Are you struggling with OCD & intrusive thoughts? CONTACT ME for details about session times & fees for Online Mindfulness Therapy via Skype
Please feel free to contact me via my main website if you are looking for an online therapist to help you overcome OCD.
Online Mindfulness Psychotherapy through Skype for Stopping Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Intrusive Overthinking without relying on anti-anxiety medications and antidepressants.
Mindfulness Therapy provides a very good approach for overcoming obsessive thoughts and addictive behaviors by teaching you how to work with OCD thoughts and impulses using the powerful methods of Mindfulness Therapy
To break free from OCD and obsessive-intrusive thoughts you MUST learn how to neutralize the underlying emotion, usually fear, that fuels intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors.
This is the primary focus of Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy for overcoming Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
CONTACT ME IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT ONLINE THERAPY VIA SKYPE FOR HELP WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND ANXIETY
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Through Mindfulness Therapy we learn how to neutralize obsessive and intrusive thoughts, images and memories as well as neutralizing the compulsive impulses of compulsive behaviors.
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong. I'm a professional psychotherapist specializing in Mindfulness Therapy for the treatment of anxiety and depression and OCD and other emotional problems using mindfulness therapy and mindfulness-based techniques rather than medications or the conventional talking therapy that you may be familiar with.
Mindfulness Therapy really tries to address the underlying process that causes your anxiety or depression or problem with intrusive thoughts and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
So Skype Therapy for OCD is one of the services that I offer. All my online therapy is done via Skype. It's very important that you use Skype or FaceTime or similar video platform because it's important that you can see each other during these sessions. This makes the therapy sessions much more effective.
During the online Skype therapy sessions that I offer I'll be teaching you how to work with the two primary elements of OCD.
So excessively worrying about that and obsessing over hygiene is one kind of reactive thinking that greatly accentuates the underlying anxiety. The thinking fuels anxiety feeds anxiety and it intensifies the anxiety. So that's one kind of thinking process.
The other kind of problems that people run into with thinking is intrusive thoughts. Intrusive thoughts, intrusive images, intrusive memories. So this is sometimes called "Pure O" sort of a pure form of obsession that is caused by intrusive thoughts that really upsets the minds and cause considerable anxiety.
So that's one side of the work. We work with these obsessive or intrusive thoughts. On the other side of OCD is working with the compulsive behaviors.
So the thoughts convert into behaviors like hand washing or trying to clean every surface in the house multiple times over, or whatever it might be. The compulsive behavior is a response to the obsessive thinking.
We would typically imagine the obsessive-compulsive thought or activity, we would play it through in the mind and we would watch to see what kind of emotion is triggered. Typically, fear or anxiety, but it could be other emotions as I say. When we see that emotion we then start to build a relationship with the emotion itself based on consciousness, that's where the mindfulness comes in.
The second part of our work in mindfulness therapy is to see how those emotions work, to look at their structure. And it's become very clear to me through working with people over many years now, that the primary structure of the emotions, it is not thoughts, it is imagery.
So the thoughts are products of the emotion, but what causes the emotion is imagery, psychological imagery. The way that you see that fear or anxiety in the mind is what determines its intensity and that in turn leads to the propagation of thoughts and compulsive activities.
So we examine this imagery in great detail during mindfulness work on our OCD. We literally meditate on those thoughts and the emotions underneath the thoughts to see how they work, to look at their imagery, to see what it is about the imagery that causes them to be intense, that creates that intense emotional charge.
So if you would like to learn more about how to work with either obsessive thinking or intrusive thoughts, memories and images, and also to work with compulsive behaviors, then please contact me. Let's schedule an online therapy session via Skype.
Skype Therapy for OCD is a very effective way of learning how to manage OCD. Most people see quite dramatic changes after the first three or four sessions. Once you learn how to apply mindfulness to work with your OCD you'll see very encouraging results.
So if you're interested in Skype Therapy for OCD then please reach out to me. Contact me. Tell me more about your particular situation. Tell me what times and days work for you and then we can go ahead and schedule the first Skype Therapy session to help you overcome your obsessive-compulsive disorder.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION FOR HELP WITH OCD AND ANXIETY
The secret is to learn how to train with your intrusive thoughts or memories using mindfulness so that you can break out of the habit of emotional reactivity that creates the anxiety or depression. I will teach you how to do this.
My name is Peter Strong. I'm a professional psychotherapist specializing in mindfulness therapy which I offer online via Skype for the treatment of anxiety disorders including obsessive compulsive disorder, using mindfulness therapy, which is very effective for helping you manage the uncontrollable habitual thought reactions that characterize OCD.
So working with intrusive thoughts is very important for managing not only OCD but also other anxiety disorders and depression as well. This reactive thinking or rumination is what fuels anxiety and depression. And the problem that most people find is that they become a prisoner of these intrusive thoughts, that they keep coming back and stimulating and recreating the anxiety or depression.
So managing intrusive thoughts is very important for working with almost all forms of emotional suffering. Mindfulness Therapy is a way of training with these thoughts. So the biggest problem typically is that people avoid intrusive or negative or emotionally painful thoughts. When you avoid intrusive thoughts you prevent them changing. You prevent them healing or resolving.
So avoidance is the first thing that we must overcome. We must not fall into the trap of avoiding intrusive thoughts or trying to get away from them or trying to push them away or trying to replace them with positive thoughts. That may seem like a good idea, but it's just another form of avoidance, and avoidance feeds the problem of habitual reactive thinking.
So we must stop avoiding and instead we actually learn to develop a conscious relationship with those disturbing intrusive thoughts based on conscious awareness, based on mindfulness. I will teach you how to meditate on these disturbing thoughts. This is the way that leads to resolution that helps end those intrusive thoughts.
Learning to meditate on them means building that conscious and non-reactive relationship to the thoughts. That's what's needed to resolve them. And it's a process whereby we train, essentially train with the thoughts, learning to be non-reactive and not becoming identified with them.
This is something that is quite easy for you to do as long as you understand clearly what you're doing and you get a little guidance, and that's what I will teach you during these online therapy sessions for OCD.
I will teach you how to work with these intrusive thoughts, how to train with them so that you can overcome this pattern of habitual identification and reactivity that simply feeds the thoughts.
So if you like to learn more about how to work with intrusive thoughts using mindfulness therapy, and really get into the heart of the problem and changing those underlying habits, then please do email me and schedule a Skype Therapy session.
People see results quite quickly when they start applying this very mindfulness and consciousness focused approach to working with intrusive thoughts on other aspects of OCD such as intrusive memories. That's a very common feature for PTSD. Working with very emotionally charged and disturbing memories that become intrusive.
We use the same kind of principles in mindfulness therapy. We do not avoid them. Instead we learn how to train with them so that we can help those memories resolve naturally so they no longer become a problem.
So if you would like to learn more, simply email me and schedule a session. I see clients via Skype. I like Skype because it allows you to see each other and that is really important for psychotherapy, because you need to understand the principles that I will be teaching, and to do that you really need to see me and I need to see you so we can establish a really good level of communication.
If you do that then Skype Therapy is really no different than meeting in person.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND ANXIETY
You do not need medications to treat Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Instead you should learn how to work with the emotional part that makes intrusive thoughts intrusive. This is what we work on during online mindfulness therapy sessions.
So how to treat OCD without medication? So, OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, is a problem in which we become prisoners of intrusive thoughts. Essentially we become prisoners of highly emotionally charged thoughts whatever they might be. There can be many many different types of obsessive thoughts or beliefs that we're struggling with.
But the key component here is that the thoughts are emotionally charged. So in order to overcome OCD you have to neutralize this emotional charge that makes those thoughts so intrusive. And that's what we focus on during online Mindfulness Therapy sessions for treating OCD.
We actually learn how to meditate on those thoughts. We introduce those intrusive thoughts into the mind and then we learn how to change our relationship to those thoughts so that we can become the Observer observing the thought as an object in the mind instead of our usual habit which is to become identified with the thought and therefore become reactive and overcome by the thought.
When we become reactive and identified with intrusive thoughts that simply feeds those intrusive thoughts, it feeds the emotional energy behind the thoughts and that leads to proliferation of intrusive thoughts, which creates even more emotional suffering.
So when we are meditating on the same intrusive thoughts, we're learning to break that pattern of reactive identification, we learn to see the thoughts without reacting. And that's the first essential step in the treatment of OCD using mindfulness.
We have to completely break the habit of becoming overwhelmed by the thoughts, we have to be able to learn how to sit with those thoughts without becoming identified with them. That's an essential part of mindfulness training to overcome OCD.
A second part of working with the emotional content of the intrusive thoughts is to actually work with their imagery, and this is quite a novel concept to most people, but emotional imagery is very, very important. This is what actually creates the emotion that is triggered by the thoughts.
The imagery: how you see it in the mind. How big are the intrusive thoughts? What position does it have in your psychological space? Do you see it in the mind? Do you see it in the heart or the stomach? Do you see it in front of you or above you? The position of thoughts is part of their imagery and that's an extremely important part of what makes those thoughts emotionally charged.
So the imagery is what creates the emotion and the emotion is what causes the thoughts to become intrusive and repetitive and prevents the thoughts from simply resolving themselves like other thoughts.
So we work with this imagery and we work on changing this imagery and when we change the imagery you change that emotional charge. When you change the emotional charge of a thought, the thought begins to subside and lose power in the mind.
So those are two parts of what I will teach you during online therapy sessions for your OCD, and the mindfulness approach works extremely well and most people will see quite substantial changes after three to four sessions of practicing mindfulness meditation on thoughts.
If you'd like to learn more, go to my website and please email me if you'd like to schedule a therapy session with me via Skype to help you overcome your OCD. Thank you.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND ANXIETY
Read more:
Main site:
Online Therapist for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Looking for an Online Therapist for OCD?