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The Brain

With OCD, it feels like your brain is broken because you are getting anxiety when there is no actual danger. However, once you understand how the brain actually operates, it will become apparent why it is acting that way.

This page explains how the brain senses and reacts to threats. By learning how this process works, you will increase your understanding OCD.

The amygdala is the part of the brain responsible for sensing danger. As soon as it identifies a threat, it releases anxiety into the body. To understand why it triggers this anxiety when there is no actual danger, we first need to look at how the brain gathers information.

The brain sits in complete darkness inside the skull. It has no way of knowing what is happening in the outside world or in your own mind, except by the thoughts it receives from the mind.

When the brain receives these thoughts, it evaluates them and decides whether they signal danger. Although the brain can treat many kinds of thoughts as threatening, in OCD it is mainly triggered by two types:

The problem with the brain (amygdala) is that it doesn’t have the tools to analyse whether the situation/thought is real or not, and so assumes it is real. Below are three examples that prove this.

The first example is the watching of a horror movie. When you watch the film your brain releases fear chemicals at the scary parts, even though you know the things on the screen are not real.

The second example is to do with dreaming. When you are dreaming your brain thinks everything is real and reacts accordingly, even though it is not real.

The third example is a simple thought experiment. For 30 seconds, pretend you have a very juicy orange in your mouth. Keep thinking how the orange would taste as you pretend to eat it. Within 30 seconds (or less) your mouth will begin to salivate, even though there is no orange , it’s just a thought of an orange.

So, the reason why the brain (amygdala) is not broken is that it doesn’t have the tools to determine whether a situation/thought is real or not.

In addition, the brain (amygdala) releases the amount of anxiety it thinks is appropriate for the situation/thought. For less dangerous situations, it may release an anxiety that has an intensity of three out of ten. However, when the brain (amygdala) senses the situation/thought is very dangerous it may release an anxiety that has an intensity of eight out of ten

In these cases (when the amygdala senses high danger), it generates one of three responses; fight, flight or freeze.

For the fight or flight response, as the name suggests, you either attempt to fight or run away. So, in the case of the vicious dog running towards you, you can either fight it or run away. Whichever option you choose the brain releases various chemicals and other things in the body to help with this. For example, it will pump more blood to the arms and legs to enable you to punch harder, or to run away. As you would expect, the amygdala will also release a large amount of anxiety to warn you that you are in a very dangerous situation

For the freeze response, you are so terrified that you cannot move. You will just stand or sit where you are and you won’t really be aware of what is going on around you e.g. if someone asks you a question, you will ignore it, as your brain thinks you have more pressing matters to deal with. This is what a panic attack is, and when you have severe OCD, you may be getting panic attacks on a regular basis, perhaps daily

As it is the amygdala that generates the fight, flight or freeze response, you can get these responses when there is no actual danger. In particular, from made-up thoughts or thoughts that are exaggerated. For example, an OCD sufferer is in the bathroom washing their hands after going to the toilet and all of a sudden, they get a thought that if they don’t wash their hands ten times, their friend, who they are going to visit shortly, will catch a terrible disease and end up dying!

To summarise the above, in OCD, it could be argued that the brain (amygdala) is being tricked by the mind into thinking it is in danger!! So, the question then becomes why is the mind trying to trick the brain ? I will answer this question when we come to the pages on the mind, as we have to build up to it, for it to make sense

Before I finish this page, I just want mention one other thing that the brain (amygdala) does, which can affect OCD sufferers. This thing is called pattern matching. For example, if you are bitten by a certain type of dog, you will be scared by that type of dog. But you may also become scared by dogs in general, as to the brain at one level, one dog is the same as any other dog. When the brain takes pattern matching to an extreme, even a colour can cause someone to have a full-blown panic attack. This is because for example, if they were involved in a car crash where there was a lot of blood pouring out, and then in a few months’ time they see an object with the colour red in it (e.g. a door) the brain could link the red door to the car accident and generate a panic attack, even though the red door has nothing to do with the car accident

This pattern matching can also occur in relation to words. If a someone says ‘I will kill him when he gets home’, the word ‘kill’ could remind an OCD sufferer of a time when nearly got run over by a fast car, and then trigger anxiety about that past situation

The brain has an attitude of ‘better safe than sorry’, so if something has a tenuous link to danger it can generate anxiety, no matter how irrational it is

In summary, the key points to remember are:

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