Online Psychotherapist for OCD via Skype
Online Psychotherapist for OCD via Skype
Online Mindfulness Therapist over Skype for Dealing with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Intrusive Overthinking without using anti-anxiety medications and antidepressants
Mindfulness Therapy provides a very good treatment for overcoming obsessive thoughts and compulsive 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.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION FOR HELP WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND ANXIETY
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Main LinkedIn article: Online Psychotherapist for OCD
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Watch this video and contact me if you are looking for online help for OCD.
Online Therapists for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
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.
Online Mindfulness-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for OCD and intrusive thoughts
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
Best online treatment for OCD without medication
OCD Therapy Online through Skype
Welcome. My name is Peter Strong and I'm a professional psychotherapist based in Boulder Colorado. And I offer online mindfulness therapy for the treatment of anxiety and depression and also obsessive-compulsive disorder.
If you're looking for online therapy for OCD, then I invite you to go to my website and learn more about this therapy service and about mindfulness therapy and then please contact me to schedule an online therapy session to help you manage your OCD.
OCD therapy online is very effective and most of my clients see quite substantial changes after the first three to four sessions of online Mindfulness Therapy. The key to working with us OCD is to learn how to change your relationship to your thoughts, to your beliefs, to your memories and to your emotions.
The biggest problem is that we simply become controlled by thoughts, we lose perspective. We become a prisoner of our thoughts and also our beliefs. So mindfulness training is the process of learning to break this imprisonment by thoughts. We do this by learning to meditate on the mind. This is called mindfulness meditation.
Mindfulness meditation is the process of learning to sit with your thoughts, emotions, memories and beliefs without becoming reactive, without becoming identified, without becoming controlled by the content of your own mind.
This is absolutely essential because if you cannot establish a degree of freedom in relationship to your intrusive thoughts then you will be a slave to those thoughts and they will not change, because your reactivity will have the effect of reinforcing those thoughts and the emotion behind the thoughts.
So, that's the first step of mindfulness therapy, is learning to establish a balanced relationship with our intrusive thoughts. We do this by meditating on our intrusive thoughts, but consciously instead of in a blind unconscious manner.
And the second stage is one of working with those thoughts, and more importantly, working with the emotional energy underneath the thoughts that is making those thoughts intrusive thoughts, making them powerful, giving them the power to cause problems and cause you to be overcome by them.
Working with the underlying fear is an essential part of breaking free from OCD. So the underlying emotion is the fuel that feeds those intrusive thoughts and the intrusive thoughts and beliefs are what get converted into compulsive behaviors.
So really the root is to learn how to change our relationship to thoughts and then to resolve the underlying fear that fuels those thoughts. And this is what I will teach you during online OCD therapy.
So, if you would like to learn more, please go to my website. Please e-mail me with any questions you may have and let's schedule a therapy session over Skype at a time that works for you. Thank you.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION FOR HELP WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND ANXIETY
Online cognitive behavioral therapy for OCD
How to stop OCD thoughts - Online Mindfulness Therapist for OCD
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 thought, it's not the narrative that's really that 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. Thank you.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION FOR HELP WITH OCD AND ANXIETY
Online Psychotherapist for OCD via Skype