and I do not want to take away from how great she is, but is specific ocd sessions supposed to be different than a regular therapy session?

Okay. That makes sense. Thank you!

I enjoy my therapist a lot but I feel like I’ve been the one working on my ocd recovery. She’s more like a great ear and a great supporter but she doesn’t have all the ocd knowledge That an ocd speacialist would have. I would reccomend trying to see an ocd specialist is possible.

Hi there @Darz, I hope you're doing okay. I would agree that for certain things in life that you may be going through, then regular talk therapy can be the most helpful. However, for OCD specific symptoms you really do need to have someone who is trained in it because unfortunately talking it out only does so much and you end up going in circles. I had a long-term therapist who I liked a lot but he wasnt trained in ocd and almost didn't like giving it that name. My primary obsession was about being homosexual and when we had gone around and around for so long with it, he basically said there is only one way to find out and that's try being with a man. He had good intentions but that is definitely not what I was going through and ended up causing me a lot of unnecessary pain and trauma. I don't mean to take over your post by sharing but I'm doing so because I know I am one of so many people who sadly have been given the wrong treatment for OCD even if the therapist has the right intentions. Oftentimes they won't know to even give that as a diagnosis. The OCD foundation as well as clinicclinics who specialize in OCD treatment agree that OCD is best treated with CBT, mindfulness and ERP with some ACT. Medication can also help those with severe symptoms in order to enable the person to perform the therapeutic work. I hope that helps

With regards to your question about whether a regular therapy session is different to an OCD one. Of course this is a general statement but generally speaking an OCD specialist will have you do actionable things, be that listing your obsessions at the beginning, then labeling them, then challenging/restructuring them and eventually confronting them while attempting not to perform a compulsion which is the ERP part.