You can think of us as having two brains: a reptile and a logical brain. They each have their strengths (speed versus accuracy) and sometimes play well together. Other times we feel torn or “of two minds.” When we encounter threats, each brain runs a risk assessment, and sometimes they come to different conclusions. If you have an untreated obsessive-compulsive disorder, your logical brain works normally, but for whatever reason, your reptile brain over-responds to a specific set of threats. When you encounter one of these threats, you feel a powerful urge to engage in “safety behaviors” that are supposed to protect your short-term and long-term survival. If you’re an adult, your safety behaviors include a lot of behaviors you can hide from other people, such as frequently monitoring the threat while pretending you’re not. You do survive the threat, which is awesome, but your reptile brain never gets a chance to learn that you would have survived even without the big physiological reaction or safety behaviors. Because no learning can occur under these conditions, without treatment, the cycle is likely to repeat itself throughout your entire life. Yes, the behaviors take different forms as you grow and change, and of course across different situations. But underneath all the surface-level idiosyncrasies, the same fear cycle remains.