the possibilities of her causing other people to have her bacteria and to get sick, thus further strengthened her belief that she is responsible to do so to prevent the harm on others.
Barlow’s (2002) model included the cognitive theory, along with many other factors such as biological and psychological vulnerabilities of individuals, could be used to guide us understand May’s case as well. Both biological and psychological vulnerability contribute to how individuals respond to stressors differently. Everyone was born with certain biological differences in emotion and cognition. Individuals with OCD were biologically susceptible to reacting strongly to stress and individuals who easily feels anxious or feels like out of control, is predisposition…show more content… Intrusive thoughts then emerge in the context of experiencing stressful life events under these dispositional vulnerabilities. The stressful situation or life event of May is suspected to be trying to balance school work and help her family at the restaurant while neither of her parents provided emotional support or spent any time to take care of her and her brother. Barlow suggested that there often is a stimulus involved to set the thoughts; It is most likely that the exposure to new information about bacteria and germs acted as the beginning of where May’s intrusive thoughts of not being clean.
According to Barlow (2002), what differentiate patient with OCD and non-clinical patients is that the development of specific psychological vulnerability. He used the example of social phobia: people had parents who worry about social evaluation were worried about social judgment. Most people have unwanted thoughts all the time, but they do not get bothered or they do not view these thoughts as extremely negative. However, for individuals who has experienced guilt and excessive responsibility (e.g. if I could have helped more, my parents would not have to work so much and having so
