Are you struggling with OCD & intrusive thoughts? CONTACT ME for details about session times & fees for Online Mindfulness Therapy via Skype
Online Mindfulness Therapy is one of the best approaches for managing OCD and for breaking free from compulsive and intrusive negative thinking.
The key is to establish a mindful relationship with your thoughts and emotions in which you train yourself to stay conscious and not become identified with those thoughts and not blindly fall into compulsive behaviors. We achieve this by actually learning how to meditate on those negative thoughts and compulsive feelings rather than try to exclude them or seek diversion. Avoidance is your enemy because avoidance and aversion are both based on fear which will feed OCD.
Online Mindfulness Psychotherapy via Skype for Managing Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Intrusive Overthinking without relying on drugs.
Mindfulness Therapy provides a very good therapeutic approach for gaining freedom from intrusive thoughts and addictive behaviors by teaching you how to work with your OCD thoughts and impulses using mindfulness training and the methods of Mindfulness Therapy.
To break free from 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 sessions together.
Peter is extremely knowledgeable on his core subject or mindfulness and also in Buddhism more generally and I found our discussions fascinating. Peter is also an ex scientist so there is nothing new age or flaky about him. He is an extremely practical person that focuses on techniques that are proven to actually work through real experience.”
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE ME TO LEARN HOW TO START SKYPE THERAPY WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OCD
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
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.
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.
FOR HELP WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND ANXIETY
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.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY VIA SKYPE
You do not need medications to treat Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Instead you should learn how to work with the emotional part that makes intrusive thoughts intrusive. This is what we work on during online mindfulness therapy sessions.
So how to treat OCD without medication? So, OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, is a problem in which we become prisoners of intrusive thoughts. Essentially we become prisoners of highly emotionally charged thoughts whatever they might be. There can be many many different types of obsessive thoughts or beliefs that we're struggling with.
But the key component here is that the thoughts are emotionally charged. So in order to overcome OCD you have to neutralize this emotional charge that makes those thoughts so intrusive. And that's what we focus on during online Mindfulness Therapy sessions for treating OCD.
We actually learn how to meditate on those thoughts. We introduce those intrusive thoughts into the mind and then we learn how to change our relationship to those thoughts so that we can become the Observer observing the thought as an object in the mind instead of our usual habit which is to become identified with the thought and therefore become reactive and overcome by the thought.
When we become reactive and identified with intrusive thoughts that simply feeds those intrusive thoughts, it feeds the emotional energy behind the thoughts and that leads to proliferation of intrusive thoughts, which creates even more emotional suffering.
So when we are meditating on the same intrusive thoughts, we're learning to break that pattern of reactive identification, we learn to see the thoughts without reacting. And that's the first essential step in the treatment of OCD using mindfulness.
We have to completely break the habit of becoming overwhelmed by the thoughts, we have to be able to learn how to sit with those thoughts without becoming identified with them. That's an essential part of mindfulness training to overcome OCD.
A second part of working with the emotional content of the intrusive thoughts is to actually work with their imagery, and this is quite a novel concept to most people, but emotional imagery is very, very important. This is what actually creates the emotion that is triggered by the thoughts.
The imagery: how you see it in the mind. How big are the intrusive thoughts? What position does it have in your psychological space? Do you see it in the mind? Do you see it in the heart or the stomach? Do you see it in front of you or above you? The position of thoughts is part of their imagery and that's an extremely important part of what makes those thoughts emotionally charged.
So the imagery is what creates the emotion and the emotion is what causes the thoughts to become intrusive and repetitive and prevents the thoughts from simply resolving themselves like other thoughts.
So we work with this imagery and we work on changing this imagery and when we change the imagery you change that emotional charge. When you change the emotional charge of a thought, the thought begins to subside and lose power in the mind.
So those are two parts of what I will teach you during online therapy sessions for your OCD, and the mindfulness approach works extremely well and most people will see quite substantial changes after three to four sessions of practicing mindfulness meditation on thoughts.
If you'd like to learn more, go to my website and please email me if you'd like to schedule a therapy session with me via Skype to help you overcome your OCD. Thank you.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME FOR TREATING OCD WITHOUT MEDICATION
Main LinkedIn article: Online Therapy for OCD
Online therapy for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder via Skype