https://www.drcelingelgec.com.au/

Dr Celin Gelgec, 685 Burke Road, Camberwell (2025)

06/11/2025

Needing some inspo for your exposure therapy exercises? Pure-O is a form of OCD where people primarily experience mental compulsions in response to obsessions about any theme. Oftentimes people think they don’t experience any compulsions at all, however once we sit down and explore their experience, we quickly realise that there are mental compilation going on. This can include things like rumination, scanning in your mind, checking, self-reassurance, avoidance, thought blocking, counting, praying, repeating safety phrases, waiting for positive or neutral thoughts to occur, etc. What are some tasks you’re working on?

05/11/2025

Most people think compulsions are only behavioural. But reassurance can become intellectual, digital, invisible. And AI has just made that cycle easier to access, faster to repeat, and harder to detect.

This doesn’t mean technology is bad. It means we need to be conscious of how quickly OCD can recruit any tool available to chase certainty. The issue isn’t the content the mind is obsessing about. It’s the process of solving and neutralising doubt.

AI makes it incredibly tempting to outsource discomfort to an external brain. But if we are using technology to clarify meaning, seek reassurance, check morality, or test probability of harm — we are strengthening the very loop we are trying to get out of.

For clients: the question to keep asking yourself isn’t “Is this answer true?” It’s “Is this helping me build tolerance for uncertainty?”

For clinicians: this is now something we need to assess for explicitly in sessions. AI-enabled compulsions will be the new hidden ritual if we don’t name it and intervene early.

Recovery isn’t about getting more accurate answers.
It’s about becoming less attached to needing them.

04/11/2025

OCD conditions the nervous system to behave like you’re in danger. You find yourself constantly scanning, anticipating, or just waiting for that bad thing to happen. It feels like only an endless pursuit of certainty will give you an access point to safety.

But the mistake we make isn’t in the content of the fear. The error sits in the behavioural posture you’re taking inside of it. When we engage in treatment, we are not learning to become fearless. Even lions get scared!

In treatment, we are learning to shift from a defensive survival mode into intentional, values-led movement. Predator energy isn’t dominance or aggression. It’s agency. Direction. Our behavioural choices are made not through certainty but through values guided choices that we make despite feeling afraid.

When we’re making choices based in fear, we are waiting until it feels safe enough to move. When we make a choice despite feeling afraid, and use tools we learn to help us feel the fear, we are moving within uncertainty.

For clients: recovery becomes possible not when the threat disappears but when we feel the fear and do it anyway.

For clinicians: this is the deeper work of advanced exposure therapy (ERP). We’re not just reducing rituals. We’re altering the nervous system’s posture towards threat so behaviour becomes flexible rather than defensive.

03/11/2025

When rumination kicks in and you feel like your mind won’t stop spinning — most people call it “overthinking”.

In OCD… this is a compulsion.

It’s mental checking. It’s certainty hunting. It’s the brain trying to solve a threat that cannot be solved.

And yes — rumination is also an intellectual defence. It keeps you in “thinking about feelings” phase instead of actually feeling the emotions itself. It’s avoidance wearing a very sophisticated academic costume.

Rumination masquerades as responsibility and insight — but it blocks emotional processing and keeps OCD alive.

Here are three steps that can start loosening its grip:
1. Notice that you’re ruminating.
2. Interrupt it by labelling the content of the rumination — not just “this is OCD” — what actually is the brain trying to solve?
3. Come back to the present moment.

At first this will last for a split second.
Then another.
Then longer.

Freedom from rumination isn’t found in the perfect thought… it’s in no longer fuelling the problem with more thought.

01/11/2025

Real-Event OCD isn’t about denial or minimising guilt. It’s about breaking free from endless mental trials that never deliver peace.
In this form of OCD, the brain mistakes guilt for accountability and reassurance for repair.

ERP teaches clients to sit with uncertainty about morality and forgiveness, and to live life despite not knowing the answer for their past behaviours.

28/10/2025

Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder isn’t a phase, fussiness, or manipulation. It is fear. Fear of choking, fear of vomiting, fear of certain textures or sensations. For many, ARFID is deeply intertwined with OCD. The same brain that demands certainty and safety around obsessions can latch onto food and turn eating into a threat.

Families often step in to help. They offer the “safe foods.” They rush to blend meals, cut smaller pieces, or swap dinner for toast again. It comes from love. Watching your child or partner eat less and less is terrifying. No one wants to see someone they care about become weak, malnourished, or hospitalised.

The trap is that accommodation feels like protection. In truth, it reinforces the brain’s belief that danger is real. Every avoided food shrinks life a little more.

Recovery asks something brave from everyone involved. Therapy focuses on gradually facing fear, building tolerance for textures, smells, uncertainty itself. Families learn how to support without rescuing. Clinicians help to map out anxiety patterns, not battles over the plate.

This work is slow. It is uncomfortable. It is worth it. Because the goal isn’t simply eating more foods. It is reclaiming health, nourishment, freedom, and a life that extends far beyond what feels “safe” today.

If ARFID and OCD are affecting your family, support exists. You don’t need to navigate this alone.

26/10/2025

These may look like an innocent batch of cookies I baked - which I did, and did so without much thought. However for someone with OCD what may seem like an activity that is relatively “harmless” carries many unwanted intrusive thoughts such as…

1. “What if I accidentally poisoned everyone by touching the dough after handling the raw eggs?”
(Contamination / responsibility OCD)
2. “Did I actually wash my hands properly — or did I just imagine I did?”
(Doubt / checking OCD)
3. “What if I turn on the oven and the whole house catches fire because I didn’t check it right?”
(Harm / responsibility OCD)
4. “What if I secretly want something bad to happen and that means I’m an awful person?”
(Moral scrupulosity)
5. “If I bake twelve cookies instead of thirteen, maybe something terrible will happen to my family.”
(Magical thinking / superstition OCD)
6. “What if I drop glass into the mix without noticing and someone eats it?”
(Intrusive harm thought)
7. “Did I put too much sugar — what if someone has a reaction and it’s my fault?”
(Perfectionism / responsibility OCD)
8. “What if I accidentally contaminated the batch with cleaning spray on the counter?”
(Contamination OCD)
9. “I need to check the recipe again — if I don’t, it means I don’t care about doing things properly.”
(Checking / moral responsibility OCD)
10. “What if this act of baking feels good because I’m trying to prove I’m not a bad person?”
(Meta-OCD — doubting motives and morality).

Experiencing unwanted intrusive thoughts like these on the daily occur thick, fast, and LOUD for people with OCD. The hardest part is that it goes against the morals and values of everyone who is experiencing them in the context of OCD. Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is a way to be able to learn skills to lean into these types of thoughts and follow your own values instead of what OCD wants you to do.

So, challenge OCD, bake the cookies, and hand them out. Push back.

25/10/2025

These were some of the reasons why people were walking to raise awareness for people with OCD. A week ago today we met at the Tan Track in Melbourne for the Million Steps for OCD walk. We shared stories, laughter, and hope. Most of all people got to meet others going through similar experiences and shared their stories. Here’s to a bigger and louder year next year! Why will you be walking?

23/10/2025

Consistency builds recovery.

You can’t expect OCD to rewire if you only show up when it’s convenient. It’s really bloody hard to be consistent. It’s painful, it’s demoralising on some days, but it’s key.

The same way you wouldn’t expect one gym session to transform your body — one exposure, one good week, or one burst of motivation won’t rewire your brain.

Recovery depends on what happens between sessions. The same goes for what happens in the therapy room — if we’re constantly chopping and changing strategies, we disrupt the brain’s ability to create new pathways.

Consistency is not about perfection. It’s about showing up again, and again, and again — especially when it feels pointless, painful, demoralising, etc. Consistency is messy. That’s where the real rewiring happens.

If you’re a client — what helps you stay consistent between sessions?
If you’re a clinician — how do you help clients stay on track when motivation dips? Share your strategies in the comments below. Let’s normalise the messy, human side of building consistency.

Save this post for a reminder on the days you want to skip the work.

23/10/2025

Many people confuse health anxiety with OCD — but the difference lies in what each is trying to escape.

Health anxiety fears illness. OCD fears uncertainty.
Both orbit the same invisible core: death anxiety.

Health anxiety says, “I need to know I’m healthy.”
OCD says, “I need to know — full stop.”

One searches for reassurance from doctors, tests, Google, Reddit rabbit holes, and spends hours on ChatGPT…
The other can do the same while searching for a feeling of absolute certainty that never arrives.

For clients, recovery means loosening the grip on control — letting life happen without endless checking or analysis.
For clinicians, it means targeting the function of OCD. Because if you treat health anxiety like OCD, or OCD like health anxiety, you’ll miss what’s driving the behaviour.

Recovery isn’t about feeling safe.
It’s about living fully while you feel unsafe.

21/10/2025

When people first present for OCD treatment they’ll say that they want recovery from OCD — but what they’re really searching for is relief from OCD. And that makes sense. When your mind is screaming doubt, relief feels like safety. What clients quickly learn is that OCD recovery isn’t about escaping discomfort — it’s about learning to carry it differently.

Comfort says: “Make the anxiety stop.”
Recovery says: “Let it come — I’ll do what matters anyway.”

We mistake relief for progress.
We call avoidance “self-care.”
We label anxiety as “unsafe.”

But recovery isn’t peace — it’s permission.
Permission to live, love, and act with doubt in the room.
To build a life that’s bigger than the next compulsion.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) don’t aim to make anxiety disappear. They teach us to build a life around uncertainty, not in spite of it.

For clinicians, our role isn’t to calm the storm — it’s to hold the fort while clients learn to stand in it. To be the anchor when their world feels like it’s coming undone.

If you’re chasing calm, you’ll stay stuck.
If you’re chasing meaning through your own values, you’ll move.

20/10/2025

“Maybe” is one of the most powerful tools in OCD recovery.

When you’re doing exposures, your mind will scream for certainty — What if it’s true? What if I’m a bad person? What if something terrible happens? The urge to fix, check, or find reassurance feels impossible to resist.

But real progress begins when you stop trying to prove your thoughts wrong and start practising “maybe.”
Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m safe, maybe I’m not. Maybe I’ll never know.

“Maybe” isn’t weakness — it’s acceptance. It’s how you stop arguing with your mind and start choosing your values over your fears. That’s when exposure and response prevention (ERP) really works — not when you feel calm, but when you move forward despite uncertainty.

Dr Celin Gelgec

06/11/2025

05/11/2025

04/11/2025

03/11/2025

01/11/2025

28/10/2025

26/10/2025

25/10/2025

23/10/2025

23/10/2025

21/10/2025

20/10/2025

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