Virtual Therapy Services Available Throughout Texas, Michigan, and Florida
Are intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors interfering with your daily life? At Live Mindfully Psychotherapy, I offer specialized, evidence-based treatment for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) to help clients in Houston and throughout Texas break free from the exhausting cycle of obsessions and compulsions—and reclaim a greater sense of peace, clarity, and control.
Understanding OCD and Related Disorders
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) involves unwanted, intrusive thoughts (called obsessions) that create intense anxiety or distress, along with repetitive behaviors or mental rituals (known as compulsions) performed in an attempt to feel relief. OCD obsessions and compulsions form into a complex and exhausting cycle that can feel overwhelming and difficult to break without the right support.
The Impact of OCD on Your Life
Living with OCD means navigating challenges that can feel invisible to others—but all-consuming to you. The condition often shows up in ways that deeply impact your day-to-day life:
Time-consuming rituals that turn simple tasks into drawn-out routines, making daily life feel frustrating and unmanageable
Intrusive thoughts that feel disturbing, unwanted, or completely at odds with your values—leading to confusion, guilt, or fear
Rising anxiety even as you try your hardest to stay in control, leaving you feeling trapped in a cycle that never truly resolves
Strain on relationships as loved ones struggle to understand your experiences, or unintentionally reinforce compulsions
Emotional and physical exhaustion from constant mental checking, avoidance, and the pressure to “get it right”
For many people, OCD symptoms intensify during periods of stress, significantly affecting work, school, and personal relationships. But you’re not alone and you don’t have to struggle with your OCD forever. With specialized, evidence-based treatment, you can learn effective strategies for responding to OCD thoughts in a new way—so they no longer dominate your time, energy, or peace of mind. Healing doesn’t mean you have to eliminate every intrusive thought; it means you gain the freedom to live your life according to your own wishes and values, rather than at the whims of your OCD.
Our Evidence-Based Treatment Approaches for OCD
At Live Mindfully Psychotherapy, I use evidence-based methods to help you effectively manage and reduce symptoms of OCD and other anxiety disorders. Each treatment plan is thoughtfully tailored to your specific symptoms, goals, and lived experience.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
ERP is considered the gold standard for treating Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, with decades of research supporting its effectiveness. This structured, behavioral approach helps you retrain your brain’s response to fear and uncertainty by gradually changing how you relate to obsessions and compulsions. ERP includes:
Exposure: Gradually confronting the thoughts, situations, or objects that trigger anxiety or intrusive thoughts
Response Prevention: Resisting the urge to engage in compulsions or rituals that temporarily reduce distress
Habituation: Learning firsthand that anxiety naturally decreases over time—even without doing anything to make it go away
Reduced Anxiety: By building emotional resilience and trust in your ability to handle discomfort and uncertainty
In our work together, we’ll create a personalized hierarchy of exposures, starting with easy challenges and moving step-by-step toward the areas that feel most difficult. This compassionate and strategic approach allows you to build confidence at a steady pace, without feeling overwhelmed.
Research consistently shows that 70–80% of individuals who receive ERP experience significant symptom reduction—even those who have lived with severe OCD for years. With the right support, lasting relief is possible.
Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT)
Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT) is an innovative, evidence-based treatment for OCD that targets the faulty reasoning patterns underlying obsessional doubt. Many individuals with OCD struggle to distinguish between what’s actually happening and what might happen—leading to a cycle of fear, uncertainty, and compulsive behaviors. ICBT helps break that cycle by focusing on how OCD-thinking starts in the first place.
Key components of ICBT include:
Identifying the Initial Doubt: Pinpointing the first intrusive thought or assumption that triggers the obsessive spiral
Understanding Reasoning Errors: Recognizing how OCD confuses imagination or possibility with reality
Bridging the Gap: Learning to trust your senses and real-world evidence instead of chasing mental certainty
Reality-Based Reasoning: Building the ability to make decisions based on what's likely—not just what's possible
ICBT is especially effective for OCD subtypes involving overvalued ideation—where intrusive thoughts feel especially believable or morally charged—and where traditional ERP can feel overwhelming or counterintuitive. I am specially trained in this approach, making Live Mindfully Psychotherapy one of the few practices in Texas to offer this targeted, research-supported treatment for OCD.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a powerful complement to ERP and ICBT in the treatment of OCD. Rather than trying to eliminate intrusive thoughts—which often only strengthens their grip—ACT helps you change how you relate to those thoughts, creating space between your mind’s chatter and your actions.
ACT focuses on building psychological flexibility—the ability to stay present, accept what’s outside your control, and take meaningful action anyway. With ACT, you’ll learn to:
Allow intrusive thoughts to come and go without trying to suppress, avoid, or neutralize them
Notice your thoughts without fusing with them, so they lose their power to dictate your behavior
Clarify your personal values, identifying what truly matters to you beyond OCD’s rules and demands
Commit to value-driven actions, even when anxiety or uncertainty shows up
This approach helps break the cycle of obsession and compulsion by freeing you from the exhausting battle for mental control. Instead of waiting for the anxiety to disappear, ACT teaches you how to live fully and meaningfully with it—reclaiming your time, energy, and sense of purpose along the way.
Common OCD Obsessions and Compulsions
Types of OCD Obsessions
Obsessions in OCD are unwanted, intrusive thoughts, images, or urges that feel deeply distressing and out of alignment with your values. These thoughts often appear suddenly and are hard to dismiss, creating intense anxiety or guilt. What makes them especially painful is that they often focus on the very things that matter most to you—your health, relationships, values, or sense of safety.
Common types of obsessions include:
Contamination Fears: Persistent worries about germs, illness, chemicals, or environmental toxins that can lead to excessive cleaning, avoidance, or health anxiety
Harm or Violence Intrusions: Unwanted thoughts or mental images of accidentally or intentionally hurting yourself or others—often accompanied by intense fear, shame, and compulsive checking
Sexual Obsessions: Disturbing and intrusive sexual thoughts or images that feel inappropriate, taboo, or completely out of character
Perfectionism and “Just Right” Obsessions: A need for exactness, symmetry, or a certain feeling of "rightness," often resulting in time-consuming rituals or repeated tasks
Relationship OCD (ROCD): Ongoing doubts or fears about your feelings toward your partner, the quality of your relationship, or whether you're with the “right” person
Religious or Moral Scrupulosity: Intense concerns about being sinful, immoral, or blasphemous, which can lead to excessive prayer, confession, or avoidance of spiritual practices
It’s important to know that having these thoughts does not mean you want them or agree with them. In fact, they often feel so disturbing because they’re the opposite of what you believe or value. With the right treatment, you can learn to relate to these thoughts differently—reducing their impact and reclaiming your peace of mind.
Common OCD Compulsions
Compulsions are repetitive behaviors or mental rituals that individuals with OCD feel driven to perform in order to reduce anxiety, neutralize intrusive thoughts, or prevent imagined harm. While compulsions may bring temporary relief, they ultimately reinforce the OCD cycle—making obsessions feel more powerful and distress more persistent. Compulsions can be outwardly visible or entirely internal, and they often become time-consuming, exhausting, and disruptive to daily life.
Common types of compulsions include:
Washing and Cleaning Rituals: Excessive handwashing, showering, or sanitizing objects out of fear of contamination, illness, or spreading germs
Checking Behaviors: Repeatedly verifying that doors are locked, appliances are turned off, or that no harm has been done—often rooted in fears of responsibility or danger
Mental Compulsions: Silent rituals like counting, repeating words or prayers, analyzing past events, or mentally "canceling" a thought—done in hopes of preventing a feared outcome
“Just Right” Compulsions: Performing specific movements or routines a set number of times, or starting over until something feels "just right"
Perfectionistic Compulsions: Arranging, aligning, or adjusting objects until they meet a certain internal standard of balance, symmetry, or perfection
Reassurance Seeking: Frequently asking others to confirm safety, morality, or decision-making—seeking temporary certainty to soothe doubt
Have you ever noticed that the more time you spend on compulsions, the more anxious and stressed you feel? Although compulsions may seem like a way to regain control, they actually tighten OCD’s grip by keeping you locked in cycles of fear and avoidance. With OCD therapy, it’s possible to break these patterns and learn new ways to respond—freeing up your time, energy, and mental space for the things that truly matter.
Our Specialized OCD Treatment Process
Treating OCD requires more than a one-size-fits-all approach. I combine structure with flexibility to meet your unique needs, tailoring each step of the process to support meaningful, lasting change.
1. Comprehensive Assessment
We begin with a thorough assessment to gain a clear picture of your experience, including:
Your specific OCD symptoms, subtypes, and severity
The impact of OCD on your daily life, relationships, and work
Any co-occurring conditions, such as anxiety, depression, or trauma
Your past treatment experiences—what’s helped, and what hasn’t
Your personal values, goals, and hopes for therapy
2. Personalized Treatment Planning
Using the insights from your assessment, I develop a customized treatment plan that:
Identifies the most effective evidence-based approaches for your unique OCD presentation
Establishes clear, measurable goals that we track together
Incorporates any co-occurring issues that may impact treatment
Outlines a flexible but focused path forward, including timeline and structure
3. Skill Building and Psychoeducation
Understanding OCD is a key part of gaining freedom from it. You’ll learn:
Why intrusive thoughts happen and how OCD tricks the brain into overreacting
How efforts to “control” thoughts often backfire and worsen symptoms
How to build practical skills for responding differently to anxiety and uncertainty
Strategies for breaking the obsessive-compulsive cycle without relying on reassurance or avoidance
4. Active Treatment Phase
Here, we dive into the core work using targeted interventions that may include:
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP): Gradual, supported exposure to fears while resisting compulsions
Inference-Based CBT (ICBT): Addressing the reasoning errors that fuel obsessional doubt
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): Building psychological flexibility and values-driven living
5. Relapse Prevention and Maintenance
As symptoms improve, we focus on building long-term resilience. This phase includes:
Creating personalized strategies to handle future stressors or symptom flare-ups
Reinforcing the tools you've developed to maintain progress
Gradually tapering session frequency to support continued independence and growth
Throughout the process, I’ll meet you with compassion, transparency, and clinical expertise—offering both structure and flexibility as we work together to help you reclaim your life from OCD.
Intensive OCD Treatment Options
For clients needing faster relief from disruptive OCD symptoms, I offer specialized intensive outpatient sessions designed to accelerate progress. These focused treatment experiences allow us to target your most challenging symptoms in a shorter timeframe than traditional weekly therapy.
The OCD Intensive Program includes:
- Deep, concentrated work using Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
- Rapid skill-building to strengthen resilience and reduce compulsions
- Personalized treatment planning tailored to your specific needs and goals
- Comprehensive support through the most demanding stages of recovery
This approach is especially helpful for individuals who need rapid relief before a big life change (like going to college, getting married, or having a baby), whose symptoms are interfering with daily functioning, or who haven’t found success through standard therapy alone. Intensives provide the structure, momentum, and clinical depth needed to break through stuck points and reclaim your life.
OCD and Co-occurring Conditions
Many of my clients come to therapy with more than just OCD. It’s common for OCD to overlap with other mental health concerns, and I specialize in treating these co-occurring conditions with an integrated, compassionate approach.
Anxiety Disorders
OCD and anxiety disorders often go hand in hand. Whether you're experiencing generalized anxiety, social anxiety, or panic attacks, I tailor treatment to address the unique patterns of both OCD and anxiety—helping you manage uncertainty, reduce avoidance, and build emotional resilience.
Depression
Living with OCD can be emotionally exhausting, and it’s not uncommon for depression to develop alongside it. I provide a comprehensive approach that treats both conditions together, helping you regain energy, motivation, and a sense of hope while reducing the intensity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms.
Trauma
For some, past trauma or adverse life experiences can exacerbate OCD symptoms. I use a trauma-informed lens to help you safely explore these connections, allowing for deeper healing while still addressing the day-to-day challenges of OCD.
Eating Disorders
OCD and eating disorders often share common traits like perfectionism, rigid thinking, and compulsive behaviors. With specialized training in both areas, I offer integrated care that addresses the roots of both conditions—supporting recovery from disordered eating and obsessive patterns alike.
No matter what you're facing, my goal is to treat the whole person—not just the diagnosis—so you can move forward with clarity, confidence, and lasting change.
Virtual OCD Therapy Across Texas
While my practice is based near Houston, I provide virtual therapy services to clients throughout Texas, including Austin, Dallas, and beyond. My secure telehealth platform allows you to connect with me from the comfort of your home.
Virtual therapy for OCD offers several advantages:
- No commute time means more energy for your recovery work
- Greater flexibility in scheduling
- The opportunity to practice exposure exercises in your actual living environment
- Immediate access to specialized care regardless of your location
Specialized OCD Therapy for Women
At Live Mindfully Psychotherapy, I offer specialized therapy for women experiencing OCD. I understand how OCD can present differently in women, including:
- Heightened concerns around responsibility for others' wellbeing
- OCD symptoms that fluctuate with hormonal changes
- The impact of societal expectations on obsessional content
- The intersection of perfectionism, anxiety, and OCD
In addition to individual therapy for women with OCD, I also offer specialized therapy groups folr women. My virtual therapy groups create a space for connection, validation, and shared understanding. These groups bring together women who are navigating similar struggles, whether it's anxiety, OCD, perfectionism, or the pressure to hold everything together. Group sessions provide a unique opportunity to give and receive support, learn from diverse perspectives, and feel less alone in your journey toward growth and self-compassion.
Take the First Step Toward Freedom From OCD
Living with untreated Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can feel like being trapped in an exhausting cycle of intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors. With specialized help, you can learn to respond differently to these thoughts and reclaim your life.
At Live Mindfully Psychotherapy, I am dedicated to providing evidence-based treatment and compassionate support to help you overcome OCD. Through my virtual therapy services, specialized expertise is accessible no matter where you're located in Texas, Michigan, or Florida.
Contact me today for a free consultation to learn more about how my Houston OCD program can help you find relief from intrusive thoughts and build a more flexible, values-driven life.
OCD Therapy FAQ
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OCD is an anxiety disorder with two features: obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are the intrusive thoughts, images, or urges that pop into your mind and won’t go away, making you feel anxious. Compulsions, or rituals, are the behaviors you engage in to try and eliminate anxious feelings or prevent a negative consequence from occurring.
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There is only one proven and effective treatment for OCD and it is exposure with response prevention or ERP. ERP is a process by which you take small steps toward confronting your anxious thoughts without engaging in compulsive behaviors. Your therapist will teach you how to process your anxiety without using compulsions, and over time, this treatment creates new neural pathways in your mind that reduce the frequency and intensity of your OCD symptoms.
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Research shows that approximately 70-80% of people who engage in proper evidence-based treatment for OCD experience significant symptom reduction. Factors that influence treatment outcomes include the severity and duration of symptoms, consistent practice of skills between sessions, and willingness to experience temporary discomfort for long-term relief.
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Your first appointment costs $225, and follow-up appointments cost $175. Check out our main FAQ page to learn more about why we are out-of-network providers.
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You can message us here to arrange a free consultation. This consult takes 15 minutes and is done over the phone with our client coordinator who can answer any questions you have about working with us. After your questions are answered, we can find a session time that works well with your schedule and get you started on the road to your recovery.
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Treatment length varies depending on symptom severity, treatment consistency, and individual factors. Many clients see meaningful improvement within 12-20 sessions, though some may need longer-term support. My intensive treatment options can accelerate progress for those seeking relief in a shorter period.