Jonathan Grayson
It is true that many who don’t understand OCD have some difficulty with the idea of treatment. Part of the answer is to check out my blog about normal people don’t know what they are doing. The standards of what they actually think and do are not the same as the standards they claim to have. The literature on violence/sex in the media as a cause of violence is a broad literature with pros, cons and qualifiers as to when this may or may not happen. There isn’t anything in that literature that alters our treatment. In reading my book, your statement that exposure will reduce anxiety is not the entire story. The primary goal of exposure in the treatment of OCD is to learn to live with uncertainty. Thus, you are accidentally undermining your treatment, because you want to be sure that you will not engage in any violent or improper sexual behavior. That is, you want to be reassured. Treatment and life are a risk. How do I know that I won’t slice and dice my wife tonight? I don’t have a plan to do so, but one doesn’t plan on going crazy. There is no way I can be sure she is safe. I could stay away from her, but then what is the point of human contact? Or I can do what everyone does without realizing it. I can go to bed, hope it won’t happen and if it does, I will be stuck coping with it. My life will be ruined, I will feel guilty, book sales will go down and even with this I will have to find a way to go on. No one has any other choice, but for most people, they are willing to take the risk. You are trying to avoid the risk and have correctly assumed that even treatment could make you worse. It isn’t where I would bet my money, but it is possible. The reason to do treatment is because of all the options you have to make life better this one is the best bet. No guarantees other than it is wiser to bet on the higher probabilities.