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

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

25/04/2026

We all learn variations of exposure therapy at uni, but when it comes to treating OCD there are certain nuances that land different. How do we do exposure therapy with intrusive thoughts? How do we do exposure therapy when habituation doesn’t always occur? How do we hold the clients distress through an extinction burst (if you’re unsure what that is check out one of my earlier posts on my grid). Holding that space is vital when it comes to treating OCD with exposure therapy. It’s through holding that space and co-regulating with our client where they learn that they can do hard things. This isn’t just managing feelings. It’s learning how to hold space for your clients so they can actually feel their feelings. Not by naming them, by feeling them. Save this for later as a reminder

24/04/2026

Who knew Victoria Beckham was also an exposure therapist. Watch through till the end to see exactly how! It’s not about making a mess. It’s that very specific “not quite right” feeling. Subtle, but persistent. And for a lot of people with OCD, that’s enough to pull them back in. Fix it, adjust it, even it out, just to get a moment of relief. So Posh Spice is on the money here, despite her hubby David Beckham getting annoyed. 😒

But that relief when he tried to “fix” it again is doing something. It’s teaching the brain that the feeling means something and that it needs to be resolved. So the threshold gets tighter. The urge gets stronger. And the cycle keeps going.

This is the part of ERP that gets missed. Not the theory, not the rationale, but the moment where you don’t correct it. Where you leave it slightly off and move on anyway. No explanation, no reassurance, no subtle “just fixing this one thing.” Just letting it sit there, unfinished.

That’s the work. And it’s uncomfortable in a very particular way. Not overwhelming, not dramatic. Just irritating enough that your mind keeps circling back, asking you to sort it out.

If you’re a clinician, this is also where things tend to soften. It’s easy to add one more sentence, one more bit of context, one small adjustment to help it land. It feels like you’re supporting the client. But often, that’s the exact point where the exposure loses its edge.

And if you’re the one feeling that pull to fix it, you don’t need to win against the feeling or make it disappear. With tools in place, you need to leave it there and carry on anyway.

23/04/2026

You’ve been sitting with that thought for three hours. Not spiralling just solving. That’s what it feels like, anyway. Like if you trace it back far enough, examine it from the right angle, turn it over one more time, you’ll finally land somewhere solid. Somewhere certain.
But you never do.

Rumination has the texture of effort. It feels like something a conscientious person does, someone who takes things seriously, who doesn’t let important things go unexamined. That’s exactly what makes it so hard to stop. Because stopping feels like giving up. Like allowing something unresolved to just sit there, unattended.

Here’s what’s actually happening though. Every time you go back into the thought, you’re sending your brain one message: this is worth checking, this is dangerous enough to review, we’re not done here. And the brain listens. It’s not about the content of what you’re thinking, but to the act of returning at all. The urge to review isn’t telling you something needs resolving. It’s the loop asking to be fed.

At some point, the work isn’t thinking it through more carefully. It’s noticing the pull and not following it. I know that’s easier said than done, and this is where practice comes in. With the tools in place, learning to interrupt this pattern gets easier and easier, giving you your time back, and mental clarity! Save this for the next time it starts.

20/04/2026

Because for the people I work with, there is nothing aesthetic about this. There is no YouTube series. There is no cute name for the thing that wakes them up at 3am because a thought arrived and now they cannot put it down. The thing that makes them replay that conversation seventeen times not because they want to but because their brain decides it is not done yet. The thing that makes them stand at the door for ten minutes because something just does not feel right and they cannot leave until it does.

That experience does not get a rebrand. It does not photograph well. It is not something they build a personality around — it is something they quietly manage around everything else in their life, while appearing completely fine on the outside.

So when this gets turned into an aesthetic, there is a gap. And if you have ever felt that gap between how this gets talked about and what it actually costs you, then you already know exactly what I mean. Share this with someone who gets it.

20/04/2026

Imagine that! Just living. Just deciding. Just moving. No checking whether the thought meant something. No going back over the conversation to see if you said something wrong. No sitting with a feeling for so long it starts to feel like fact. Just … next.

For some of us, being able to move on feels like a foreign language. The brain does the other thing. It catches the thought before it passes. It holds it up to the light. Turns it over. Checks it again. Checks it one more time just to be sure. And by the time it’s done, the moment is gone and you’re exhausted. That’s a pattern. And patterns can shift. Not into Gary Vee energy — let’s be realistic. But into something a little looser. A little less controlled by every thought that passes through. A little more flexible.

Save this for the next time your brain decides a passing thought needs a three-hour investigation.

17/04/2026

This isn’t as straightforward as calling it OCD. Let’s listen to what Khloe is actually saying. She enjoys organising, it makes her feel calm and happy, she sees her “OCD” as a pro, she questions why anyone would want her to stop. That matters, because OCD isn’t defined by liking things neat — it’s typically driven by distress, doubt, or a sense that something bad might happen if you don’t act.

Sometimes behaviours look similar on the surface but function very differently underneath. This can lean more towards being value-aligned, where it feels “right” rather than relieving discomfort. That distinction changes how we approach treatment.

Exposure can still be useful, but the goal shifts. It’s less about discomfort, and more about building flexibility, loosening rigid rules, and tolerating imperfection. This is where approaches that target overcontrol and high standards, like schema-informed work or DBT, can become relevant alongside ERP.

Of course, you can’t diagnose from a clip, but you can start to notice the patterns that matter. OCD often sounds like, “I have to do this or something bad might happen,” whereas other presentations like OCPD sound more like, “this is the right way to do things.”

If this resonates with you, follow for more. If you’re a clinician wanting to navigate these distinctions in practice, you can find training and supervision via the link in my bio.

16/04/2026

Have you ever done something perfectly and still felt like it wasn’t quite done? Finished a task. Said a good goodbye. Made a decision you know was right. And then sat with this strange, low-level sense
that something is still… off. Not wrong, exactly. Just not “right”.

Most people assume this is perfectionism. A personality trait. Just how they’re wired. But it’s not about standards. It’s about a mind that has learned to use the feeling of rightness as a safety signal. And when that signal doesn’t come, even when everything actually is fine, it sends you back.

To check. To redo. To adjust. To wait.

You’re not chasing perfection. You’re chasing a feeling that keeps moving. And the more you follow it, the less it settles. At some point, the work isn’t finding it. It’s noticing the urge to go back, and resisting that urge.

Save this one. Share it with someone who gets it.

15/04/2026

You function well.
By most measures, extremely well.

You show up.
You follow through.
You hold a lot together for a lot of people.

And still, underneath all of it, there is this hum.

Not depression.
Not quite anxiety.
Something harder to name.

A sense that you’re slightly out of step with your own life.
That you’re moving through it correctly, but not quite in it.
That everyone else seems to have made some kind of peace
you haven’t been offered yet.

You’ve wondered, more than once,
if something is just fundamentally different
about the way your mind works.

You’re right that something is different.

But different doesn’t mean broken.

It’s a mind that never got taught
how to let things be unresolved.
That learned, somewhere along the way,
that uncertainty was a problem to be solved
rather than an experience to be had.

And now it keeps trying to close loops
that were never meant to be closed.

Not everything that feels unfinished needs an answer.

Sometimes the shift is learning
how to stay in your life
without resolving it first.

Save this for later or send it to someone who this could resonate with.

14/04/2026

Why does it still feel like you’ve done something wrong? There’s something sitting in your chest that won’t quite leave. A low-grade sense that you missed something. That you should have handled it differently. Said something. Not said something. Done more. Not enough.

Not because anyone told you that you got it wrong. Just because the feeling is there. And for you, feelings have always felt like evidence.

This is one of the quieter ways a mind can make life very hard. Not through dramatic guilt. Not through obvious wrongdoing. Through a conscience so finely tuned it starts detecting things that aren’t actually there.

And the cruel part: the more you care about being a good person,
the louder it gets. The people who don’t worry about this stuff?They’re usually not the ones asking these questions.

So instead of trying to solve it… notice the urge to want to solve it. That pull to go back, check, replay, figure it out. And practise leaving it there. Unresolved. Uncomfortable. And still choosing how you want to show up.

If this hit somewhere specific — save it and come back to it.

31/03/2026

You’re not organised. You’re avoiding something.

The list gets rewritten because the uncertainty of not having it perfect feels unbearable. The plans get confirmed again because sitting with “I don’t know how it’ll go” is too uncomfortable. The inbox gets cleared, the house gets tidied, the research gets done. Not because any of it is urgent, but because there’s a feeling underneath that needed somewhere to go.

A lot of what we call strength is actually just a very sophisticated way of avoiding discomfort.

This is what avoidance looks like when it’s high-functioning. It doesn’t look like staying in bed. It looks like being on top of things. It gets mistaken for conscientiousness, diligence, capability.

But notice the pattern. The urge to do something arrives at the exact moment a difficult feeling does. The discomfort of not knowing. The low hum of a conversation that needs to happen. The anxiety of a decision with no clean answer. And instead of sitting with any of it — you organise.

The problem isn’t the organising. It’s that the feeling never gets to move through, because you never let it arrive.

Save this one.

27/03/2026

Nobody teaches you that uncertainty is survivable.

You learn to drive, manage money, read a room. Nobody sits you down and says: you will not always know how someone feels about you, and that is not a crisis.

So when the text takes longer than usual to come back, you’re already reading into it. When they seem quiet you run back through the last thing you said. You look for the moment you got it wrong. You ask if everything’s okay and they say yes and you almost believe them. You go to sleep replaying the tone of their voice.

And then you wake up and do it again.

I’ve spent years sitting with people inside that loop. What strikes me every time is how logical it is. Of course you’re scanning for signals. Of course you need to know. Nobody ever told you that not knowing was something you could just… leave alone. Uncertainty doesn’t require a resolution. It requires a different relationship.

20/03/2026

OCD isn’t just scary thoughts.

It’s the feeling that you have to solve them before you can move on.

“What if I hurt someone and didn’t realise?”
“What if I don’t really love my partner?”
“What if I touched something contaminated?”
“What if I made a mistake and forgot?”
“What if this thought means something about me?”

So you check.
You replay it in your head.
You ask for reassurance.
You Google.
You confess.
You try to feel 100% sure.

And for a moment it works…
until the doubt comes back with
“yeah, but what if you’re wrong?”

That’s the OCD cycle.

Recovery doesn’t happen when the thoughts go away. It happens when you stop treating every thought like it needs an answer. Save this for later for when you need the reminder.

Dr Celin Gelgec

25/04/2026

24/04/2026

23/04/2026

20/04/2026

20/04/2026

17/04/2026

16/04/2026

15/04/2026

14/04/2026

31/03/2026

27/03/2026

20/03/2026

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