an other way
OCD Therapy Dublin
Psychotherapy for adults experiencing intrusive thoughts, obsessions, compulsions, persistent doubt and the need for certainty.
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Support for OCD
We work with people struggling with intrusive thoughts, checking, reassurance-seeking, contamination fears, and other obsessive-compulsive difficulties.
Qualified & Experienced
Each of our therapists holds at least one relevant master’s degree and has at least five years of relevant experience.
Flexible
Appointments can be made throughout 7 days of the week. Evenings too.
many shapes and forms
What OCD Can Feel Like
OCD is not simply a preference for order or cleanliness. It can involve thoughts, images or urges that feel disturbing, shameful or completely at odds with how you understand yourself.
It can be debilitating and exhausting. A thought arrives that feels urgent or dangerous, and the mind starts demanding certainty.
Some people repeatedly check doors, appliances, messages or their own memories. Others wash, count, repeat actions, arrange things, avoid particular situations or ask other people for reassurance.
Compulsions can also take place entirely in the mind. You might replay an event, examine your intentions, test your feelings, repeat a phrase internally or try to replace a frightening thought with a safe one.
Because these rituals are not always visible, some people refer to this experience as “Pure O”. In practice, there are often mental compulsions taking place alongside the intrusive thoughts.
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common experiences
Common OCD-Related Difficulties
We regularly work with people experiencing:
• Intrusive thoughts that feel alien or disturbing. (often referred to as ‘Pure O’)
• Obsessions around harm, morality, sexuality, or religion.
• Persistent doubt and the need for certainty.
• Mental checking, reviewing, or reassurance seeking.
• Past-event rumination or false-memory fears.
• Relationship doubt and compulsive checking of feelings. (often referred to as ROCD)
• Anxiety that won’t settle despite “thinking it through.”
• Sleep disruption from rumination and mental replaying.
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Our Memberships
it functions
A Psychoanalytic Approach to OCD Therapy
At the Other clinic, our approach is psychoanalytically informed. This means that we do not assume the same explanation applies to every person with obsessive-compulsive difficulties. We work from the point of view that each person is unique.
OCD often involves an intense demand for certainty: certainty that nothing bad will happen, that no mistake has been made, that a thought means nothing, or that one’s feelings are exactly as they should be.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, it can be useful to explore how doubt, guilt, responsibility and control have taken shape in your life. For one person, the obsession may centre on the fear of harming someone. For another, it may concern morality, contamination, sexuality, a relationship or an event from years earlier.
Therapy does not involve treating an intrusive thought as evidence of a hidden wish or endlessly debating whether the fear is true. That can become another form of checking. Instead, the work pays attention to the particular hold the thought has acquired, the rituals built around it and the place the symptom occupies in your life.
Get Help for OCD
transforming OCD
How can psychotherapy help with OCD?
Psychotherapy offers a space to explore and work through the structure of thoughts and rituals that may be difficult to disclose elsewhere.
The therapist listens not only to the content of the obsession, but also to when it appears, what intensifies it, how you respond and what happens when certainty cannot be obtained. Over time, this can help make the obsessive cycle less compelling and create more room between the arrival of a thought and the demand to act on it.
The aim is not to reassure you that every feared outcome is impossible. Reassurance often becomes part of the OCD cycle. The work is to help you develop a different relationship with uncertainty, responsibility and the thoughts that have acquired such power.
OCD symptoms are understood within the wider context of a person’s life, alongside aspects like anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, loss, trauma, or broader questions about identity, meaning, and how they want to live.
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FAQ
Can OCD be cured?
OCD can improve significantly, and for some people acute symptoms can resolve over the course of treatment. For others, symptoms diminish more gradually, or persist in a milder form. Most importantly, It’s always case by case.
It can also help to be clear about what “cured” means. Therapy isn’t about removing every trace of anxiety or uncertainty. Those are part of being human. The aim is to reduce acute, repetitive patterns of obsession and compulsion, and to change your relationship to the thoughts and feelings that keep OCD going.
Are intrusive thoughts a sign that something is wrong with me?
Intrusive thoughts are common to all people. Most pass quickly and are dismissed without much concern. In OCD, however, these thoughts become charged with meaning and emotion, and can be more persistent. They are experienced as alien or disturbing because they conflict with a person’s values, and they trigger an urgent need to interpret, neutralise, or gain certainty about what they mean.
Can OCD affect sleep?
Yes. Many people with OCD experience difficulty sleeping due to rumination, mental reviewing, or attempts to “solve” intrusive thoughts before rest. Night-time often removes distraction, making obsessive doubt more pronounced.
Do you use CBT or ERP?
No. Our approach to OCD is psychoanalytically (Lacanian) informed, drawing particularly on Lacanian psychoanalysis, rather than CBT-based.
Our work is generally longer-term. It explores how obsessive symptoms function within the person’s life, history and relationships. With the aim of loosening the hold those symptoms have, and establishing benefits long after the treatment has ended.
How long does therapy for OCD take?
Therapy length varies, because it isn’t a standardised process. It revolves around a developing relationship between two unique people, and each person’s difficulties have their own history, meaning, and structure. For some, change can come relatively quickly. For others, it unfolds more slowly, and sometimes not in the way a person initially hopes.
For that reason, the length of therapy is always case by case — and it tends to depend on what you are looking for, how long the difficulties have been present, and what emerges over the course of the work.
It can also help to understand that therapy isn’t something that is done to a person. It’s a collaborative relationship, and it depends on genuine engagement and interaction over time – including what you bring, what you avoid, and what you begin to speak about differently.
Do you provide techniques or quick fixes for OCD?
Practical techniques can provide short-term relief. Breathing exercises, behavioural strategies, or structured interventions may help reduce immediate anxiety.
However, OCD rarely persists because a person lacks techniques. It tends to endure because certain patterns of thought, doubt, responsibility, guilt, or meaning remain unresolved.
While short-term strategies can be useful, lasting change usually involves understanding and working through the deeper structure that sustains the cycle of obsession and compulsion.
Therapy here is not focused solely on symptom management, but on addressing the roots of the difficulty.
an Other way
Our Approach to OCD Therapy
Each psychotherapist holds at least a relevant master’s degree and has a minimum of five years relevant experience.
Our team has extensive experience supporting people with OCD, including intrusive thoughts, compulsions, reassurance-seeking, rumination and “Pure O” presentations. Most importantly, our team is equipped to work with each person as a unique individual.
Therapists receive regular clinical supervision, and their qualifications and memberships are listed on their individual profiles.
Psychoanalytically informed therapy in Dublin.
Masters level therapists
Five years relevant experience
Singular approach to OCD
Evidence Based Approach
ERP, CBT and medication are often recommended first-line for OCD, but psychoanalytic therapy has a growing evidence base, particularly for complex or long-standing presentations.
2008 — Long-term psychodynamic therapy (Leichsenring & Rabung) [1]
A meta-analysis of 23 studies found that long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy produced significant improvements in people with complex mental disorders.
It showed stronger outcomes than shorter treatments in overall effectiveness, target problems and personality functioning.
This study concerned a range of complex mental-health presentations rather than just OCD specifically.
2014 — Psychodynamic therapy for anxiety disorders (Keefe et al.) [2]
A meta-analysis of 14 randomised controlled trials involving 1,073 participants found psychodynamic therapy more effective than control conditions.
This research concerned anxiety disorders generally rather than exclusively OCD.
2010 — The wider evidence for psychodynamic therapy (Shedler) [3]
A major review examined eight meta-analyses covering approximately 160 studies. It found that psychodynamic therapy produced effects at least as large as those reported for other established therapies.
Crucially, the benefits were not only maintained after therapy ended. Follow-up findings indicated that many patients continued to improve, suggesting that psychodynamic therapy can initiate psychological changes that develop and strengthen beyond the treatment itself.
2026 — OCD-specific evidence (Leichsenring et al.) [4]
A randomised trial found manual guided short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy led to response in 64% and remission in 60% of participants at post-treatment.
Research Summary
There are many other relevant studies, but these findings are highlighted because they provide a clear, high-level overview of what the wider research base suggests.
Psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapies have a tangible and growing evidence base. In 2026, the first randomised controlled trial of a short-term psychodynamic treatment for OCD reported a 60% remission rate following treatment.
Across a wider body of studies and meta-analyses, psychodynamic therapy has shown benefits for anxiety and long-standing, complex difficulties. These improvements are often maintained, with some follow-up studies finding that people continue to improve after therapy has ended.
These summaries necessarily simplify a complex research literature. Outcomes vary between individuals and according to how improvement is measured.
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