GAD vs OCD (and How to Tell the Difference) | Ep. 357 Your Anxiety Toolkit - Anxiety & OCD Strategies for Everyday

If you are wondering if you have (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) GAD vs. OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and how to tell the difference, this episode is going to be exactly what you need. 







My name is Kimberley Quinlan. I’m a cognitive behavioral therapist. I specialize in all anxiety disorders, and I help people overcome their anxiety in the kindest way possible. Now, I have treated generalized anxiety disorder and OCD for over 15 years, and I want to share with you that it is true—there is a massive overlap between OCD and GAD. They do look very similar. So I’m going to break it down and address the GAD and OCD overlap. Let’s go.


GAD versus OCD. You might know this, but in the world of anxiety disorders, this is actually a very controversial topic right now. I’ve been to conferences and master classes where clinicians will very much disagree on how we differentiate between the two. In fact, some people believe that they are so similar that they should be labeled as the same thing. We don’t all agree, and the reason for that, as I said, is that they do look similar. They do follow a very similar cycle. 


My hope is that in order to understand what GAD is and what OCD is, we need to actually go through the diagnostic criteria. And that’s what we’re going to do for you today so that you too can understand the difference between GAD and OCD and determine for yourself what you think will help move you in the right direction. Let’s talk about it. 


GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER SYMPTOMS

As I mentioned, in order to get a GAD diagnosis, you do have to have a specific set of symptoms, and we’re going to go through them. 


Number one, if you have GAD, the first symptom you need to have is anxiety and worry, and that’s usually focused on everyday events like work, school, relationships, money, and so on. Now, the frequency of GAD needs to occur more days than not for at least six months. The person needs to find it difficult to control this worry and anxiety, and it focuses on areas that are not consistent with other mental health struggles. 


What we mean by that is, let’s say the focus was on being judged by other people. Well, that’s better understood as social anxiety. Or if the focus of your worry was on your health, then we would actually be better diagnosing you or understanding your symptoms as health anxiety. If it was focused on a specific thing, like planes, needles, or vomit, we would better understand that as a specific phobia. In order to have the diagnosis of GAD, it needs to not be under the umbrella of a different diagnosis. Other things that we would rule out when we’re thinking about GAD are things like panic disorder, body image, or even a previous trauma. 


Now, the fifth symptom is it needs to cause distress and impairment. That’s very, very important here because, again, we’re talking about a disorder. What that means is a lack of order, no order. So what we want to see here is that it’s highly impacting their daily lives, highly impacting their ability to function. 


And then the sixth criteria is it has to be ruled out that these symptoms could be from a medical condition or substance abuse. An example of that might be even me with POTS. I have postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. A lot of the symptoms of POTS can actually look a little bit like generalized anxiety. 


The seventh criteria are the specific symptoms, and this is important to recognize because this might be true of a lot of different situations, symptoms, diagnoses, medical and mental. You need to have symptoms such as restlessness or being on edge. You need to be either easily fatigued, have difficulty concentrating, or have what we call a blank mind. You might have irritability, you might have muscle tension, and you could also have sleep disturbances. 


That is the breakdown for GAD. As I said, it’s very easy to mix it up with ot