We know that for many conditions, both medications and psychotherapy work about equally well. Common sense would dictate that there is some final common pathway of neuropsychiatric change underlying the symptomatic improvements we see. But identifying what is happening in a living human brain is extremely tricky.
Most treatment guidelines recommend cognitive behavioral therapy as first-line psychotherapy for anxiety disorders. In this article, Dr. Glen Spielmans will give you a brief primer of CBT techniques for panic disorder, social phobia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as review whether, for these conditions, CBT is indeed superior to other forms of therapy.
Trichotillomania (TTM) is an impulse control disorder in which patients feel that they can relieve tension by pulling out hair from different parts of their bodies. While sharing some features with obsessive compulsive disorder, DSM-IV-TR does not officially classify it as a type of OCD.