Will OCD Ever Go Away? Understanding Remission, Relapse, and Real Recovery (Pt. 1)

If you’re living with OCD, you’ve probably asked yourself—maybe at 2 a.m., maybe in the grocery store aisle, maybe after a week of doing “well” only to have a small spike out of nowhere— “will this ever go away?”

It’s one of the most painful questions OCD sufferers carry.

And it makes sense. OCD is exhausting. It’s loud. It’s convincing. It steals time and energy and emotional bandwidth. You want a finish line. You want to know if you’ll ever be free.

This blog answers that question honestly—but with hope, clarity, and truth that actually helps.

No false promises.

No scaring you.

No pretending recovery looks perfect.

Today I'm sharing real OCD science to help you understand your brain—and learn to work with it rather than against it. Next week, I’ll be sharing real OCD lived-experience stories. My goal is to help you see that recovery is possible and to give you a realistic picture of what it can look like. Having grounded expectations and a clear goal to work towards is one of the most important anchors in your therapy journey.

Now let’s get into it!

What Does “Going Away” Actually Mean?

When most people ask if OCD can “go away,” they’re actually asking one of three very different questions:

• Can my intrusive thoughts stop happening?

• Can I stop reacting to the thoughts?

• Can I live a normal life without constant compulsions, fear, or checking?

These questions all have different answers.

Let’s break them down individually.

1. Will My Intrusive Thoughts Ever Stop Completely?

Here’s the truth most clinicians won’t say directly and gently:

Intrusive thoughts are part of being human.

Everyone has them—people with OCD just notice them more.

So, the goal of treatment isn’t to erase thoughts.

It’s to reduce and remove their power.

What actually changes is this:

• They come less often

• They hit with less intensity

• They feel less urgent

• They feel less believable

• They stop dictating your behavior

• They lose their emotional charge

Recovery means:

A thought pops up… and you shrug. You keep living. You stay free.

That’s recovery—not intrusive thought elimination, but intrusive thought irrelevance.

2. Will OCD Symptoms Ever Go Into Remission?

Yes!

And it happens far more than people think.

In clinical research, “remission” means:

• Intrusive thoughts still happen, but

• You’re not doing compulsions

• You’re functioning normally

• You’re not distressed most days

• OCD isn’t driving your decisions

• You’re in control of your life again

People can live years—sometimes decades—with OCD in remission.

This is what therapists often call “quiet OCD.”

It’s there… but you’re louder and you know you’re in control.

3. Will I Ever Be the Person I Was Before OCD?

Here’s the bittersweet truth:

You won’t be the same person.

You’ll be much stronger than the person you were before.

What OCD therapy teaches you:

• emotional regulation

• distress tolerance

• uncertainty acceptance

• resilience

• boundary setting

• identity outside fear

• self-compassion

Most people come out of treatment more grounded than people who have never been through OCD at all.

You don’t return to who you were—you evolve.

Okay, But Will OCD Ever Be “Gone Forever”?

This is the part people rarely say out loud:

OCD is considered a chronic condition—but chronic does NOT mean constant, miserable, or lifelong suffering.

Think of OCD like asthma:

• Sometimes it flares

• Sometimes it’s silent

• You learn how to manage it

• You learn how to prevent attacks

• You know what to do when one happens

• You still get to live an incredibly full life

You don’t need to cure asthma to live normally. The same is true for OCD.

Why Do OCD Relapses Happen? (And Why They Aren’t Failure)

Relapse is not a sign that treatment isn’t working.

Relapse is a sign that you’re human.

Relapses usually happen when:

• you’re stressed

• you’re grieving

• you’re majorly burned out

• your sleep is off

• there’s a big life change

• you’re trying to be “perfect” with your recovery

• you stop practicing uncertainty

• you get triggered by something new

But relapse doesn’t mean starting over.

Relapse means you’re re-strengthening old skills.

You don’t lose progress. You re-access it.

What Does Real OCD Recovery Look Like?

Real recovery is not:

• zero intrusive thoughts

• perfect ERP responses

• constant calm

• never having a spike again

Real recovery is:

• “I can handle this discomfort.”

• “I don’t need to solve this thought.”

• “I won’t engage the compulsion.”

• “I can let this be here and keep living.”

• “I can have OCD and still have a good day.”

OCD recovery is living life with intrusive thoughts the same way you live life with background noise; you barely notice it and even when you do, you don’t care.

OCD recovery is growth—steadier emotional reactions and gradual shifts in thought patterns.

The Most Hopeful Part: Your Brain Can Change

ERP + medication + lifestyle support can physically reshape the brain’s fear system.

We have decades of neuroscience showing:

• fear circuits weaken

• compulsive loops break

• cognitive flexibility strengthens

• emotional regulation increases

Your brain adapts.

Your relationship with uncertainty changes.

Your tolerance skyrockets.

OCD recovery is real.

And it is absolutely possible.

So… Will OCD Ever Go Away?

Here’s the honest answer you’ve been looking for: OCD may not disappear forever—but its control over your life absolutely can.

You can reach remission.

You can reach a place where OCD is quiet.

You can have spikes without spiraling.

You can live a meaningful, peaceful, full life.

You can feel free again. Because freedom is not the absence of thoughts— it’s the absence of fear.

If today’s blog inspired you to take the next step in your recovery journey, click below to schedule a free consultation for my OCD Intensives Program. You don’t have to do this alone—support is here.

Until next time, stay blessed by the best!

• Transcript

  Introduction: Several OCD Patients Ask “Will This Ever Go Away?”

  Several OCD patients are like, “Will this ever go away?”
  Any adult that is struck with some type of OCD thinks, Oh my God, this is driving me crazy and ruining my life, and I also can’t imagine a life without it.

  What’s up, Bossing Up Overcoming OCD listeners? I’m your host, Erin Davis, and today I’m sitting down with guest Kristen Louise Duncombe. In today’s episode, we’re talking about her book as well as her personal experience with OCD. This is a must-listen episode. If you or someone you know is struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder, please send this their way.

  And if you’re looking to discover the five biggest mistakes that fuel relationship anxiety, I’ve got a resource for you: The Overthinker’s Guide to Love. Link is in the show notes, or find it at livebeyonddoubt.com/overthinkersguidetolove. It’s a free five-day email course that gives you bonus tips to help you get out of the spiral.

  Now, back to the conversation.

  Meet Kristin Louise Duncombe: Therapist, Author, OCD Survivor

  Erin: Kristen, can you share with the listeners your background and your experience with OCD?

  Kristen: Absolutely. I’ll start with where I am now. I’m a therapist by training, also a life coach and an author. I’ve really got the career of my dreams. It’s not what I thought I’d do when I was younger. I wanted to be a talk show host—if I could’ve figured out how, I would have become one. But becoming a writer and therapist let me take the parts of myself that made me want that and apply them to my work.

  I work with a lot of people with obsessions, OCD, and related issues. I didn’t set out to focus on that, but it comes easily because I have my own history—going back to early childhood—of obsessional behaviors and OCD.

  Kristin’s Childhood: Tics, Hypochondria, and Emetophobia

  When I was a kid, I had tics. I was constantly making weird facial gestures—my mouth, rolling my eyes. You can imagine being seven years old in class doing that. Kids were mean to me, but I couldn’t stop. It was beyond me.

  That came with early-onset anxiety—specifically hypochondria. I became convinced I had leukemia. I’d heard about it and saw a made-for-TV movie about football player Brian Piccolo, who died of leukemia. I became convinced I had it, obsessively thought about it, and then convinced myself that doing all the tics would somehow stave it off. Totally OCD.

  And then I developed emetophobia—a fear of vomiting.

  Erin: Oh, that one’s so challenging. For listeners, emetophobia is the fear of vomiting.

  Kristen: I was terrified. It’s a violent, terrible experience.

  I didn’t get any treatment. I was born in ’69, so this was the 1970s. Then my family moved to West Africa—my dad was in the Foreign Service. Even if my parents had considered therapy, there weren’t therapists in the Ivory Coast. OCD therapy really hadn’t progressed yet.

  Without support, I did grow out of some of the behaviors. Later, I developed others. As an adult I’ve never been controlled by OCD the way I was as a child, but I feel the presence of funny little behaviors—obsessions and compulsions that come and go.

  The Behavioral Approach and “Hidden Meaning” Technique

  In my work with clients, and on myself, I take a behavioral approach. I learned a lot from David Burns—he wrote Feeling Good, When Panic Attacks, The Feeling Good Handbook, and he has a great podcast.

  One way he addresses anxiety is looking for the hidden meaning. I don’t want to get psychoanalytic with OCD—because I think it’s more brain-driven—but sometimes noticing the meaning behind a behavior helps.

  Sometimes I’ll do something like put my glasses on my head, and then redo it because “I did it wrong.” Then I’ll catch myself and ask, “Okay, what’s going on? Why are you doing this?”

  “Will This Ever Go Away?” — The Question Every OCD Patient Asks

  Erin: So many OCD patients ask, “Will this ever go away?” Have you experienced that question?

  Kristen: Yes—it's completely understandable. Parents wonder it, adolescents wonder it, adults wonder it. “Is this ever going to go away? This is driving me crazy and ruining my life, and I can’t imagine a life without it because it helps me.”

  One helpful approach is paradoxical:
  Stop trying to make it go away.
  Start with acceptance: “This may not go away—and I can live with it, because I know what it is.”

  When you accept something—even invite it in—it makes the involuntary (the obsession) more voluntary.

  Sometimes I encourage people to schedule time to force themselves to obsess, to get ahead of it.

  And here’s another answer I give:
  Absolutely, it will go away—and it will probably come back.
  Everything in life comes and goes. Good times, bad times, depression, hard days. If you treat it as a normal part of life instead of something catastrophic, that’s acceptance.

  OCD in Remission: Understanding Lapses vs. Relapses

  Erin: I love that perspective. For OCD, I believe it can go into remission. Does that mean forever? No.

  With adolescents especially—there’s so much development. OCD will try to hook onto new things. A 12-year-old may obsess about their menstrual cycle, later about sexuality, later about “How do I know they’re the one?”

  But all the techniques work across all themes. I try to give hope:
  The good news is—you know what to do.
  OCD is sneaky, but the tools stay the same.

  Kristen: Exactly. And when I find myself doing a little compulsion, I don’t spend three hours on it. I think, “Okay, what’s bothering you?”

  Erin: Do you notice it’s usually tied to stress?

  Kristen: Yes. That’s why I encourage people to befriend their OCD—use it as information. What’s the function of this behavior? Why do I need to repeat this?

  You don’t have to know the perfect answer. Don’t get perfectionistic about analyzing your own OCD (because… hello, more OCD). Sometimes there are several possible meanings. Just stay aware.

  Kristin’s Trauma Story: Sexual Abuse and a State Department Cover-Up

  Erin: And then there are folks with taboo OCD—POCD, harm OCD, suicidal OCD. They have a hard time being with themselves.

  Kristen: Yes. And I’ll share something personal—I’ve never had those OCD themes. And I say this transparently because it relates to my history.

  When my family moved to West Africa, my path crossed with a serial pedophile who was a high-ranking State Department official. He sexually abused me for two years. When it came out, the State Department protected him and threw the victims and families under the bus.

  I write about all of this in my most recent book. I believe my early OCD made me vulnerable—I was the “weird kid,” so when this man paid attention to me, I was vulnerable.

  After the abuse and the cover-up, I developed other anxiety-driven behaviors—bulimia, binge drinking, chain smoking. You can't do a control study on yourself, but I always attributed those to the trauma.

  The Connection Between OCD, Bulimia, and Addictive Behaviors

  People don’t think of bulimia, binge drinking, or smoking as OCD—but if you’ve had OCD and then you’ve had addictive behaviors, they feel adjacent and parallel.

  Erin: Yes—they keep you in the comfort zone. The function is to stay comfortable.

  Kristen: Exactly. You get a surge of discomfort; with bulimia you respond with food, then purge. With smoking, nicotine quells the anxiety. It’s a cycle.

  Treating Emetophobia: What Actually Works

  Erin: And you had emetophobia, which then seems like the opposite of bulimia—that’s wild. Emetophobia is one of the hardest OCD cycles to overcome. What worked?

  Kristen: Honestly? Nothing helped me as a kid. I found coping mechanisms. I would sneak Rolaids constantly—I thought they would prevent leukemia and therefore vomiting. I was eight years old. I had my magical thinking.

  There wasn’t help available.

  Erin: And now you're the therapist you wish you had. So how do you help clients with emetophobia?

  Kristen: A few things. Not in a set protocol—I agree with Irvin Yalom: you create a different therapy for every person.

  But overall:

  1. Figure out the function.

  One client now calls it her “fear of life.” She used to say she was terrified of dying, but everything she described—fear, discomfort, being grossed out—are life experiences, not death. That reframe landed.

  2. Contract with the client.

  “Do you really want to work on this?” If yes, we agree they’ll take steps—baby steps—to get uncomfortable.

  3. Exposure therapy (reasonable forms).

  I’ve only once done the flour-and-egg fake vomit mixture. But it’s obviously not real, so it’s limited.

  I’ve never used medications that induce vomiting, and I wouldn’t recommend it.

  I have done:

  • water-in-the-mouth and spitting into the toilet

  • gagging or vomiting noises

  • normal everyday exposures (like eating food they’re convinced will cause food poisoning)

  Those tend to be most effective because they’re tied to daily life.

  Kristin’s Book Object: A Memoir

  Erin: What’s the title of your book and where can we find it?

  Kristen: Object: A Memoir. It’s about being turned into an object by a middle-aged pedophile, and the recovery process of becoming the subject of my own life again. You can order it through any bookstore.

  Erin: I’ll include that in the show notes.

  Carrying On Despite OCD: You Can Have Problems and Still Live

  Erin: Any final words of wisdom?

  Kristen: So many. But as someone who’s mid-aged, wise enough, happy enough despite everything I’ve been through:

  You can have a problem like OCD and still carry on.
  You can be afraid of germs on the doorknob and still touch it. One thing doesn’t have to control the other. That’s a shift you have to make.

  And also—seek help, and trust the help of others.

  Erin: Thank you so much, Kristen. This was very enlightening.

  Kristen: Thank you—it was great to meet you. I look forward to staying in touch.