Compulsion
The act of compulsion is a conscious, standardized, recurrent behavior, which include counting, checking, or avoiding. A patient with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) realizes the irrationality of the obsession and experiences both the obsession and the compulsion as something that is ego-dystonic (i.e., unwanted behavior). Although most of the time the compulsive act may be carried out in an attempt to reduce the anxiety associated with the obsession, but it has been observed that it does not always succeed in doing so. The completion of a particular compulsive act may not affect the anxiety, and it can also lead to increase in the anxiety. Anxiety is also distinctly increased when a person resists carrying out a compulsive act. A feeling of anxious dread accompanies the central manifestation. The key characteristic of a compulsion is that it acts in order to reduces the anxiety associated with the obsession. The obsession or the compulsion is ego-alien; to put it differently, it is experienced as foreign to the person’s experience of himself or herself as a psychological being.