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 therapeutic approach for eliminating intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors by teaching you how to work with your OCD thoughts and compulsions using mindfulness training and the techniques of Mindfulness Therapy.
To successfully overcome OCD and obsessive-intrusive thoughts you MUST learn how to neutralize the underlying fear that fuels obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors.
This is the primary focus of Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy for overcoming Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and is what I will be teaching you during our online therapy sessions together.
"My sessions with Peter have been transformational…I changed more after 2 weeks of online counseling than after 2 years of talking therapy."
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE ME TO LEARN HOW TO START SKYPE THERAPY WITH ME FOR THE TREATMENT OF OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER
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
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.
Welcome. My name is Peter Strong. I am a professional psychotherapist specializing in Online Mindfulness Therapy, which I offer via Skype for the treatment of anxiety disorders, including obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD.
If you're looking for online therapy for OCD, then I invite you to go to my website and contact me if you have any questions about the Mindfulness Therapy program that I teach online via Skype.
If you are looking for online therapy, and a lot of people prefer online therapy these days because it's so convenient and it also gives you greater access to therapists like myself who specialize in Mindfulness Therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy. Whenever you're selecting an online therapist, do make sure that the therapist offers therapy via Skype.
It's very important that you can see each other. If you can see each other, then there's no difference in the effectiveness of online therapy by Skype compared to therapy in-person. But you do need to be able to see each other.
So in the Mindfulness Therapy approach our focus is on helping you fundamentally change the way that you relate to those intrusive thoughts, those obsessive thoughts that trigger unwanted repetitive behaviors in the compulsive aspect of OCD, and that also cause a great deal of suffering, emotional suffering.
So we do that by developing a conscious relationship, first of all, in which we are able to observe the fear and its thoughts without becoming identified with the fear and its associated thoughts. When you become identified with the fear, then the fear controls you.
But when you are not identified with the fear, then the fear is reduced to what it actually is, which is an object, a mental object. So cultivating a mindful relationship with the fear means that we are learning to see the fear objectively as an object in the mind instead of becoming that fear.
So the only way to do that effectively is to meditate on the fear, because meditation is the process of cultivating a fully conscious and non-reactive relationship with whatever it is you're meditating on. In this case, we meditate on the fear because we want to break free from that habit of reactive identification, which feeds the fear. So that's a very important part of the mindfulness training that I will be teaching you during our therapy sessions together, if you choose to work with me.
There are other aspects, of course, that we have to look at in OCD. So working with the underlying emotions that are fueling the obsessive thinking and compulsive behaviors is central. But we also need to look at ways of managing the compulsive aspect.
That is where that fear is converted into repetitive behaviors like hand-washing. So there we need to learn how to manage that impulse itself. So we use mindfulness to develop an objective relationship with the impulse so that we can see it separately as an object and not become overwhelmed by it.
This is the same principle that we have to apply when we're working with addiction. We have to learn how to break free from becoming controlled by that impulse.
So if you'd like to learn more about Mindfulness Therapy for OCD and you like the idea of online therapy for the treatment of OCD, then do reach out to me and ask any questions you may have about this process and we can go ahead and schedule your first Skype Therapy session for your obsessive compulsive disorder or problem with intrusive thoughts.
The Mindfulness Therapy approach is very effective. Most people sees tremendous improvements in a relatively short time. I have worked with people who have suffered from intrusive thoughts for years, and it really affected the quality of their life, dramatically. Within three or four sessions, they begin to see a way out from this nightmare, which is how obsessive thoughts, intrusive thoughts are often experienced; it's like a nightmare, it is terrible, terribly painful.
So it is possible to change and really quite quickly once you learn how to work with your emotions, to fear primarily, and with thoughts and with emotional impulses using mindfulness.
When you develop a conscious relationship without fear, it will heal. If you feed it with reactivity, including acting out the particular compulsion, that will simply feed that underlying fear. But when you change your relationship to one that's based on mindfulness, and with mindfulness comes compassion, then you'll start to see rapid healing from OCD.
So if you'd like to learn more about how to recover from OCD using mindfulness. Then please contact me. Thank you.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME
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 treating OCD 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 FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME
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 TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME FOR TREATING OCD WITHOUT MEDICATION
Online Psychotherapy to manage obsessive intrusive thoughts via Skype