Checking OCD: How to Stop Double-Checking Everything

Checking OCD is one of the most common forms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, characterized by checking-based compulsive behaviors. Checking is also a symptom of various other OCD subtypes.

The first-line treatment is exposure and response prevention (ERP), which teaches you to face the doubt without giving in to the urge to check.

A person with checking OCD will go back to check repeatedly to ensure everything is as it should be. And even still, they may still not genuinely be convinced it is okay.

Checking OCD
Compulsive checking arises when people feel a special responsibility for preventing harm, mainly to others, and are unsure a threat has gone. They check repeatedly. How long and how hard they check depends on their sense of responsibility, the probability of harm, and its anticipated seriousness (Rachman, 2002).

Individuals who suffer from Checking OCD often fear that they will somehow cause harm to themselves or others, whether intentionally or not. 

Like most forms of OCD, Checking OCD can manifest in several ways. It looks different for everyone. OCD-related checking is typically driven by a need to be certain that nothing bad will happen. 

It is associated with excessive anxiety, feelings of guilt, elevated vigilance, perfectionist tendencies, resistance to change, and an inflated sense of responsibility (Radomsky et al., 2010, 2022).

Two triggers for checking compulsions to occur:

  1. People feel like it’s their job to make sure nothing bad happens.
  2. They’re not sure if they did enough to stop something bad from happening.

How long and how strong the checking is will depend on three things:

  1. If they feel even more responsible for preventing harm.
  2. If they think there’s a bigger chance of something bad happening.
  3. If they think something really bad will happen if they don’t check.

Checking Obsessions

Obsessions often take the form of repetitive, persistent ideas, unwanted or intrusive thoughts, images, or bodily impulses that are experienced as distressing.

The obsessive thought creates a sense of anxiety and fear.  In theory, checking OCD can involve obsessions about anything.

For example, someone who fears leaving the door unlocked may worry that someone will break in and steal their possessions or cause harm. They would be responsible for not having checked the lock initially.

According to Jon Hershfield, MFT, director of The Center for OCD and Anxiety:

“People describe for me that they are sort of reading this spam junk mail that’s coming into their feed marked as urgent and they don’t know, are they supposed to ignore it, or are they supposed to open it and reply to it, which then teaches the algorithm to send you more of that stuff.”

When people pay excessive attention to their intrusive and obsessive thoughts, they may find it more difficult to get rid of them.

Some of the more common obsessions include: 

  • Fear of causing a fire by leaving the stove or oven or any other electrical appliance on.
  • Fear of hurting someone or being hurt.
  • Fear of your child being harmed under your care (i.e., not childproofing the outlets properly).
  • Fear of losing items such as your phone, wallet, or keys.
  • Fear of leaving the door unlocked or the garage open.
  • Fear of contamination and causing illness.

Generally, people attempt to resist thinking of the obsession and get rid of the thoughts. But as people resist, the intrusion persists.

Checking Compulsions

Compulsions are repeated patterns of ritualistic behaviors, used to reduce anxiety and prevent an outcome, following a strong obsessive urge to do so.

Individuals suffering from Checking OCD will use checking compulsions to counter their fear-based obsessions. They believe that the best way to prevent something bad from happening is to use a compulsive checking ritual.

Checking serves to reduce doubt, prevent misfortune, and protect oneself or others from harm.

These rituals are repetitive and time-consuming. They relieve anxiety only temporarily. Compulsively double-checking things can make you feel like a prisoner trapped by your intrusive thoughts.

checking ocd

Some common Checking OCD compulsions include:

  • Checking that the stove, oven, and any other electrical appliances are turned off.
  • Checking that the garage is closed and all doors are locked.
  • Checking that car doors are locked.
  • Checking that candles are blown out.
  • Checking that the sink and other water faucets are turned off.
  • Getting out of their car to ensure they did not hit someone after going over a bump.
  • Checking newspapers or watching the news to make sure nothing terrible has happened that they might be responsible for. 
  • Checking that their children are safe or that their baby is still breathing.
  • Checking to make sure their personal items are in the proper place.
  • Taking photos for lasting “proof.”
  • Seeking reassurance, such as asking other people questions such as “You saw me lock the door, right?” 
  • Avoiding responsibilities, such as getting someone else to be the last to leave the house (sometimes avoidance is subtle, such as not listening to music while driving for fear of being too distracted to recognize that one has hit a pedestrian).
  • Spending hours going over conversations in your head to be certain you did not say anything hurtful or inappropriate.
  • Calling loved ones repeatedly to make sure they are safe.

Reassurance seeking deserves a closer look. Asking someone to confirm the door is locked feels helpful, but it keeps the cycle going.

In one study, 153 people with OCD, 50 with panic disorder, and 52 healthy controls rated how they felt after seeking reassurance. Both anxious groups reported short-term relief. Then the discomfort and the urge to ask again returned (Salkovskis & Kobori, 2015).

Healthy controls showed no significant resurgence. The data are self-reported recollections of real episodes, so prospective studies are still needed.

The Checking OCD Cycle

Having unwanted thoughts, images, or urges (bodily sensations) of doing or saying something that will harm yourself or others is a very normal part of how our brains work. 

People with and without OCD have these thoughts. It is not the thoughts themselves that are the problem. It is the meaning people with OCD attribute to them. 

ocd anxiety

These obsessive concerns cause anxiety and fears, which trigger people with OCD to perform checking compulsions to gain certainty that something terrible has not or will not happen.

By immediately reducing fear, checking prevents the natural process of anxiety from gradually fading on its own over time. The person never learns to tolerate uncertainty.

Because anxiety is only relieved in the short term, the vicious, obsessive cycle of OCD will continue with the next intrusive thought.

Put simply, an event or thought triggers an intrusive thought. That thought brings anxiety. The person responds with a compulsion. That creates temporary relief. 

When the anxiety is reduced in this way, the compulsion will be reinforced and grow stronger.

Checking robs the person of the chance to learn their fears are unlikely to come true even without rituals. No one can predict the future with 100% certainty, but we have to live with some acceptable level of uncertainty.

Repeated checking actually makes people trust their memory less. So, it creates even more doubt and uncertainty, further fueling the cycle.

So, the next time an intrusive thought arises, you are even more inclined to perform a compulsion (in this case, you are more inclined to keep checking).

One leading expert frames this as over-conscientiousness. Professor Paul Salkovskis, a clinical psychologist at the University of Oxford, originated the inflated-responsibility theory of OCD. As he explains, people with OCD are in effect “too careful, too nice, and trying too hard.”

The intrusive thoughts themselves are normal. The problem is an exaggerated sense of responsibility, which turns an ordinary thought into a warning that demands action (Salkovskis, 2022).

Why Repeated Checking Backfires

Checking is meant to bring certainty. Often it does the opposite. Three lines of research show why.

Memory Confidence

A review of 24 experiments on compulsive checking found six factors that undermine memory confidence (Abbasi Jondani & Yazdkhasti, 2025). Memory confidence is the belief that you can trust your recollection of having done something. The six factors are:

  • Negative beliefs about your own memory
  • An unrealistically high standard for what counts as remembering an action properly
  • An inflated sense of responsibility
  • Familiarity with the object being checked
  • The number of times you have already checked
  • The anxious emotional charge of the object itself

The number of earlier checks is itself on the list. That creates a second loop beside the anxiety cycle.

The more you check, the less you trust your memory. The less you trust your memory, the more you feel you must check again. The review is a narrative synthesis, so it cannot say which factor matters most.

Distrust of the Senses

A meta-analysis of 22 studies compared 663 people with OCD with 614 healthy controls. Every task involved uncertainty and measured how much participants checked.

People with OCD checked more on perceptual tasks, where they had to rely on what they saw or heard. They did not check more on reasoning tasks (Strauss et al., 2020). The pattern supports models in which checking stems from distrust of the senses.

Responsibility and Harm

Radomsky et al. (2022) tested Rachman’s (2002) cognitive model directly.

People with OCD who check compulsively and undergraduate controls were assigned to a high or low responsibility condition. They then checked stove burners, which represent a high seriousness of harm, and light bulbs, which represent a low one.

Some objects worked and some did not. This varied the probability of harm.

In general, having OCD, facing a more serious or more likely harm, and, to a lesser degree, feeling more responsible all led to longer checking times. The results broadly fit the model.

For Example

A woman is constantly late for work due to her obsessive checking. Even though she woke up early and was ready to leave in time, she was stuck at her house, bombarded with intrusive thoughts. 

Did I remember to turn off the stove? Did I unplug the toaster? Are all of the doors locked? What if a fire starts when I am not home? 

She worries that her carelessness could result in tragedy. She gets stuck in a downward spiral of anxiety, doubt, and repetitive checking. 

After performing her compulsions by assuring everything is locked and turned off multiple times, she becomes even more entrenched in the cycle. 

Real-Life Examples

“I spent several months compulsively checking my social media profiles and even comment sections on Youtube, Instagram, etc., every morning after waking up and as much as possible during the day, in order to see if I hadn’t posted, commented or liked anything I didn’t mean to. Same goes to messaging apps.”

“I am always careful when I go out to check and make sure I have my purse. One day I left my purse in a restaurant, and I never got it back. There was not much money in it, but it was so difficult replacing all the cards and cancelling my credit cards.

So now I always check around and under the seat I have been sitting on and actually make a habit of touching my purse to be certain I have it with me.”

Effects of Checking OCD

Checking OCD can affect many parts of life. The main effects include:

  • Stronger cycle: The more a person engages in the obsession-compulsion cycle, the stronger the OCD can become. They also come to distrust their own memory.
  • Other conditions: The pressure and exhaustion of this cycle can lead to anxiety and depression.
  • Daily life: It can feel impossible to focus at work, school, or with loved ones when your mind is constantly preoccupied with obsessive thoughts. Holding a job, driving, keeping a relationship, or leaving the house can become hard.
  • Suicide and self-harm: Suicidal thoughts, attempts, and self-harm behaviors have also been observed in people with OCD.
  • Time lost: In extreme cases, checking can fill several hours a day to relieve overwhelming anxiety. Someone may be unable to leave the house for over an hour because they keep checking the stove.

How To Stop Repeatedly Checking Everything

Checking OCD should not be solely self-managed, and working with a mental health professional is critical. But, in tandem with this, there are some daily self-help steps you can take to ease the impact. 

1. Do not identify with OCD

You are not the disorder, and your OCD does not define you. Yes, it is something you are dealing with. But you are not a defective human because of it. 

The intrusive thoughts you experience are not necessarily a reflection of who you are and do not say anything about you as a person. Try to remember that intrusive thoughts are common and do not always align with your core values, beliefs, and morals.

Learn to appreciate yourself for who and how you are and practice leaning in, embracing, and accepting your unwanted thoughts, feelings, and sensations. 

“Learning to stop ruminating is a really good first step. You also have to change your relationship with anxiety, if you are trying just to seek relief from anxiety at all costs via any means necessary it won’t work.

You have to be willing to feel the entirety of your anxiety and continue on with your life regardless.”

Tip 1: Identify and Challenge Maladaptive Thoughts

  • Keep a thought log to identify situations that trigger obsessive thoughts and your negative automatic thoughts about them.
  • Examine the evidence for and against the fearful thoughts. Ask yourself, “What is the likelihood this catastrophic outcome would actually happen?”
  • Try to come up with more balanced thoughts. For example, “Just because I feel something bad will happen doesn’t mean it actually will.”

Tip 2: Reduce Avoidance

  • Don’t avoid triggering situations, as this prevents learning that feared consequences likely won’t happen.
  • Make a list of situations you tend to avoid due to OCD fears. Rank them from least to most anxiety-provoking.
  • Gradually confront the least anxiety-provoking items on your list, working your way up. Avoid compulsions during and after.
  • Remind yourself that avoidance prevents learning the feared outcome, which likely won’t happen. Tolerating uncertainty gets easier.

Tip 3: Practice Mindfulness

  • Stay focused on the present moment to avoid getting caught up in obsessive thoughts. Notice them non-judgmentally.
  • Imagine the thoughts floating away like clouds. Don’t judge yourself for having them.
  • Bring your attention fully to your current activity whenever obsessions creep in.

Tip 4: Call An Obsession By Its Name

When your OCD voice tries to convince you that you forgot to do something, identify it as an obsessive thought. Tell yourself that this is not the truth and just my OCD talking.

2. Why Compulsions Make Your Intrusive Thoughts Worse

People perform compulsions to suppress their anxiety and neutralize their fears. They also use them to keep things safe, to make sure the thoughts do not come true, and to stop something bad from happening.

However, while compulsions might “help” in the short term, they only make the intrusive thoughts worse. They keep the OCD cycle going long-term.

Every time one engages in a compulsion related to the obsession, the thoughts will only become stronger in a powerful and debilitating loop.

Compulsions will never make the intrusive thoughts go away. They only reduce your anxiety and give you a short-term reprieve from your thoughts.

If your brain has a pattern of carrying out a compulsion each time you get an intrusive thought, you will never learn to recover.

“If I was feeling the need to do something based on an intrusive thought, I just wouldn’t do it and I’d survive, reinforcing that I had survived and nothing had changed. It’s to the point for me where I still have stupid intrusive thoughts, but I don’t act on them unless I’m super stressed.

My life quality has increased tremendously from resisting urges based on thoughts. At this point sometimes I can go for weeks without engaging in a compulsion. I feel like I’m fine now. I just struggle with thoughts at times but it doesn’t run my life anymore like it used to.”

Tip 5: Resist Urges to Check or Reassure

When you feel an urge to check, sit with the anxiety and let it pass without giving in.

It’s understandable that you want a guarantee to ease your obsessional doubts. But constantly seeking reassurance, even after you’ve been given an answer, will only reinforce your OCD cycle. It makes it harder to break free.

The most effective way to overcome these doubts is to practice tolerating the discomfort and uncertainty they bring. It’s not easy. Each time you resist the urge to seek reassurance and sit with the distress, you teach your brain that you can handle it.

These steps can help:

  • Ask for no reassurance: Tell friends and family not to provide reassurance when you seek it compulsively. Explain that this enables your OCD.
  • Stay occupied: Engage in an activity that requires focus and concentration, so you can’t give in to the urge.
  • Accept uncertainty: Uncertainty is part of life, and you can cope with not knowing whether family or friends are safe. Avoid trying to feel 100% sure.

Tip 6: Alter How You Check

Cut back gradually. Reduce the number of times, or the time, you spend checking. When you have an obsessive thought, do not give in immediately. Take a minute. Sit with it and let the obsession lose its power.

Tip 7: Engage in Distractions

When you have the urge to check or obsess, shift your focus to another activity to take your mind off it.

3. Do Exposure Exercises

Follow these steps:

  1. Build a hierarchy: Make a hierarchy of triggering obsessional thoughts, objects, and situations.
  2. Rate each item: Rate how distressing each one is from 0-100.
  3. Start at 50: Start by exposing yourself to items ranked around 50.
  4. Work upward: Work your way up over multiple sessions for at least 30-60 minutes.

Remind yourself habituation takes time. Urges and anxiety will eventually decrease on their own if you don’t perform compulsions.

Keep records of what happens after you manage to sit with your intrusive thoughts and resist the urge to engage in compulsions. Use these records as a way to build confidence in your own memory and to reduce the amount of checking you do. 

Treatment

There is evidence that OCD can be well managed by treatment intervention, enhancing an individual’s quality of life significantly.

Like with most types of OCD, the best course of treatment for Checking OCD is Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) therapy.

ERP is a form of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). It is considered the gold-standard psychotherapy for OCD. 

A meta-analysis of 37 randomized trials found very large benefits compared with waiting-list and placebo control groups (Öst et al., 2015).

The picture is more nuanced against stronger comparisons. A later meta-analysis of 36 trials found a large overall effect (g = 0.74).

However, ERP showed little advantage over other active therapies and only a marginal one over adequately dosed medication (Reid et al., 2021). In the eight trials run by researchers with no allegiance to ERP, the effect was not significant.

ERP remains the first-line psychological treatment. The finding shows why trial quality matters.

In ERP for Checking OCD, patients are deliberately exposed to the intrusive thoughts or feared situations that set off the urge to check. They then practice not performing the compulsion. Anxiety rises at first, then falls without the ritual.

Over time, patients learn to resist the urge to perform compulsive rituals and to manage their OCD thoughts and actions.

They stay in the feared situation, and nothing terrible happens. 

For example, a patient may fear leaving the stove on and burning their house down. The goal of ERP would be to let them leave home without re-checking the stove multiple times. 

In an ERP session, the steps might look like this:

  1. The patient starts by imagining that they left the stove on.
  2. They may even be asked to picture something terrible happening, such as their house catching fire.
  3. The person is then instructed to refrain from checking the stove before leaving home.
  4. They eventually learn that, despite their thoughts, the feared outcome won’t occur and the anxiety will subside on its own.

Brain-imaging studies suggest that successful therapy changes the brain, too. The orbitofrontal cortex flags when something is wrong. The caudate nucleus normally helps suppress intrusive impulses. In OCD, both areas tend to be overactive, and that overactivity normalizes after successful treatment.

Patients sit with the feared thought and lean into the discomfort and uncertainty. They learn that they don’t need compulsions to cope. Their fearful thoughts have no power over them.

Here is an example of a fear hierarchy for Checking OCD

The fear hierarchy is a collaborative effort between the individual and their therapist. The goal is gradual exposure. The person faces feared situations or stimuli while preventing compulsive behaviors or mental acts.

The list is arranged in a hierarchical order, starting with the least anxiety-provoking situation or stimuli (0% anxiety) and gradually progressing to the most anxiety-provoking (100% anxiety).

This exposure helps the individual to learn that they can tolerate the anxiety without resorting to compulsions or mental acts, and that the anxiety will eventually decrease on its own.

  1. Leave the house without checking the front door lock and walking a certain number of steps away from the house before going back to check. (15%)
  2. Leave the house without checking the front door lock and go for a walk around the block before going back to check. (30%)
  3. Leave the house without checking the front door lock and go to another room before going back to check. (45%)
  4. Leave the house without checking the front door lock and spend an hour doing something else before going back to check. (60%)
  5. Leave the house without checking the front door lock and go out for a few hours before going back to check. (75%)
  6. Leave the house without checking the front door lock and stay overnight away from home without checking. (90%)
  7. Leave the house without checking the front door lock and stay away from home for a weekend without checking. (100%)

ERP takes time, effort, and practice, but people learn to cope with their thoughts without relying on ritualistic behaviors.

The compulsion to avoid anxiety is a powerful driver of OCD. Still, ERP is one of the most powerful tools available for treating OCD because it directs the patient to live with the anxiety and see that nothing bad will happen.

Cognitive Therapy and Medication for OCD

Cognitive therapy tests the beliefs that drive checking, such as an inflated sense of responsibility. Clinical guidelines recommend combining it with ERP.

In a randomized trial of 127 adults with OCD, ERP plus cognitive therapy reduced symptoms more than ERP alone. The advantage lasted to a six-month follow-up and appeared across symptom types, including checking (Rector et al., 2019).

The trial ran at a single community clinic, so it needs replication.

Medication is the other main option. Key points include:

  • First-line drugs: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) raise serotonin levels and are the first-line medication. The older drug clomipramine works about as well but has more side effects.
  • Dose and response: OCD usually needs higher doses and longer trials than depression. Roughly 40-60% of people respond inadequately to an SSRI alone, and a low-dose antipsychotic is a common next step.
  • Relapse: Symptoms tend to return when the drug is stopped. ERP’s gains, being a learned skill, tend to last longer.

In a meta-analysis, CBT outperformed antidepressant medication. Adding medication to CBT gave no significant extra benefit over CBT plus placebo (Öst et al., 2015). Talk to a doctor before starting or stopping any medication.

How to Help Someone with OCD

Here are some tips for family members to help someone with checking OCD:

  • Educate yourself about OCD and checking behaviors specifically. The more you understand the condition, the better you can support your loved one.
  • Avoid participating in checking rituals or providing reassurance. This will only reinforce the OCD in the long run, even though it provides temporary relief.

    Set healthy boundaries around what checking behaviors you will and will not tolerate or participate in. Make these clear to your loved one.

    Remain calm and understanding if your loved one becomes distressed when you stop accommodating rituals. Explain you are trying to help long term.

    Know that stopping rituals may initially increase anxiety for your loved one, but this will diminish if they persist with ERP.
  • Encourage the person to get professional treatment with exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy and possibly medication. Do not force treatment, but let them know help is available.
  • Avoid making personal criticisms. Do not ridicule or belittle checking concerns, as irrational as they may seem. Recognize the obsessions are very real to your loved one.

    Demonstrate love and support in ways other than enabling rituals, like spending quality time together away from OCD topics.

Family responses matter too. Two meta-analyses found a moderate link between family accommodation, such as joining rituals or giving reassurance, and more severe OCD symptoms (Strauss et al., 2015; Wu et al., 2016).

Most of the studies measured both at one point in time, so they cannot show which causes which.

Criticism does not help either. A review of family functioning in childhood OCD describes responses ranging from accommodating to antagonistic. Antagonistic responses include blame and demands that symptoms stop. Both may reinforce symptoms (Murphy & Flessner, 2015).

A supportive stance that withdraws rituals gradually, with the person’s agreement, is the sensible aim.

Hotlines and Support

In the U.S.
Call the NAMI Helpline at 1-800-950-6264. Or Find a Therapist.

UK
Call Anxiety UK at 03444 775 774.

Canada
Find services at Anxiety Canada.

Australia
Call the SANE Help Centre at 1800 18 7263.

India
Call the Vandrevala Foundation at 1860 2662 345 or 1800 2333 330.

In other countries
Access a global database of OCD resources from the International OCD Foundation.

Key Takeaways

  • Checking OCD: Checking is the most common compulsion in OCD. It is driven by a need to be certain that nothing bad will happen.
  • The Cycle: An intrusive thought triggers anxiety. Checking brings brief relief, and that relief strengthens the next urge to check.
  • Memory Doubt: Repeated checking lowers confidence in your memory. That doubt fuels more checking.
  • Reassurance: Asking others to confirm things brings short-term relief. Then the anxiety and the urge to ask again return.
  • Treatment: ERP, a form of CBT, is the first-line therapy. You face the doubt and resist checking until the anxiety falls on its own.
  • Self-Help: Resist urges, reduce avoidance, and accept uncertainty. Professional support remains critical.

Sources

Abbasi Jondani, J., & Yazdkhasti, F. (2025). A narrative review of factors affecting memory confidence in the context of compulsive checking. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 64(2), 297–314. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjc.12501

Cougle, J. R., Lee, H. J., & Salkovskis, P. M. (2007). Are responsibility beliefs inflated in non-checking OCD patients? Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21(1), 153–159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.03.012

Hershfield, J., & Corboy, T. (2020). The mindfulness workbook for OCD: A guide to overcoming obsessions and compulsions using mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy. New Harbinger Publications.

Murphy, Y. E., & Flessner, C. A. (2015). Family functioning in paediatric obsessive compulsive and related disorders. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 54(4), 414–434. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjc.12088

Öst, L.-G., Havnen, A., Hansen, B., & Kvale, G. (2015). Cognitive behavioral treatments of obsessive–compulsive disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies published 1993–2014. Clinical Psychology Review, 40, 156–169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2015.06.003

Rachman, S. (2002). A cognitive theory of compulsive checking. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40(6), 625–639. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(01)00028-6

Radomsky, A. S., Alcolado, G. M., Dugas, M. J., & Lavoie, S. L. (2022). Responsibility, probability, and severity of harm: An experimental investigation of cognitive factors associated with checking-related OCD. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 150, Article 104034. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2022.104034

Radomsky, A. S., Shafran, R., Coughtrey, A. E., & Rachman, S. (2010). Cognitive-behavior therapy for compulsive checking in OCD. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 17(2), 119–131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2009.10.002

Rector, N. A., Richter, M. A., Katz, D., & Leybman, M. (2019). Does the addition of cognitive therapy to exposure and response prevention for obsessive compulsive disorder enhance clinical efficacy? A randomized controlled trial in a community setting. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjc.12188

Reid, J. E., Laws, K. R., Drummond, L., Vismara, M., Grancini, B., Mpavaenda, D., & Fineberg, N. A. (2021). Cognitive behavioural therapy with exposure and response prevention in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 106, Article 152223. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2021.152223

Salkovskis, P. (2022, February 18). Obsessive compulsive disorder — too careful, too nice, and trying too hard [Webinar]. University of Oxford Podcasts. https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-too-careful-too-nice-and-trying-too-hard

Salkovskis, P. M., & Kobori, O. (2015). Reassuringly calm? Self-reported patterns of responses to reassurance seeking in obsessive compulsive disorder. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 49, 203–208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2015.09.002

Strauss, A. Y., Fradkin, I., McNally, R. J., Linkovski, O., Anholt, G. E., & Huppert, J. D. (2020). Why check? A meta-analysis of checking in obsessive-compulsive disorder: Threat vs. distrust of senses. Clinical Psychology Review, 75, Article 101807. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2019.101807

Strauss, C., Hale, L., & Stobie, B. (2015). A meta-analytic review of the relationship between family accommodation and OCD symptom severity. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 33, 95–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2015.05.006

Wu, M. S., McGuire, J. F., Martino, C., Phares, V., Selles, R. R., & Storch, E. A. (2016). A meta-analysis of family accommodation and OCD symptom severity. Clinical Psychology Review, 45, 34–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2016.03.003

Dr. Florence Yeung

DClinPsy

Clinical Psychologist

Dr. Florence Yeung is a qualified Clinical Psychologist who completed her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (DClinPsy) at the University of Hertfordshire in 2025. Prior to her doctorate she worked as a Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner in NHS primary mental health care, and her clinical training spanned adult community mental health, CAMHS, cardiac rehabilitation, and psychiatric intensive care. She served as Clinical Editor at Simply Psychology between 2022 and 2023 and is now practising as a Clinical Psychologist in Hong Kong.


Saul McLeod, PhD

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol)

Saul McLeod, PhD, is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Julia Simkus

Psychology Researcher and Writer

BA (Hons) Psychology, Princeton University

Julia Simkus is a Princeton University graduate in Clinical Psychology (Magna Cum Laude) and holds a Master of Arts in Applied Psychology from New York University. During her studies she worked as a research assistant to Professor Nicole Avena at Princeton, co-authoring three published works on food addiction and substance use disorders in peer-reviewed journals and Oxford University Press. She wrote and edited over 70 articles for Simply Psychology between 2021 and 2024.