Online Buddhist Therapy for OCD
Online Buddhist Therapy for OCD
Learn how to manage obsessive-reactive thinking and compulsive behaviors.
Overcome Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder through Mindfulness Therapy.
Talk to an online therapist specializing in Buddhist Mindfulness-based Therapy for overcoming OCD online via Skype.
Main site:
Online Therapist for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) via Skype
Main LinkedIn article: Online Mindfulness Therapy for OCD
Online Buddhist Therapist for treating OCD and anxiety
Online Mindfulness Psychotherapy via Skype for Managing Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Intrusive Overthinking without using drugs.
Mindfulness Therapy provides an effective treatment plan for eliminating intrusive thoughts and behaviors by teaching you how to work with your OCD thoughts and impulses using mindfulness training and the very effective methods of Mindfulness Therapy.
One of the primary problems that sustains OCD is the habit of becoming identified with your OCD thoughts. We have to break free from this conditioned habitual reactivity.
This is the primary focus of Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy for overcoming OCD and is what I will be teaching you during our Skype Therapy sessions together.
Everyone that I have worked with really benefits from the mindfulness approach that I teach for healing emotional suffering…
"I have practiced working with difficult emotions with many wonderful Buddhist teachers, including Pema Chodron and Adyashanti. Peter taught me aspects and nuances that were completely new to me that are making a huge difference and allowing me to meet and heal these parts of myself more efficiently and actually with less distress."
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE BUDDHIST THERAPY SESSION FOR THE TREATMENT OF OCD
Online Buddhist therapy to overcome OCD intrusive thoughts
Welcome. My name is Peter Strong and I provide online therapy via Skype for anxiety disorders, including obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. Now, OCD is a very common anxiety disorder, and it's estimated that as many as 1 in 40 people in the US suffer from some form of OCD. It's also quite common in young children and children often experience an episode of OCD, but usually it doesn't last very long and most children completely overcome their OCD. When OCD occurs in adults, it can often last a lot longer and is harder to overcome, mainly because as adults, we tend to get more lost in thinking, and reactive thinking is one of the main mechanisms that feeds the underlying anxiety that is fueling your obsessive compulsive disorder.
There are various medications prescribed for treating OCD as an anxiety disorder. But they're often not very effective and sometimes those medications create additional problems.
Types of OCD
Obsessive Checking
There are certain main categories of OCD that we can describe. The first is obsessive checking. For example, checking if you turned off all the lights or if you locked all the doors before going to bed.
There is this incessant impulse to recheck that is based on a reactive belief that things are not completed in some way, and that's based on the emotion of fear. So the fear motivates that belief that things need to be checked again, which then leads to the compulsive behavior or sometimes ritual of rechecking over and over again. Ritualized rechecking means checking things is a specific order.
Fear of Contamination - Germophobia
Another very common kind of OCD has to do with fear of germs and the fear of infection, which leads to compulsive and sometimes ritualized handwashing, where you have to wash your hands in a certain way to try to eliminate the fear that you haven't washed your hands completely. The fear of infection or contamination is often accompanied by other emotional reactions that also feed that underlying fear, fear of infecting family members, guilt, and so on.
Obsession with Symmetry - Needing things to be arranged exactly
A third kind of OCD has to do with symmetry. And this is quite common with children, but also adults as well and it's that sense of having to put everything in the right place, with the right alignment and organized in the right way. For example, arranging all of the pens and pencils on your desk in a certain way, facing a certain direction and so on. That fear of things not being in the right position, in the right order is what feeds the obsessive compulsive behavior of arranging things in a specific way.
Fear of Aggression
Another kind of OCD that is quite common in adults is the fear of doing harm to yourself or others. For example, the fear of suddenly driving your car off the road; the fear of throwing a cup of water at someone; the fear of hurting an animal. It can take many different forms and it's very distressing if you are plagued by such aggressive thoughts. And again, this gform of OCD is often exacerbated by a great deal of secondary emotional reactivity, guilt and shame, and so on. Now, it's very rare that people with OCD-based fear of doing harm actually act out that impulse, but it's very distressing.
Obsessive Beliefs about self or other
Another common form of OCD is based around obsessive beliefs. For example, the belief that I am going insane, or that I will be punished if I do something wrong. This obsessive belief can show itself in a religious context where I feel like I will be punished if I stopped praying or if I stop going to church. We become obsessed with a particular belief and that can lead to ritualized behaviors to counter that fear.
This can also show itself has an obsession around physical appearance.For example, having an obsessive belief that your nose is too big or that you are ugly. This can convert into compulsive behaviors such as constantly checking yourself, constantly putting on makeup or some other action to try and alleviate the underlying fear.
Of course, all these compulsive behaviors and rituals do not actually release the underlying fear. It doesn't actually heal the underlying emotion.
What is the best treatment for OCD?
So how do we go about treating OCD? Well, the most common treatment involves medications and antidepressants. But as I have said, these typically are not very effective for the long term management of obsessive compulsive disorder.
A very popular form of psychotherapy is called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT. And this is a good choice because this approach starts to make you more aware of the reactive thoughts that are feeding your anxiety and lead to compulsive behaviors. And it is generally highly recommended that you look for a therapist who specializes in CBT or Mindfulness Therapy, which is what I teach.
These practical psychological approaches provide the best long term solutions for the treatment of OCD. If you would like to learn more about mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, Mindfulness Therapy, then do please contact me and we can schedule a therapy session through Skype.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE ME TO LEARN HOW TO START SKYPE THERAPY WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OCD
Online Therapist to treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder through Mindfulness Therapy
Through Mindfulness Therapy, a practical application of Buddhist Psychotherapy, we learn how to neutralize obsessive and intrusive thoughts, images and memories as well as learning how to neutralize the compulsive impulses that lead to compulsive behaviors.
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong. I'm a professional psychotherapist specializing in Mindfulness Therapy for the treatment of anxiety and depression and OCD and other emotional problems using mindfulness therapy and mindfulness-based techniques rather than medications or the conventional talking therapy that you may be familiar with.
Mindfulness Therapy really tries to address the underlying process that causes your anxiety or depression or problem with intrusive thoughts and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Skype Therapy for OCD is one of the services that I offer. All my online therapy is done via Skype. It's very important that you use Skype or Zoom or FaceTime or similar video platform because it's important that you can see each other during these sessions. This makes the therapy sessions much more effective.
During the online Skype therapy sessions that I offer I'll be teaching you how to work with the two primary elements of OCD.
So excessively worrying about that and obsessing over hygiene is one kind of reactive thinking that greatly accentuates the underlying anxiety. The thinking fuels anxiety feeds anxiety and it intensifies the anxiety. So that's one kind of thinking process.
The other kind of problems that people run into with thinking is intrusive thoughts. Intrusive thoughts, intrusive images, intrusive memories. So this is sometimes called "Pure O" sort of a pure form of obsession that is caused by intrusive thoughts that really upsets the minds and cause considerable anxiety.
So that's one side of the work. We work with these obsessive or intrusive thoughts. On the other side of OCD is working with the compulsive behaviors.
So the thoughts convert into behaviors like hand washing or trying to clean every surface in the house multiple times over, or whatever it might be. The compulsive behavior is a response to the obsessive thinking.
We would typically imagine the obsessive-compulsive thought or activity, we would play it through in the mind and we would watch to see what kind of emotion is triggered. Typically, fear or anxiety, but it could be other emotions as I say. When we see that emotion we then start to build a relationship with the emotion itself based on consciousness, that's where the mindfulness comes in.
The second part of our work in mindfulness therapy is to see how those emotions work, to look at their structure. And it's become very clear to me through working with people over many years now, that the primary structure of the emotions, it is not thoughts, it is imagery.
So the thoughts are products of the emotion, but what causes the emotion is imagery, psychological imagery. The way that you see that fear or anxiety in the mind is what determines its intensity and that in turn leads to the propagation of thoughts and compulsive activities.
We examine this imagery in great detail during mindfulness work on our OCD. We literally meditate on those thoughts and the emotions underneath the thoughts to see how they work, to look at their imagery, to see what it is about the imagery that causes them to be intense, that creates that intense emotional charge.
So if you would like to learn more about how to work with either obsessive thinking or intrusive thoughts, memories and images, and also to work with compulsive behaviors, then please contact me. Let's schedule an online therapy session via Skype.
Skype Therapy for OCD is a very effective way of learning how to manage OCD. Most people see quite dramatic changes after the first three or four sessions. Once you learn how to apply mindfulness to work with your OCD you'll see very encouraging results.
If you are interested in Skype Therapy for OCD then please reach out to me. Contact me. Tell me more about your particular situation. Tell me what times and days work for you and then we can go ahead and schedule the first Skype Therapy session to help you overcome your obsessive-compulsive disorder.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION FOR HELP WITH OCD
See an OCD therapist online
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.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION FOR HELP WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND ANXIETY
OCD Therapist specializing in Mindfulness Therapy over Skype
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong. I'm a Buddhist psychotherapist based in Colorado and I offer online therapy via Skype for treating anxiety and depression, addictions and also I get a lot of requests for help with OCD and particularly with various troubling intrusive thoughts and intrusive images.
The approach that I use is called Mindfulness Therapy, which is extremely good at helping you break free from repetitive intrusive thoughts and memories and images.
The most important thing that we must get right, right from the beginning, is to break the habit of fear reaction to the intrusive thoughts. Many people are very distressed by intrusive thoughts and it's quite natural to react with fear and also with hatred for these thoughts.
You just want them to go away at any cost. But the trouble is, that reactions of fear and hatred end up feeding those thoughts. It makes them more intense and that will cause them to become even more intrusive.
From experience in the field of mindfulness psychology, that is becoming quite popular these days, it's quite clear that the winning strategy is actually to do the exact opposite of reacting with fear or aversion. And that is to develop a friendly and compassionate relationship with those intrusive thoughts and troublesome images.
This may seem very counter-intuitive, but it is not. The way it works is that by learning how to form a non-reactive relationship with those thoughts you basically break the habit that feeds the intrusive thoughts.
When you break a habit that feeds them, then they begin to subside and lose strengths quite naturally like any thought would do. Any thought that arises in the mind has a strength to it when it first arises, an emotional charge that keeps it in the mind, but that emotional charge quickly dissipates and for most of the time for most kinds of thoughts the thoughts simply disappear when that emotional charge has dissipated.
But with intrusive thoughts and intrusive images and memories that emotional charge does not dissipate. The main reason why it doesn't dissipate is because you inadvertently continue feeding that emotional charge through your reactivity to the thoughts.
Now when you to develop friendliness or compassion, which is the essence of mindfulness, towards those thoughts, you basically take away this fuel source and that allows the thoughts to naturally subside and lose their emotional charge and intensity.
So that's the first very important principle. The way that we go about doing this and helping those intrusive thoughts neutralize themselves and lose their emotional charge is by, surprisingly enough, by meditating on those intrusive thoughts directly.
So you deliberately bring them into the mind but you cultivate this relationship that is not reactive to those thoughts. You have to train with the thoughts in order to break free from them.
Change the imagery of the thoughts and you can greatly reduce the intensity of those thoughts.
So it's by consciously interacting with the imagery and changing it that you can have a profound effect on decreasing the intensity of those intrusive thoughts. So this is another aspect of Mindfulness Therapy that I teach during these Skype Therapy sessions.
I will teach you how to apply mindfulness, how to meditate on your intrusive thoughts and memories. And these mindfulness-based methods are methods that you can use yourself and apply at home between sessions, which of course greatly accelerates the process of recovery.
So please contact me if you'd like to get started with this very effective approach to working with intrusive thoughts.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE BUDDHIST THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR HELP WITH YOUR OCD
Online Buddhist Therapy for OCD
Main site:
Online Therapist for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) via Skype
Related pages:
Online Buddhist Therapy for OCD