Online Mindfulness Therapy for OCD Iowa
Online Mindfulness Therapy for OCD Iowa
Online Mindfulness Therapy for overcoming Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and problems with intrusive thinking and memories is available via Skype for Iowa, including Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport
Online Mindfulness Therapy Iowa
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Online Therapist for OCD via Skype
Mindfulness Therapy is especially effective for managing OCD because it teaches you how to manage obsessive-intrusive thinking and worrying
Best treatment for OCD without medication
Online Mindfulness Psychotherapy via Skype for Managing Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Intrusive Overthinking without using drugs.
Mindfulness Therapy provides an extremely effective treatment for recovering from intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors by teaching you how to work with your OCD thoughts and impulses using mindfulness training and the techniques 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 treating Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and is what I will be teaching you during our sessions together.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME FOR HELP WITH OCD
Talk to an online therapist for treating OCD
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
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.
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 Aggresion
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 most reliable 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 TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY VIA SKYPE
Talk to an online therapist for treating OCD
Through Mindfulness Therapy 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
Struggling with OCD? Try Online Therapy
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.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME
Overcome your OCD through Online Therapy
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. Skype for treating Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
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.
Working with intrusive OCD thoughts using Mindfulness Meditation
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.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION FOR THE TREATMENT OF OCD
Online Mindfulness Therapy Iowa
Main site:
Online Mindfulness Therapy for OCD Iowa