Are you struggling with OCD & intrusive thoughts? CONTACT ME for details about session times & fees for Online Mindfulness Therapy via Skype
Mindfulness Therapy provides a very good treatment for overcoming obsessive thoughts and behaviors by teaching you how to work with OCD thoughts and impulses using mindfulness.
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.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE ME TO LEARN HOW TO START SKYPE THERAPY WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OCD AND ANXIETY
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. I'm a professional psychotherapist and I provide online psychotherapy for OCD. So if you're interested in getting help from an online psychotherapist for the treatment of OCD and for work with intrusive thoughts and intrusive memories and other forms of intrusive thinking, then please reach out to me.
I offer all my sessions through Skype. Skype is really important for online therapy because it allows you to see each other and this greatly improves the effectiveness of communication, which clearly is needed for good quality psychotherapy.
During our online psychotherapy sessions for OCD we learn how to break free from the blind habitual reactivity in the mind where we become blindly identified with these intrusive thoughts or obsessive thoughts.
This is critical because if we become blindly identified with the thoughts, then they basically control us. And this leads to the proliferation of more intrusive thoughts, which in turn feeds the underlying emotion, whatever that may be, that's feeding the intrusive thoughts. So we need to stop this process of proliferation of reactive thinking in the mind.
The way we go about that in Mindfulness Therapy, which is what I teach for the treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder and intrusive thoughts is by learning how to meditate on those thoughts.
So we don't avoid the thoughts. That's the worst thing you can do, because if you try to avoid the thoughts, as painful as they may be, you will simply feed the underlying fear, the emotional charge that makes those thoughts intrusive. So we don't want to avoid our thoughts.
Instead, we want to meditate on them, which is a process of choosing to bring them into the mind, but to remain fully present as a conscious observer. This is what makes all the difference. So by meditating on our intrusive thoughts or memories or images we are training ourselves out of this habit of reactive identification and we start to see the thoughts more as objects in the mind. This helps us detach from them. They become objects and we become the observer of those objects.
This produces a very significant shift in the mind and starts to fundamentally resolve the emotional charge of the thought. When you stop feeding it, it starts to heal.
So we learn to meditate on our thoughts. We learn to develop that healthy distance from the intrusive-obsessive thoughts. Then we we can start to develop a response pattern that helps resolve the underlying fear, learning how to comfort the fear internally.
Finding a way of being with the fear that helps it heal. This is called the response of compassion, which is very much a part of mindfulness, and Mindfulness Therapy is about developing this internal consciousness and compassion towards those emotions that are in pain. This is what is needed for healing. And it's very effective.
Trying to stop thinking by willpower, trying to replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts, arguing with them and trying to convince yourself that those thoughts are irrational and you shouldn't be thinking them is not an effective way of overcoming OCD.
Those kind of cognitive processes don't really work. The reason they don't work is because they are at the wrong level. They are at this same level as the intrusive thoughts that you're trying to change. Thoughts cannot change thoughts very effectively.
If you want to achieve freedom from intrusive thoughts, you have to change and heal the underlying emotion that is feeding those thoughts. And that is the function of meditating on the thoughts so we can find that emotion, which is usually fear, and help it heal.
We can help it heal mostly by developing this internal relationship where you are the observer, which is your True Self, and that does not react out of fear to those fear-based intrusive thoughts. This is what is needed to heal intrusive thoughts. You have to bring your True Self into connection with the Little Self, the fear.
So if you'd like to learn more about working with an online psychotherapist for OCD and you like the idea of online psychotherapy via Skype, then do please contact me and schedule a therapy session via Skype.
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 - the prescription medications may reduce symptoms for a while, but medications will not transform the underlying process that produces your anxiety or depression.
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 WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OCD AND ANXIETY
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 Obsessive Compulsive Disorder 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 Obsessive Compulsive Disorder 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.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE ME TO LEARN HOW TO START SKYPE THERAPY WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OCD AND ANXIETY
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong. I am a professional psychotherapist specializing in Mindfulness Therapy for the treatment of anxiety and depression and also obsessive-compulsive disorder including what is now becoming called Pure O, Pure Obsessive OCD. So this is basically the situation in which the mind is bombarded by intrusive thoughts.
The kind of cognitive material that invades the mind can be in the form of just repetitive thoughts; it could be in the form of repetitive intrusive beliefs; it could be in the form of an obsessive desire to hurt yourself or another person.
Very often the intrusive thoughts take the form of imagery, whether fantasy imagery or memory imagery as in the case of PTSD flashback memories. These thoughts and images become very intrusive, taking a great deal of our attention and cause a tremendous amount of emotional suffering in the form of anxiety and also depression, as well.
So it's really quite common. Pure O OCD, Pure O, is quite common. It's estimated probably at least 1 percent of the population in the USA and also in the UK and Europe suffer from some form of Pure OCD.
The best approach to deal with this is not to try and block those thoughts, because that reaction, that response of aversion, tends to feed the intrusive thoughts themselves. It feeds the emotional charge that keeps those thoughts recurring in the mind. So we don't try to argue with the thoughts, we don't try to remove them; we certainly don't try to avoid them, either.
What we find is most effective is some form of exposure therapy. So exposure response prevention therapy has become quite popular, ERP, and the type of therapy that I offer online is called Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy, which is very effective indeed.
So in the approach that I use, we deliberately bring those intrusive thoughts into the mind but we train ourselves to remain as the observer. The habit we are trying to combat here is the habit of reactive identification, whereby we become and thought. We lose our identity as the observer and we become the object that is observed, which in this case is the obsessive thought or image.
So that process of reactive identification is really what feeds Pure O and other forms of OCD, because the moment that you become captivated by the thoughts or the emotion and you start reacting then that will feed the emotion that is fueling that intrusive thought.
So we have to learn how to sit with the intrusive thoughts or images without reacting. And that takes some training and that's what I will teach you during the Online Mindfulness Therapy sessions that I offer.
We will learn to meditate on those thoughts, taking each thought and making it the primary object of our conscious attention. That's quite different than reactive awareness where it's just running the show. Now we are training and becoming detached from the thoughts and becoming the observer of the thoughts, and that's a very different quality of consciousness and that does not feed the emotional charge of the thoughts or images.
So that's the first stage in working with OCD intrusive thoughts. We learn to become the observer and cultivate that state of being the observer. The second part of working with Pure O thoughts is one of looking at the imagery of the emotion that is feeding the thoughts. So the thought itself is not actually the problem.
Now emotions work through imagery in the mind. The imagery of an emotion is what actually causes that emotion to take form, and then that emotion converts into thoughts and actions, and so on. So we examine the imagery of the emotion.
We work on changing that imagery, because when you change the imagery you change the intensity of the thought. When you change it enough, then the thought loses its emotional charge and then it will cease to be intrusive.
In the case of PTSD and emotional trauma the factor that really keeps those image-based thoughts active and intrusive in the mind is the intensity and size of the imagery itself. The qualities of the imagery are what keep the thoughts alive in the mind so we work on changing that imagery.
Contact me to learn more about how to work with your Pure O OCD using Mindfulness Therapy.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OCD AND ANXIETY
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