https://www.drcelingelgec.com.au/

Dr Celin Gelgec, 685 Burke Road, Camberwell (2025)

11/12/2025

Harm OCD—especially the hit-and-run type—isn’t about danger on the road. It’s about the mind demanding certainty in a world that doesn’t give any. A tiny bump, a shadow, a noise, and suddenly you’re replaying the last few metres of your drive as if you’re responsible for every possible outcome.

The urge to circle back, check mirrors, slow down, replay every moment in your head—these aren’t signs that something happened. They’re signs that OCD has hijacked your sense of responsibility.

The real work isn’t proving you didn’t hit someone.
It’s learning to tolerate the discomfort of not knowing for sure.

That’s where ERP changes everything.
Not by offering reassurance—
but by helping you build confidence in the face of uncertainty.

Harm OCD is treatable.
And you don’t have to keep turning the car around.

08/12/2025

What if OCD’s acronym has been misleading us all along?

Not the disorder.
The treatment.

Try this instead:

O — Opposite Action
Doing the thing your fear tells you to avoid. Not to feel better… but to expand what you can tolerate.

C — Consistently
Not perfectly. Not heroically. Just repeatedly — because rewiring a brain is a volume game, not a vibe.

D — Discomfort Means Change
If it feels easy, it’s probably maintenance. If it feels uncomfortable, it’s probably therapy.

So next time your brain screams for certainty, remember:
OCD isn’t just something you have. It’s a roadmap for how you heal.

03/12/2025

We don’t treat taboo-themed OCD by chasing certainty. We treat it by learning to stay with the thing your mind insists you shouldn’t feel, think, or be near. ERP isn’t about proving you’re “safe” or “good.”
It’s about practising the skill your brain avoids: sitting with discomfort without fixing it. That’s why exposures for taboo themes often look like:

1. Write and reread a detailed “intrusive thought script.”
A deliberately uncomfortable narrative describing the feared scenario as a thought (not an action), read daily without neutralising. This directly targets mental avoidance, rumination, and the urge to check for “rightness.”

2. Consume media that triggers the theme — without checking reactions.
This might be watching certain TV scenes, reading confronting storylines, or viewing age-appropriate images that evoke discomfort, while dropping all checking (e.g., “Did I feel aroused?”, “Did I want that?”, “Did I react wrongly?”).

3. Attend triggering locations or be near triggering cues.
Examples include parks, shopping centres, churches, bystanders, or specific people categories — with strict response-prevention: no scanning for urges, no monitoring your body, no avoidance of eye contact, no self-interrogation.

4. Practice “letting thoughts sit” during daily tasks.
Rather than distracting yourself when a taboo thought pops up, you intentionally continue what you’re doing — cooking, feeding a baby, talking to someone — while allowing the thought to be present without analysis.

5. Delay compulsions that feel ‘urgent.’
If your usual reaction would be to seek reassurance, confess, mentally review, or check your internal sense of morality/intent, you experiment with delaying the compulsion by 10–15 minutes. This builds uncertainty tolerance and disrupts the reassurance loop.

None of this is about morality. It’s about rewiring a brain that has mistaken discomfort for danger so as to learn that alternative pathways can exist.

The work isn’t clean or pretty — but it’s freedom-giving. And the goal isn’t certainty. It’s capacity.

01/12/2025

The most controversial thing about OCD? It forces you to face the questions the rest of the world spends its whole life avoiding. People think OCD is about germs, harm, s*x, morality, identity. It’s not.

OCD is about existence. About the unbearable weight of being a conscious human who knows that nothing — absolutely nothing — comes with guarantees.

Most people get to wander through life half-asleep, pretending they know who they are, what’s safe, what’s real, what’s right. People with OCD don’t get that luxury. They see the cracks in reality too clearly.

The mind asks:

What if I’m not who I think I am?
What if I can’t trust myself?
What if life is fragile, random, uncontrollable?
What if everything that matters could shatter in a second?
What if there is no final answer?

These are not “intrusive thoughts.”
They’re ancient, human questions — the ones philosophers have wrestled with for centuries.

The controversial part?

OCD doesn’t create these questions. It simply refuses to let you look away. And recovery isn’t about silencing them.

It’s about learning how to live alongside them without collapsing into analysis or avoidance.

To let the questions exist without demanding a resolution.

To let uncertainty simply be part of being alive.

To realise that freedom doesn’t come from finding the right answer —
it comes from discovering you can live fully even when the answer never arrives.

There’s nothing pathological about wondering who you are or what it means to be a good person or whether life is safe.
That’s humanity.

The work of OCD treatment isn’t to “fix your mind.” It’s to help you stop arguing with the universe.

25/11/2025

People with *P-OCD don’t usually walk into session and announce it.
They circle it and dance around it.
They test the waters.
They wait until the relationship with you as a clinician feels steady enough to hold the worst thing their mind has thrown at them.

Because this theme comes with a cocktail of emotions no one warns people about the guilt they feel that feels radioactive, the shame they experience that clamps their throat, and often the anger that comes up, anger at their own brain for producing something so misaligned with who they are.

And that silence?
It isn’t secrecy for secrecy’s sake. It’s fear. Fear of being misunderstood, judged, mislabelled, or dismissed by a professional who doesn’t understand OCD at this depth.

When someone finally shares this theme, it isn’t because the fear has gone. It’s because the trust has grown. And the work from there isn’t about proving anything. It’s not about proving right or wrong. It’s learning how to stop analysing the thought, stop policing bodily sensations, stop replaying memories, stop asking “What does this say about me?” It’s learning to tolerate uncertainty instead of chasing safety.

P-*OCD isn’t a moral diagnosis. It’s a fear disorder with impeccable aim. If you’re a clinician, remember, people disclose this theme only when they genuinely believe you won’t flinch. Meet it with clarity, not reassurance. And help them take back their lives by changing what they do, not what they think.

If you work with OCD, this is one of the themes you must know how to hold. If you’re needing support and supervision, follow the link in my bio to reach out.

24/11/2025

When OCD grows out of relational trauma, it doesn’t look like “just anxiety.” It looks like a nervous system that never learned what safe feels like.

For some people, OCD doesn’t begin with a random intrusive thought.
It starts much earlier — in the childhood moments where connection felt unpredictable, love felt earned, or safety depended on being watchful, perfect, compliant, or hyper-responsible.

When the people you relied on were inconsistent, critical, unavailable, chaotic, or easily overwhelmed… your brain didn’t learn “I am safe.”
It learned “I must monitor, prevent, fix, anticipate, and protect.”

And that’s a perfect recipe for OCD.

Not because trauma causes OCD. But because relational trauma wires the system to expect threat — especially threat from the self.

So checking becomes “Don’t let anyone down.”

Reassurance-seeking becomes “Please don’t leave.”

Perfectionism becomes “If I get it wrong, the connection is gone.”

Intrusive thoughts become “I must control myself to stay safe in relationships.”

And suddenly the compulsions aren’t rituals…. They’re survival strategies you learned decades ago.

Here’s the truth:
You’re not “doing OCD wrong.”
You’re reenacting an attachment style in the language of symptoms.

The work isn’t only ERP.
It’s learning how to feel safe in your body, safe with others, and safe without. It’s repairing the internal template that taught you your worth depends on getting it right.

When we treat OCD and the relational wounds underneath it?
People stop surviving… and start living.

22/11/2025

Why does contamination OCD feel so powerful?
Because the brain isn’t actually terrified of germs… it’s terrified of uncertainty. The more you wash, check, clean or sanitise, the more you teach your brain that the danger is real.

ERP flips that script.

Swipe to read about five exposure ideas that help retrain the brain to tolerate the feeling of risk without performing compulsions. Alternatively keep reading for a brief summary below ⬇️.

Touch a “mildly dirty” surface and delay washing.

Handle something that feels contaminated and eat a snack with the same hands.

Use a public toilet without excessive precautions.

Drop an object on the floor, pick it up, and keep using it.

Touch a trolley, petrol pump, cash, or bin lid and resist sanitising.

None of this is about proving it’s safe. It’s about building your tolerance for uncertainty, discomfort and the urge to neutralise.

If you’re a clinician wanting to improve your ERP work—or someone dealing with contamination OCD—start small, go slow, and be consistent. Your brain learns through repetition, not reassurance.

20/11/2025

Trying to “get rid” of intrusive thoughts is like trying to evict oxygen. It’s not happening — and the harder you push, the louder your brain rebels.

One of the biggest myths in OCD treatment is the idea that intrusive thoughts are the problem. They’re not. Intrusive thoughts are a universal human experience. The only difference is that people with OCD take them seriously, analyse them, fear them and try to eliminate them.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth no one likes to say out loud:
Every attempt to get rid of an intrusive thought is a compulsion in disguise.
Every mental pushback is fuel.
Every “I just want them gone” is the exact thing keeping them alive.

Intrusive thoughts don’t need erasing.
They need depriving. Depriving of urgency. Of reassurance. Of analysis. Of debate.

ERP works not because it deletes thoughts, but because it teaches you to stop negotiating with them. You learn to let them exist without giving them authority.

OCD recovery isn’t about thought control.
It’s about response control.
It’s about letting the noise be noise — and letting your life get louder.

If you’re focused on elimination of thoughts, you’ll stay trapped.
If you’re focused on tolerance of thoughts, you’ll move.

18/11/2025

What if you’ve been treating the tip of the iceberg when it comes to OCD treatment while the real driver sits underwater?

Most people try to manage OCD by chasing down the symptoms, aiming for less checking, fewer questions, and increasing coping. This is needed, and an important first step to take. Clients need to feel wins in the board against OCD to build confidence.

Have you noticed though that as you’re doing this OCD starts to shape shift? That’s because OCD isn’t defeated at the surface. Real change happens underneath when we start to understand and incorporate core fears such as:
responsibility.
intolerance of uncertainty.
intolerance of discomfort- “I can’t handle this feeling.”
etc.

That’s the part that drives the compulsions, no matter how hard you try to out-manoeuvre them on top, if you don’t incorporate them into treatment and teach your clients how to feel them, they’ll rise to the surface in different ways.

So, anchor your work beneath the surface — not in symptom-chasing, but in reshaping what lives beneath it.

13/11/2025

People with OCD often wait to feel ready before doing an exposure or stepping into uncertainty. But “ready” is not a feeling. It’s a decision. Not feeling ready” is never the problem. The emotions that sit beneath that thought are often the problem. Some of these include:

Uncertainty.
Fear.
Apprehension.
Dread.
The list goes on.

These emotions and more create an internal pull to resolve doubt before you take a single step. But that’s what keeps you stuck. OCD convinces you that readiness should “feel” calm, certain, safe.
But that’s not readiness. That’s reassurance dressed up as preparation.

In OCD treatment, readiness isn’t an emotional state. It’s a choice to move with the discomfort you’re trying to avoid. A willingness to let uncertainty ride shotgun while you do the thing your brain swears you can’t handle.

If you wait to feel ready, you’ll wait forever.
If you decide you’re ready, you’ll start living again. Because the moment you choose willingness over certainty, you’re already doing the work.

10/11/2025

Harm OCD isn’t about danger. It’s about the intolerable weight of being responsible for preventing danger. That’s why these clients don’t just fear “bad things happening” — they fear being the direct cause. Or missing something microscopic that leads to catastrophe. Or failing to stop it.

There’s a moral horror to Harm OCD that goes way beyond fear of violence. It’s fear of moral collapse.

Compulsions become private investigations. Endless self-interrogations. Mental cross-examinations. The brain becomes a courtroom obsessed with certainty as safety.

Recovery asks for a different metric. Not “have I proven I’m safe?”
But “can I tolerate the possibility that I and others around me are not safe?” This isn’t cruelty. It’s how we undo the loop.

Because when we endlessly search for certainty it becomes the drug. And abstinence from certainty is the medicine. Maybe you’ll never get the answer your brain demands. And maybe you don’t need it to actually live.

06/11/2025

Needing some inspo for your exposure therapy exercises? Pure-O is a form of OCD where people primarily experience mental compulsions in response to obsessions about any theme. Oftentimes people think they don’t experience any compulsions at all, however once we sit down and explore their experience, we quickly realise that there are mental compilation going on. This can include things like rumination, scanning in your mind, checking, self-reassurance, avoidance, thought blocking, counting, praying, repeating safety phrases, waiting for positive or neutral thoughts to occur, etc. What are some tasks you’re working on?

Dr Celin Gelgec

11/12/2025

08/12/2025

03/12/2025

01/12/2025

25/11/2025

24/11/2025

22/11/2025

20/11/2025

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