Find Online Psychotherapy for OCD

Find Online Psychotherapy via Skype for OCD

Online cognitive behavioral therapy for OCD over Skype or Zoom

Online Mindfulness Therapy via Skype for Stopping Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Intrusive Overthinking without using medications.

Mindfulness Therapy provides an effective treatment plan for reducing intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors by teaching you how to work with your OCD thoughts and impulses using mindfulness training and the techniques of Mindfulness Therapy.

To overcome OCD and obsessive-intrusive thoughts you MUST learn how to neutralize the underlying fear, that fuels obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors.

This is the primary focus of Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy for recovery from OCD and is what I will be teaching you during our sessions together.

GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR THE TREATMENT OF OCD

• Online Therapy via Skype is available for the USA, Canada, UK & Western Europe.

• Go to my main website to learn more and to schedule a Skype Therapy session: Online Mindfulness Therapy for OCD

You might find this video informative. Contact me if you are looking for online help for OCD.

Online Therapists for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Online Mindfulness Therapy through Skype for Overcoming Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Intrusive Overthinking without using medications

Welcome. My name is Peter Strong and I provide online therapy via Skype for anxiety disorders, including obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. Now, OCD is a very common anxiety disorder, and it's estimated that as many as 1 in 40 people in the US suffer from some form of OCD. It's also quite common in young children and children often experience an episode of OCD, but usually it doesn't last very long and most children completely overcome their OCD. When OCD occurs in adults, it can often last a lot longer and is harder to overcome, mainly because as adults, we tend to get more lost in thinking, and reactive thinking is one of the main mechanisms that feeds the underlying anxiety that is fueling your obsessive compulsive disorder. 

There are various medications prescribed for treating OCD as an anxiety disorder. But they're often not very effective and sometimes those medications create additional problems. 

Types of OCD

Obsessive Checking

There are certain main categories of OCD that we can describe. The first is obsessive checking. For example, checking if you turned off all the lights or if you locked all the doors before going to bed.

There is this incessant impulse to recheck that is based on a reactive belief that things are not completed in some way, and that's based on the emotion of fear. So the fear motivates that belief that things need to be checked again, which then leads to the compulsive behavior or sometimes ritual of rechecking over and over again. Ritualized rechecking means checking things is a specific order. 

Fear of Contamination

Another very common kind of OCD has to do with fear of germs and the fear of infection, which leads to compulsive and sometimes ritualized handwashing, where you have to wash your hands in a certain way to try to eliminate the fear that you haven't washed your hands completely. The fear of infection or contamination is often accompanied by other emotional reactions that also feed that underlying fear, fear of infecting family members, guilt, and so on. 

Obsession with Symmetry

A third kind of OCD has to do with symmetry. And this is quite common with children, but also adults as well and it's that sense of having to put everything in the right place, with the right alignment and organized in the right way. For example, arranging all of the pens and pencils on your desk in a certain way, facing a certain direction and so on. That fear of things not being in the right position, in the right order is what feeds the obsessive compulsive behavior of arranging things in a specific way. 

Fear of Aggresion

Another kind of OCD that is quite common in adults is the fear of doing harm to yourself or others. For example, the fear of suddenly driving your car off the road; the fear of throwing a cup of water at someone; the fear of hurting an animal. It can take many different forms and it's very distressing if you are plagued by such aggressive thoughts. And again, this gform of OCD is often exacerbated by a great deal of secondary emotional reactivity, guilt and shame, and so on. Now, it's very rare that people with OCD-based fear of doing harm actually act out that impulse, but it's very distressing. 

Obsessive Beliefs

Another common form of OCD is based around obsessive beliefs. For example, the belief that I am going insane, or that I will be punished if I do something wrong. This obsessive belief can show itself in a religious context where I feel like I will be punished if I stopped praying or if I stop going to church. We become obsessed with a particular belief and that can lead to ritualized behaviors to counter that fear. 

This can also show itself has an obsession around physical appearance.For example, having an obsessive belief that your nose is too big or that you are ugly. This can convert into compulsive behaviors such as constantly checking yourself, constantly putting on makeup or some other action to try and alleviate the underlying fear.

Of course, all these compulsive behaviors and rituals do not actually release the underlying fear. It doesn't actually heal the underlying emotion. 

What is the best treatment for OCD?

So how do we go about treating OCD? Well, the most common treatment involves medications and antidepressants. But as I have said, these typically are not very effective for the long term management of obsessive compulsive disorder. 

A very popular form of psychotherapy is called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT. And this is a good choice because this approach starts to make you more aware of the reactive thoughts that are feeding your anxiety and lead to compulsive behaviors. And it is generally highly recommended that you look for a therapist who specializes in CBT or Mindfulness Therapy, which is what I teach. 

These practical psychological approaches provide the best long term solutions for the treatment of OCD. If you would like to learn more about mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, Mindfulness Therapy, then do please contact me and we can schedule a therapy session through Skype. 

Online Mindfulness-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for OCD

If you wish to talk with a psychotherapist online, then visit my website to learn about Online Psychotherapy through Skype for the treatment of anxiety and depression, addictions, OCD, PTSD, Emotional Trauma and other forms of emotional suffering not requiring medical treatment.

Conventional talk therapy can be useful, but often common talk therapy does not transform the the underlying process that is the real cause of your emotional suffering.

The same can be said for medications - prescription medications may reduce symptoms for a while, but medications will not transform the underlying process that produces your anxiety or depression. This requires good quality psychotherapy.

The type of psychotherapy that I offer is called Mindfulness Therapy, which can be quite powerful for managing chronic anxiety as well as for treating depression or other emotional issues caused by habitual reactive thinking. Most of my clients see dramatic reduction in the level of anxiety and depression after 3-4 sessions of Skype Therapy.

Welcome. My name is Peter Strong and I'm a professional mindfulness therapist using a system of mindfulness therapy that I developed many years ago now, that's extremely effective for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD. 

So, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for OCD basically teaches you how to break free from the habit of reactive thinking, that is falling into the stream of reactive thinking, of rumination or worrying that might get triggered in the minds. 

This is a very important step in cutting off the fuel that that fuels anxiety or depression. So, OCD is simply the result of a process where we become habitually identified with thoughts, and when we become trapped in our thinking. The result is that the thoughts tend to propagate more thoughts and this amplifies the reactive thinking, which in turn amplifies the underlying emotional obsession or anxiety or depression that feeds the OCD. 

So, learning to break this habit of reactive identification is extremely important and is the principal focus of the mindfulness therapy that I teach online via Skype. 

If you'd like to learn more about online mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for OCD, simply go to my websites and then email me. You can ask any questions you might have about mindfulness therapy for OCD and I'd be happy to explain to you how the mindfulness therapy approach can work for you. 

When you feel ready you can schedule a Skype therapy session with me at a time that works for you, and then begin to teach you how to apply mindfulness for overcoming obsessive thinking and for overcoming the anxiety and depression that's associated with obsessive-compulsive thinking.

GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY VIA SKYPE WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OCD

Best online treatment for OCD without medication

Treatment for OCD without medication - Online Mindfulness Therapist for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and intrusive thoughts

Welcome! My name is Peter Strong. I'm a professional psychotherapist and I offer online therapy for anxiety and depression, addictions and also for the treatment of OCD and intrusive thoughts. 

So obsessive-compulsive disorder really describes a problem of reactive intrusive thoughts; thoughts that just keep appearing in the mind and that trigger compulsive behaviors. 

Now how do we manage these intrusive thoughts? Well there are certain things we must understand. The first is that you cannot remove intrusive thoughts by willpower. If you try to stop those intrusive thoughts you will actually end up making them stronger.

So we must take a different approach, and the approach that I teach involves mindfulness training. So mindfulness therapy teaches you how to change your relationship to those intrusive thoughts from one of fear and anger, which is also fear-based, to one of equanimity, of allowing the thought to be there without reacting to it. 

And also friendliness. This is an essential part of mindfulness training. You learn to make friends with those intrusive thoughts, even if they are negative thoughts or painful thoughts. 

The most important thing is to develop a non-reactive relationship with those thoughts and that will involve developing a friendliness-based relationship with the thoughts. Friendliness is non-reactive and it is not fear-based. So this will essentially take away the fuel that feeds those intrusive thoughts. 

Intrusive thoughts become intrusive because of the emotional charge that they have. It's not the thought itself that's the problem, it's the emotional charge that the thought has, and this is what keeps it coming back. 

We need to find a way to defuse that emotional charge, and the first way is not to feed the emotion. So that's the reason why we focus on developing a friendly non-reactive relationship with those intrusive thoughts and memories also. 

And one of the best ways to do this is to look at the imagery of these thoughts and then change that imagery. This imagery is what keeps that emotional charge alive and that's what keeps the thoughts in an intrusive and repetitive manner in the mind. 

But when you bring mindfulness to it you see the imagery clearly and then you can begin to help it change. So this is really helping the thought resolve itself. And when it changes his imagery it loses that emotional charge and then it will disappear. 

From my experience with working with people who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder and intrusive memories; thoughts including traumatic memories, I find that this Mindfulness Therapy approach to be the best approach that I have ever explored with people. It Is very, very effective. 

So if you'd like to learn more about the mindfulness approach for overcoming OCD and intrusive thoughts, then please email me. 

So medications are often prescribed for OCD to reduce the intensity of the anxiety. But I think you'll understand that's just treating the symptoms and not treating the underlying process that creates those intrusive thoughts.

So if you would like to learn more about how to treat OCD without using medications, but through through this mindfulness-based approach, do please contact me. 

Most people see quite dramatic changes within a matter of a few weeks once you start applying these mindfulness methods. And this will include meditation, but a different kind of meditation than you may be familiar with. 

Because, when I talk about mindfulness meditation I'm talking about meditating on the mind. 

So in this case we would actually learn to meditate on those intrusive thoughts. We would deliberately bring them into the mind and start building this non-reactive relationship and start exploring how to change the imagery of those thoughts. 

So this is training, active focused training, to help those thoughts resolve themselves and lose their emotional charge so they no longer become a problem. 

Generally, when you can do that with thoughts then the compulsive behaviors will also subside because there is nothing that is connected to the behaviors. There's nothing that can feed the compulsive behaviors. 

So if you would like to learn more and you would like to schedule some online therapy sessions with me, then please contact me. Thank you.

GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION

Online therapy for OCD and anxiety

How to stop OCD thoughts through Online Mindfulness Therapy

Welcome. My name is Peter Strong. I'm a professional psychotherapist based in Boulder, Colorado and I offer online therapy via Skype for the treatment of anxiety and depression and addictions and many other common psychological problems that respond well to mindfulness-based therapy. 

Mindfulness Therapy is my preferred approach because I find it to be vastly superior to conventional talk therapy and certainly a great improvement over medications, which really do nothing to change the underlying cause of your emotional suffering. 

So anxiety disorders are the most common condition that I work with and this includes obsessive-compulsive disorder, and I'm often asked how to stop OCD thoughts, how to break free from those intrusive thoughts that cause so much emotional suffering and anxiety for a lot of people. 

So working with intrusive thoughts. First of all we have to ask what is it that makes them intrusive? How does this work? Well, there's four major factors that I have identified that really cause a thought to become intrusive. 

The first is the emotional charge of the thoughts. So with all OCD thoughts it's not the content of the thought that matters, it's not the narrative that's important. What is important is the emotional charge of that thought. When a thought has a very high emotional charge then it tends to stay in the mind longer and it tends to return more frequently than a thought with a low emotional charge. 

So the emotional charge is what gives the stickiness to intrusive thoughts and leads to obsessive behaviors based on those intrusive thoughts. So working with that emotional charge and learning how to neutralize it is essential, and much more important than trying to change the narrative, or your beliefs, or trying to replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts, or any other cognitive manipulation like that, because it really won't work if that emotional charge is not first neutralized. 

So working with the emotional charge of the thoughts is very important. The second factor that causes those thoughts to be intrusive is really just plain habit. That is, the lack of conscious awareness. We tend to simply identify with these thoughts when they arrive and we get caught up in them and we start trying to fight them or resist them in some way. So this process of pure habit operates when there is very little consciousness. Like any habit it operates unconsciously. 

So developing much more consciousness around our OCD thoughts is very important, and in fact we learn how to meditate on those thoughts rather than trying to make them go away, which is not practical or trying to resist them in some other way or distract ourselves from those thoughts. 

Any kind of effort to try and remove thoughts by distraction just won't work. We have to completely change our relationship to those thoughts. We have to, in fact, create more consciousness, not less. 

The third factor that causes thoughts to become intrusive is really just the problem of what I call reactive identification, and that is where we really become consumed by that thought; we take on the identity of the thought. We take it to be who we are. We take it as the truth of things and we simply blindly fall into that thought. 

The fourth factor that's closely related to reactive identification is general reactivity to those unpleasant emotionally charged thoughts. As I mentioned earlier we tend to try to escape or avoid unpleasant experiences, including thoughts. We try to avoid them or we react with self-hatred, aversion or extreme dislike for those thoughts, which is understandable because they cause so much pain for us. But unfortunately reactivity simply feeds the problem. 

So if you would like to learn more about how to work with intrusive thoughts and OCD thoughts in general, please contact me. 

Send me an email. Tell me more about yourself and how I can help you and then we can schedule a Skype Therapy session to help you overcome your OCD thoughts using the very effective and well tested methods of Mindfulness Therapy that I teach and have developed over the last ten or twelve years now. 

So please contact me if you would like help overcoming your OCD.

GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OCD