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

Dr Celin Gelgec, 685 Burke Road, Camberwell (2026)

08/03/2026

Not everything that reduces anxiety is helpful. If you have OCD, reassurance, avoidance, and “protect your peace” advice can actually make the cycle stronger.

Real recovery often looks the opposite: sitting with uncertainty, resisting the urge to check, and letting the discomfort be there without fixing it.

That’s not cruel. That’s treatment. If this makes you uncomfortable… it might also be exactly what OCD doesn’t want you to hear.

04/03/2026

Most people think OCD recovery means getting rid of the thought.

ERP flips that idea on its head.

One exercise we sometimes use is deliberately writing down the feared thought and reading it back to yourself. Something like:

“I might lose control and harm someone I love.”

Not to prove it’s false.
Not to analyse it.
Not to reassure yourself.

Just to let the thought be there.

Because the trap in harm OCD isn’t the thought itself — it’s the hours spent trying to neutralise, cancel, analyse, or push it away.

ERP is the opposite move.

You bring the thought closer…
and then you refuse to do anything about it.

No arguing with it.
No checking how you feel.
No replacing it with a “good” thought.

Just sitting there while the discomfort rises, peaks, and eventually settles.

Not because the thought changed.

But because you stopped treating it like an emergency.

27/02/2026

It’s never just about the soap. From the outside, it looks ordinary. Responsible, even. But inside, it can feel urgent. Pressing. Non-negotiable.

The extra rinse. The restart because it “didn’t feel right.” The invisible rule that says, again.

This is how fear disguises itself as responsibility. How doubt masquerades as hygiene. How a five-second task quietly becomes a 20-minute ritual.

And here’s the part we don’t talk about enough. The relief works.
Briefly. That tiny drop in anxiety is what keeps the cycle alive.

Recovery isn’t about shaming the behaviour. It’s about changing your relationship to the urge beneath it. Learning to feel the spike — and not answer it.

If you recognise this pattern, know this: it’s common, it’s treatable, and it’s not a personal failure.

And if you’re a clinician, this is where the real work begins — beyond surface behaviours, into the mechanics of reinforcement, avoidance, and inhibitory learning.

Ready to step out of the loop? Follow the link in my bio for workshops and supervision.

26/02/2026

Two hours.
To put on a pair of socks.

Not because someone is “particular.”
Not because they’re “quirky.”
But because their brain won’t let them stop.

On.
Off.
Again.
Until it feels “right”.

And while the world laughs about being “a bit OCD”,
someone else is stuck in a loop they never chose.

OCD is not cute.
It’s exhausting.
It’s isolating.
And on average, people wait over a decade to get the right help.

We can do better.

If you’re a clinician, let’s raise the standard.
If you’re struggling, know that you’re not alone.

Save this. Share this. Let’s shorten that 10–14 year gap.

28/01/2026

These routines and superstitions that athletes can have are often just a habit. It’s a way for them to focus and settle nerves. But sometimes… these routines, beliefs, and habits stop being helpful and start to become more stressful. They start feeling rigid. Such as : “I have to do this perfectly, or something bad will happen”. Or “If I don’t do my routine before I take this shot, I won’t win the point/score the goal”.

This is something I see a lot in people with OCD and high anxiety. Not because they’re not great athletes. Not because they’re dramatic. But because their brain is trying to create certainty… in an uncertain moment.

The problem is — performance doesn’t come from controlling every feeling. It comes from learning how to show up… even when you feel uncomfortable.

There’s a big difference between a routine that supports you… and a ritual that traps you. And you can’t always see the difference from the outside.

If this resonates, you’re not “weird”. You’re human. And support really can help. Get in touch with our team for support- admin@melbournewellbeinggroup.com.au

24/01/2026

Here’s an example of an extinction burst in action. Let’s say you have OCD with health related themes. This part of ERP (exposure therapy) can feel terrifying. To help resist compulsions……

You stop googling symptoms.
You resist checking your body.
You don’t ask for reassurance.

And suddenly your anxiety explodes! You experience new sensations.
scarier thoughts, and a crushing sense of dread and urgency.

You think: “What the hell have I done? I’ve made a mistake”.

But here’s the thing… you haven’t.

This phenomena is called an extinction burst.

When OCD stops getting fed by checking, scanning, seeking reassurance, Googling, or spending hours on forums and chat GPT,, the brain panics. It turns the volume up in one last attempt to get you to go back to the old safety behaviours.

OCD thinks: “If I make this feel serious enough, maybe they’ll check again.”

Feeling worse in this moment doesn’t mean ERP isn’t working.
It often means it is working and you’ll be on your way to freedom if you hold the line and stay consistent.

What keeps recovery moving is…
• Not checking your body “just once”
• Not Googling “to be sure”
• Not asking for reassurance when the fear spikes
• Letting uncertainty sit there — loudly, uncomfortably
• Repeating the same response even when your brain screams

Giving in during an extinction burst teaches OCD that escalation works. Holding the line teaches your brain that checking doesn’t work.

The last ditch spike in discomfort isn’t danger. It’s your nervous system learning a new rule. And that learning phase is uncomfortable, but it’s also temporary.

So next time you’re in a spike of anxiety, ask yourself, could this be an extinction burst and do I need to just keep holding the line?

13/01/2026

I’m going to start the new year by calling this stuff out. It’s posts and memes like this ⬆️ that cause so much distress for so many people. This post was liked and shared over 40,000 times. We need to call this out more and more. This is NOT OCD. It might be perfectionism but it’s not OCD. People with OCD experience so many different themes and struggle with their intrusive thoughts. They don’t want to engage in their compulsions, or feel they have to in order to prevent harm or unwanted consequences etc. Pictures like this that depict extreme perfectionism are a far cry from the debilitating nature of OCD. Perfectionism in its own right can also be debilitating, but we really need to stop calling it OCD. Let’s do better

21/12/2025

OCD convinces you that one more thought will fix it.
One more answer. One more check. One more moment of certainty.

And for a split second, it works.
The anxiety dips. The body exhales.

But that relief is short-lived — because OCD isn’t a problem of insight.
It’s a problem of how the brain has learned to respond to threat.

Thinking harder doesn’t weaken OCD.
It trains it.

Every time you analyse, reassure, mentally review, or seek certainty, the brain learns:
“This thought mattered. We did the right thing by engaging.”

Treatment works differently.

ERP isn’t about getting better thoughts.
ACT isn’t about feeling ready.
Both are about changing your response — allowing uncertainty, resisting compulsions, and letting anxiety rise and fall without fixing it.

That’s how the loop loosens.
Not through control.
Through willingness.

Save this if you keep trying to outthink something that was never meant to be argued with.

19/12/2025

When traumatic events happen in the world — like the tragic Bondi shootings — it’s common for OCD symptoms to flare.

Not because you’re failing treatment.
Not because you’re “going backwards”.

Because OCD is highly sensitive to threat, uncertainty, and moral danger. When the world feels unsafe or unpredictable, OCD often tries to regain control by turning the volume up on intrusive thoughts, hyper-responsibility, checking, reassurance-seeking, or mental reviewing.

For people with harm OCD, responsibility OCD, or trauma-linked OCD, these events can feel intensely personal.

The work here isn’t to make the anxiety disappear, consume more news, or prove you’re a good person.

Sometimes the most therapeutic response is noticing what OCD is doing, and choosing not to respond to it by using the exposure therapy tools you have to help you resist.

If your OCD feels louder right now, that doesn’t mean you’re weak.
It means you’re human, responding to a confronting and oftentimes messed up world. And this is often where the real work begins.

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.

Dr Celin Gelgec

08/03/2026

04/03/2026

27/02/2026

26/02/2026

28/01/2026

24/01/2026

13/01/2026

21/12/2025

19/12/2025

11/12/2025

08/12/2025

03/12/2025

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