>>12292248Rituals "calm" OCD because you are repeating a task until your neurons finally transfer information with inadequate seratonin. You feel relief because you are releasing more dopamine than seratonin. It id an imbalance. Dopamine then fubctions to make your brain remember what it did to release it(too little seratonin) so you then require a stronger ritual next time for the same effect.
This is how SSRIs treat the biological component of OCD. Your brain has enough seratonin now to send information between neurons, so when you wash your hands, it recieves the message that they're clearly clean after ~20 seconds like it should and you feel okay as you should, instead of repeating over and over for 20 minutes until it finally transfers and you finally "feel" okay even when you can see and know that they were clean after 20 seconds etc.
It is an imbalance; too much dopamine and too little seratonin. The excess dopamine causes the paranoia and delusions of contamination, justification of ridiculous behaviors, etc.
