Are you struggling with OCD & intrusive thoughts? CONTACT ME for details about session times & fees for Online Mindfulness Therapy via Skype
Online Mindfulness Psychotherapy through Skype for Controlling Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Intrusive Overthinking without relying on medications.
Mindfulness Therapy provides a very good treatment plan for managing intrusive thoughts and addictive behaviors by teaching you how to work with your OCD thoughts and compulsions using mindfulness training and the very effective methods of Mindfulness Therapy.
To overcome OCD and obsessive-intrusive thoughts you MUST learn how to neutralize the underlying emotion, usually fear, that fuels obsessive-intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors.
This is the primary focus of Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy for treating Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and is what I will be teaching you during our online therapy sessions together.
"I had been stuck in another bout of intense generalized anxiety for several months when I found Peter. His website states that people experience significant results after 3-4 sessions. Well, after just 2 sessions I was 80% back to normal."
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME FOR TREATING OCD WITHOUT MEDICATION
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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The principal teaching in Mindfulness Therapy for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is to learn how to meditate on your intrusive thoughts and on the impulses that lead to compulsive actions. The critical teaching here is that we must develop a conscious relationship with our thoughts and with our emotions. Mindfulness meditation provides one of the best and most direct ways of developing a conscious relationship with your mind.
The biggest problem that I come across when helping people manage OCD is that people fall into a habit of avoidance. You try to blot out or escape from those unpleasant intrusive thoughts and you react against those impulses to convert your intrusive thoughts into actions through willpower, through cultivating aversion to those compulsive impulses.
This will not work. The more that you react either through avoidance or through aversion, the stronger the underlying emotional charge will be for those intrusive thoughts and compulsive impulses.
So trying to overcome OCD through willpower or through rational thinking or some other cognitive process is not usually a very effective.
One of my main criticisms of cognitive behavioral therapy for OCD is that it tries to convince people that the intrusive thoughts and impulses are irrational and not real, and that you can simply replace them with more rational or positive thoughts and behaviors. But, in my experience, this is not an effective approach. People already know that their OCD thoughts and impulses are irrational. That is not the issue for the vast majority of people. The problem is they can't stop themselves reacting. They can't stop those repetitive thoughts and behaviors. They are just too strong.
What makes Intrusive thoughts and impulses strong is the emotional charge of those thoughts and impulses. The strength of the emotional charge is the issue, not irrational thinking, and this is the primary focus in Mindfulness Therapy. We work on those emotions. We work on neutralizing the underlying emotions, not the thoughts.
The thoughts and the behaviors are secondary, they are the logical consequences of those very strong underlying emotions. The intrusive-obsessive thoughts are simply the byproducts of the underlying emotion.
So if you want to overcome OCD, you have to work with the underlying emotions that are giving power to your intrusive thoughts or memories, including traumatic memories, as in PTSD. You have to neutralize the emotion in order for those thoughts and memories and impulses to heal and to resolve and to stop being intrusive.
The thoughts are intrusive simply because they have a high emotional charge. So the mind is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. The mind brings into into our awareness, thoughts, memories, experiences that have a high emotional charge and those that don't have a high emotional charge resolve very quickly.
So the mind is working perfectly. The problem is not the thoughts but rather the emotional charge underneath that has become fixed and has become stuck and unresolved.
Most thoughts and experiences arise and pass away quite quickly. But in the case of OCD thoughts and impulses, they don't pass away. They stay for a long period of time in the mind because of that strong emotional charge. That is what MUST heal in order for thoughts to stop being intrusive.
So we work at the emotional level. And the primary way that we work with the emotional charge that's fueling intrusive thoughts and behaviors is by learning how to meditate on our emotions and thoughts. So instead of trying to avoid our thoughts and impulses, we actually do the opposite, we bring them into full conscious awareness, which is really quite different than how they usually arise, which is subconscious and habitual. OCD is basically formed around conditioned habits. These are subconscious, habitual reactions that keep those thoughts arising over and over again. It's a habit. Habits thrive when there is very little or no consciousness.
So we need to overcome that unconscious habit. And that's a central part of the teaching of mindfulness therapy as I have developed it for treating OCD. It's about developing full conscious awareness around those specific obsessive thoughts and compulsive emotional impulses.
During meditation you learn to be fully present with your thoughts and emotions. Developing this very special quality of conscious awareness that we call "objective consciousness", where you are able to see the thoughts and emotions, but as an observer, rather like watching a movie as the audience.
The real issue here is that we become lost in the movie of our mind and that is what perpetuates OCD. So we learn to meditate on our mind. We learn to bring those intrusive thoughts deliberately into our awareness to develop this objective consciousness. We learn to be very present with those thoughts and the underlying emotion that are fueling the thoughts. This is what leads to healing. This is the necessary step for healing and recovery from OCD.
So willpower, which is really cultivating aversion towards the impulses and thoughts, is actually taking conscious awareness away from those emotions and thoughts as we become ensnared in the conditioned awareness of aversion or dislike or hatred or criticism of those thoughts and impulses.
So we need to learn to be present directly, without any reactivity at all, without any aversion, without any avoidance, without any cognitive reactivity. Trying to understand the emotion, trying to change our beliefs and things of that nature will be ineffective. Beliefs change themselves once the emotional impulse that fuels those particular beliefs changes.
You have to change things at the emotional level in order for beliefs and obsessive thoughts to change. If that emotional charge remains strong, then the obsessive belief will remain active. For example, the belief that if I don't wash my hands 10 more times, then I will be carrying those germs to my family. So I must wash my hands 10 more times. That's a belief. And what keeps it strong and active is the emotional charge of that belief. The problem is not being irrational; the problem lies in the emotional charge that cause us to attach to the belief.
The most common emotional charge around OCD is fear. So we need to learn to heal that fear.
The best way to heal fear is by developing a conscious, mindful relationship with that fear. We learn to see the fear as being like a child. It can't free itself from its own fear so it goes to its parent for comforting. We need to establish the same kind of inner relationship with our fear. The True Self-Little Self alliance is what I call it, and that is the most effective and necessary step for healing the fear that is keeping those obsessive thoughts active in the case of handwashing.
Once that fear is resolved you will no longer be dominated by those intrusive thoughts. They will cease to have any effect, any meaning. They will not convert into the impulse to wash your hands because there's no emotional charge behind them. They are neutralized and are now just empty thoughts and they just resolve to be replaced by more functional, positive thoughts quite naturally and without any effort.
So we have to work at the emotional level of OCD. That's the primary teaching in Mindfulness Therapy. And this is what I will teach you during our sessions together as an online therapist.
I will teach you these very specific mindfulness tools for overcoming your OCD.
Online therapy is an excellent option for working with anxiety disorders and also for depression and PTSD and other forms of emotional suffering that are caused by these underlying subconscious habits.
The key requirement for successful online therapy is that you can see your therapist by a Skype or Zoom or FaceTime or other video platform. Being able to see each other makes communication effective and that's necessary for good psychotherapy.
So if you're suffering from OCD and you would like to get help from an online therapist to treat that OCD using mindfulness, then do please contact me so we can schedule a Skype Therapy session.
You can expect to see very noticeable improvements in your obsessive, intrusive thoughts and compulsive actions in a relatively short time, once you start applying these mindfulness techniques that I'll be teaching you.
So please contact me so we can schedule a Skype Therapy session to help you on your path of recovery from obsessive compulsive disorder. Thank you.
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 psychotherapy 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.
CONTACT ME IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT ONLINE THERAPY VIA SKYPE
Welcome! If you'd like to learn how to cure OCD intrusive thoughts then you might want to consider a few sessions of online Mindfulness Therapy with me.
Mindfulness Therapy is a very effective way of working with intrusive thoughts and obsessive thoughts in general. It helps you learn how to change the relationship that you have to thoughts in general, so that you don't become overwhelmed by them, that you don't become identified with thoughts.
That is the first key training in Mindfulness Therapy, is how to be with your thoughts without becoming reactive, without becoming identified with them, without allowing them to dominates the mind. It is possible to sit with your thoughts and see them as objects in the mind the same way that you could sit with a dangerous animal and watch it, without becoming overwhelmed with fear.
Let us imagine a trip to the zoo. We see animals in the zoo that could be very dangerous if we didn't have a good relationship with them. In that case we are separated by the cage that the animals are in. It is possible to put your thoughts into a cage too if necessary.
But the thing is, when you work with your thoughts using mindfulness you can basically create the right internal situation whereby you can be with that thought without becoming overwhelmed.
So the primary way we do this is by actually meditating on our thoughts. We deliberately choose to meditate on our intrusive thoughts but we do it under controlled circumstances. We make the choice to invite this thought into the mind for the purpose of training with it, so that's quite different.
The main problem with OCD intrusive thoughts is that they there's no consciousness involved. They just arise spontaneously in a habitual conditioned manner and then create emotional suffering. But we can change that by choosing to invite a scary thought into the mind, but on our terms, and that makes all the difference.
So building a real relationship with the thoughts in which we learn how to become less and less reactive is a primary function that we develop during mindfulness therapy sessions. Another thing that is quite interesting and that I will teach you and show you how to do during these therapy sessions, is how to work with the imagery of the thoughts.
So any thought that has an emotional charge to it will have associated emotional imagery. The most simple example of that is that the emotional charge of the thought appears very large and very close and usually above us.
That's why we say "I feel overwhelmed" by the thought, because literally we seem the thought above us. And it has to be big in order to be overwhelming. And it has to be very close to be overwhelming. So the imagery of the thought is really quite important. Actually, I would say it's vitally important.
When we meditate on our thoughts consciously we get to see this imagery and when we see the imagery then we can change that imagery because all emotional imagery is a product of habit, of conditioning, and habits can be changed when we develop a conscious relationship with the habit.
So we look at the imagery of our emotions, our emotionally charged thoughts, and we help change that imagery and diminish the emotional charge of the thoughts.
So this is working with the emotions underneath the thoughts in a very productive and positive way that leads to the resolution and basically the healing of the thoughts so it no longer has that emotional charge that makes it intrusive.
So this is a very effective way of working with obsessive thoughts, with intrusive thoughts, and for basically neutralizing them so that they don't catalyze compulsive behaviors which is the second stage of OCD.
After the intrusive thoughts comes compulsive behaviors. But those behaviors are powered by the emotional charge of the intrusive thoughts.
So if you would like to learn more about how to cure OCD, how to basically neutralize those intrusive thoughts and break out of the very scary place that OCD intrusive thoughts create, do please send me an email and let's schedule a trial therapy session via Skype, and I will show you how to work with your thoughts using mindfulness.
Mindfulness Therapy is by far the most effective method out there, besides CBT, and most people that I work with see quite dramatic changes within the first three to four sessions. So please contact me and let's schedule a session. Thank you.
FOR HELP WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND ANXIETY
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 TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME FOR TREATING OCD WITHOUT MEDICATION
Online Counseling through skype for help with OCD