If you're asking whether you might have OCD, something has probably been bothering you for a while. Maybe a thought keeps coming back however hard you push it away. Maybe there's something you feel you have to do, again and again, before you can relax, and you know it doesn't quite make sense. And maybe it's started to cost you: time, sleep, concentration, or ease with the people around you.
This guide walks you through what professionals look for and gives you some honest questions to reflect on. It won't give you a score. It will help you decide whether talking to someone is worth it, and how to do that in Ireland.
This guide is not a diagnostic tool. It can't tell you whether you have OCD, and it can't replace an assessment by a qualified professional such as a registered psychologist or psychiatrist. Use it to organise your thoughts before you speak to someone, not as an answer in itself.
What Professionals Actually Look For:
OCD is often treated as a joke about tidy desks and colour-coded wardrobes. That picture is misleading. Plenty of people with OCD are not especially neat, and plenty of very neat people don't have OCD. When a psychologist or psychiatrist assesses for OCD, they look at three things together.
- Obsessions, compulsions, or both. Obsessions are unwanted thoughts, images or urges that push their way into your mind and cause real discomfort. Compulsions are the things you do, physically or in your head, to ease that discomfort or stop something bad from happening.
- Significant distress. The thoughts usually feel wrong to you. They clash with what you value or who you believe you are, which is exactly why they're so upsetting. That's different from ordinary worry about bills or deadlines.
- Interference with daily life. The cycle takes up a lot of time or gets in the way of work, study, relationships or home life. A common marker is that obsessions and compulsions together take up more than an hour a day.
The hour-a-day marker is a useful guide, not a strict cut-off. Someone whose rituals take forty minutes but leave them exhausted, late and avoiding friends may still meet the criteria. What matters is the whole picture.
Questions to Reflect On:
Take your time with these. There are no right answers and nothing to add up. Notice which ones feel familiar, and how strongly.
About the thoughts
- Do unwanted thoughts, images or urges arrive without warning and keep returning, even when you try to ignore them?
- Do you spend a lot of effort trying to block them out, cancel them with a "good" thought, or argue yourself out of them?
- Do they feel completely out of character, the opposite of what you want or believe?
- Do they tend to circle around a theme? Common ones include germs or contamination, accidentally causing harm or a fire, upsetting violent or sexual images, religious or moral fears, doubts about a relationship, or a need for things to feel exactly right.
About the things you do in response
- Do you feel a strong pull to do something to make the anxiety go away, or to stop something bad from happening?
- Does it have to be done a particular way, a set number of times, or until it feels "right"?
- Do you check things (locks, switches, the cooker, messages you've sent) more than you think you need to?
- Do you wash, clean, count, tap, repeat words in your head or mentally replay events?
- Do you ask the people close to you for reassurance, or search online for it, over and over?
- Does the relief only last a short while before the doubt or discomfort comes back and you feel you have to do it again?
Not every compulsion is visible. Many people with OCD do most of theirs in their head: reviewing, checking their feelings, praying, counting or repeating phrases. If you've ever been told you have "Pure O", these mental rituals are usually what's going on. You can read more about this in our guide to the different types of OCD.
About time and impact
- Added together, do the thoughts and the things you do about them take up more than an hour on a typical day?
- Are you regularly late, distracted at work or college, or behind on things because of them?
- Have you started avoiding places, people, objects or activities to keep the thoughts away?
- Are the people around you affected, for example by repeated questions or by having to follow your rules?
Everyday Worry or Something More?
Everyone has odd or unpleasant thoughts, and everyone double-checks things now and then. The difference with OCD is how the thoughts feel, what you do about them, and how much room they take up.
| Everyday worry | Signs that point towards OCD | |
|---|---|---|
| The thought | About real-life concerns like money, work or health | Unwanted, intrusive, often out of character or hard to say out loud |
| What you do | Sort the problem out, or get distracted and move on | Rituals, checking, reassurance-seeking or mental reviewing that has to be done a certain way |
| How it feels | Uncomfortable, but fades | Intense anxiety, guilt, disgust or a sense that something isn't right |
| Time taken | Comes and goes | Often more than an hour a day, most days |
If much of the right-hand column sounds like you, that doesn't mean you have OCD. It does mean a proper assessment is worth having.
What to Do Next: Two Routes in Ireland:
There's no single right way to get assessed. These two routes suit different situations, and both lead to the same kind of evidence-based care.
Route 1: Start with your GP
Your GP can talk through your symptoms, check your overall health, and refer you on to HSE services such as primary care psychology or your local community mental health team. A GP can also discuss whether medication might help alongside therapy and prescribe it if appropriate. This route makes sense if you'd like everything coordinated through your own doctor, if cost is a barrier, or if you have other health issues to consider. Waiting times for public mental health services vary from area to area.
Route 2: Book an OCD assessment directly
If you'd rather go straight to a specialist, you can book Fettle's online OCD assessment yourself. You don't need a GP referral. It's a 30-minute consultation with a PSI-registered clinical psychologist, appointments are usually available the same week, and it takes place over video from wherever you are. You'll come away knowing whether what you're experiencing fits OCD and what a sensible next step looks like. If you want to talk it over first, you can book a free 20-minute call with our team.
Some people use both: an assessment for a quick answer, and their GP for anything involving medication or wider health care.
OCD Is Very Treatable:
The main psychological treatment for OCD is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) with exposure and response prevention, usually shortened to ERP. With a trained therapist, you gradually face the situations or thoughts that trigger your anxiety, one manageable step at a time, while holding back from the ritual you'd normally use to make it go away. Over time, your brain learns that the anxiety fades on its own and that the feared outcome doesn't need preventing. The cycle loses its grip.
For moderate or severe OCD, therapy is often combined with medication, most commonly an SSRI antidepressant such as sertraline, prescribed by a GP or psychiatrist. Medication can take several weeks to work fully, and it's a decision to make with a doctor.
Whatever is going on, you don't need to be certain it's OCD before you ask for help. Working that out is the assessor's job, not yours. Book an OCD assessment when you're ready.
Sources:
- HSE, "Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD): symptoms", www2.hse.ie/conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/ (accessed 13 October 2026).
- HSE, "Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD): treatment", www2.hse.ie/conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/treatment/ (accessed 13 October 2026).
- HSE, "Community mental health teams", www2.hse.ie/mental-health/services-support/community-mental-health-teams/ (accessed 13 October 2026).
- NHS, "Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD): overview" and "symptoms", nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/ (accessed 13 October 2026).
- World Health Organization, ICD-11, "6B20 Obsessive-compulsive disorder", icd.who.int (accessed 13 October 2026).
Last reviewed: October 2026. This article is for general information and is not a substitute for professional advice. If you are in crisis or worried about your safety, call 999 or 112, or contact Samaritans free on 116 123.
