Can bad habits foster OCD
Emerging research on obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) suggests that a tendency to develop habits — the compulsive component of the disorder — may be a central feature of the disorder, rather than a consequence of irrational beliefs.
For example, instead of washing one’s hands because of the belief that they are contaminated, some people may develop concerns about hand contamination as a consequence of a recurring urge to wash their hands.
Experts say habits are behaviors ingrained by practice that enable us to perform very complex behaviors in a nearly automatic way, such as swinging a golf club or performing a piano sonata.
Habits do not seem to be fully conscious goal-directed behaviors in that when one thinks about the details of the complex behavior, for example when trying to improve a golf swing, it often interferes with the expression of the habit.
