Are you struggling with OCD & intrusive thoughts? CONTACT ME for details about session times & fees for Online Mindfulness Therapy via Skype
Mindfulness Therapy provides one of the best available therapeutic approaches for managing obsessive thoughts and behaviors by teaching you how to work with OCD thoughts and compulsions using the powerful 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 intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors.
This is the primary focus of Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy for treating Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND ANXIETY
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
You might find this video informative. Contact me if you are looking for online help 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, and I am a professional On line Therapist. I specialize in Mindfulness Therapy for treating a range of conditions, including anxiety, depression, stress, addictions and also for the online treatment of OCD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
So, how does Mindfulness Therapy work? Well, briefly, Mindfulness Therapy teaches you how to control the reactive thoughts that cause reactive-compulsive behaviors.
We learn how to establish what is called a Mindfulness-based Relationship with our compulsive thoughts, so that we can hold those thoughts in our awareness without becoming overwhelmed by them. When we can do this, then we can start to examine the underlying emotion that duels the obsessive thoughts - and this is essential for the treatment of OCD.
Working with that underlying emotion using mindfulness allows us to change the structure of how that emotion operates in the mind. So, once you can change the underlying emotions, then you take the fuel away from the obsessive thinking and this then stops that obsessive thinking converting into compulsive behaviors.
So, if you would like to learn more about Mindfulness Therapy for OCD, please contact me through my website. Send me an email and then we can discuss if Online Therapy for OCD is a good choice for you, and I will explain more detail about how this works, and then we can schedule a Skype Therapy Session for your OCD. So, please, if you are interested in Online Mindfulness Therapy for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, contact me now.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND ANXIETY
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
During our Skype therapy sessions I will teach you how to neutralize intrusive thoughts and emotions using the techniques of Mindfulness Therapy.
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong. I'm a professional psychotherapist and I offer online Mindfulness Therapy via Skype for the treatment of anxiety, depression addictions and particularly for help with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
So this is very common. It's a very common problem. It's very distressing for many people. And this is something that responds very well to the techniques of Mindfulness Therapy. If you're interested in seeing an online therapist for OCD then please reach out to me. Contact me and schedule a therapy session via Skype for your OCD.
So the principle of Mindfulness Therapy is learning how to work with these intrusive thoughts and compulsive impulses. Mindfulness is a way of changing the relationship that you have to intrusive thoughts and emotions in general. It overcomes this habit of becoming reactively identified with thoughts and emotions. This is the primary problem with OCD.
The thoughts get triggered and they appear in the mind. And then we simply become completely overwhelmed by them. We become identified with and become become consumed by the thought. And then it tends to propagate and produce even more thoughts, and that feeds the underlying anxiety that fuels the obsessive thoughts.
So the first step in Mindfulness Therapy is learning and retraining yourself to sit with a thought consciously, but without becoming identified with it and without becoming reactive. The process for doing this is meditation.
You learn to meditate on those thoughts. People think that meditation is about escaping from the mind and thoughts, and it's not. That is not the kind of meditation that I teach.
So mindfulness meditation is about learning to establish balance in the mind so that you can be free from emotional suffering no matter what thoughts arise in the mind. That's the primary focus for mindfulness meditation: freedom.
So that's the first part of the training and I will teach you how to do this and you will learn how to meditate on your intrusive thoughts and how to re-establish this balance so that they do not overwhelm you.
You need to learn to develop a compassionate and friendly relationship with your intrusive thoughts. If you try to avoid your thoughts or suppress them or run away from them or even distract yourself from them this will have the effect of reinforcing those thoughts, and more importantly, reinforcing the fear underneath those thoughts.
In mindfulness work we develop this inner fearlessness. This is what we call your True Self and the True Self is really nothing more than the observer within you that we train to sit with that thought or series of thoughts or to sit with the fear and not react to it.
So the emotion of fear, like any other emotion, is based around imagery. You can explore changing the imagery so that the fear resolves itself. This is a very important part of Mindfulness Therapy that we call mindfulness-based imagery reprocessing.
It Is the same process that we use when we're working with PTSD and recovering from very distressing, traumatic memories. Same process exactly. You look at the imagery itself, how it works and then we explore changing that imagery into a form that no longer triggers emotional trauma.
Contact me for help with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and intrusive thoughts
If you'd like to get started with me and schedule some online therapy sessions via Skype, then please contact me and let's set up a session. The mindfulness approach is really effective for working with intrusive and distressing thoughts and OCD.
So most people who I work with see quite remarkable changes within three or four sessions. Once you start learning how to apply mindfulness yourself to work with your fear and with the thoughts you'll rapidly see progress, and that's the focus of Mindfulness Therapy.
I will teach you how to work with your emotions and thoughts more effectively, to give you the tools to overcome OCD and anxiety.
So please contact me if you'd like to get started and you would like to overcome your OCD using Mindfulness Therapy. Thank you.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND ANXIETY
Overcome your OCD through Online Therapy