Compulsions are “repetitive behaviors or mental acts, the goal of which is to prevent or reduce anxiety or distress.”6 The person does not carry out these behaviors or thought processes to gain pleasure. Rather, they feel driven to perform the compulsion to reduce the distressing anxiety that accompanies an obsession. So, someone having a contamination obsession might wash his hands thirty times a day. Someone with intrusive and unwanted aggressive impulses might count to twenty forward and backward