Are you struggling with OCD & intrusive thoughts? CONTACT ME for details about session times & fees for Online Mindfulness Therapy via Skype
Mindfulness Therapy provides an excellent treatment plan for managing obsessive thoughts and addictive behaviors by teaching you how to work with OCD thoughts and impulses using mindfulness.
To break free from the 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 Exprosure Therapy for OCD.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME 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
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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.
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong, and I am a professional On line Therapist. I specialize in Mindfulness Therapy for treating a range of conditions, including anxiety, depression, stress, addictions and also for the online treatment of OCD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
So, how does Mindfulness Therapy work? Well, briefly, Mindfulness Therapy teaches you how to control the reactive thoughts that cause reactive-compulsive behaviors.
We learn how to establish what is called a Mindfulness-based Relationship with our compulsive thoughts, so that we can hold those thoughts in our awareness without becoming overwhelmed by them. When we can do this, then we can start to examine the underlying emotion that duels the obsessive thoughts - and this is essential for the treatment of OCD.
Working with that underlying emotion using mindfulness allows us to change the structure of how that emotion operates in the mind. So, once you can change the underlying emotions, then you take the fuel away from the obsessive thinking and this then stops that obsessive thinking converting into compulsive behaviors.
So, if you would like to learn more about Mindfulness Therapy for OCD, then please contact me through my website. Send me an email and then we can discuss if Online Therapy for OCD is a good choice for you, and I will explain more detail about how this works, and then we can schedule a Skype Therapy Session for your OCD. So, please, if you are interested in Online Mindfulness Therapy for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, contact me now.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND ANXIETY