Looking for an Online Therapist to help you overcome Hypochondria and Health Anxiety?
Individual Online Counseling Therapy Sessions with Dr. Peter Strong
Online therapy for hypochondriasis
The key to overcoming health anxiety, including hypochondria, germophobia or fear of contamination is to learn how to manage and neutralize the underlying anxiety and fear impulses that lead to obsessive thinking and worrying and to compulsive behaviors such as obsessive hand-washing.
We do this through the systematic approach of Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy where we set ourselves manageable and progressive exposure challenges and work on healing the underlying anxiety associated with each challenge before proceeding to progressively harder challenges.
This is what I will teach you how to do yourself during our Skype Therapy Sessions together. The mindfulness approach is very effective and most of my clients see significant improvements after 3-4 sessions with me.
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Online Therapist for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder – OCD Treatment Online via Skype
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. Thank you!
Learn How to Control OCD
Hypochondria or hypochondriasis is a form of obsessive worry and anxiety (OCD) about having an illness or fear of contracting an illness that far exceeds the normal range of actual health risks. This form of obsessive disorder is actually more common than we might expect. It is estimated that up to 5% of visits to the doctor’s office are from people suffering from hypochondria and have an excessive preoccupation with perceived medical symptoms or with the fear that they may be at risk for cancer or some other disease.
One client described her fear of cancer,
“I am deathly afraid of weighing myself. If my weight has decreased then I am afraid that this is a symptom of cancer depleting my body; if my weight has increased then I am afraid that a cancer has started growing.”
In spite of frequent checkups and reassurance from her doctor that she did not have cancer or any particular risk factors for developing cancer, she could not let go of the nagging worry that perhaps the doctors had missed something or that something had changed since the last checkup.
Hypochondria is based on irrational beliefs concerning the state of one’s health. However, the fact that the beliefs are irrational does not make them any less real for the hypochondriac and it is relatively futile to try and persuade a hypochondriac that they are simply mistaken in their beliefs. In order to effectively change these core beliefs we need to understand the structure of beliefs.
Changing the Core Beliefs of Hypochondria
If you are suffering from OCD or hypochondria and are seeking some form of psychotherapy, then you might benefit from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (see Online CBT). The aim of Cognitive Therapy is to help you become aware of your core beliefs and of the habitual patterns of reactive thinking that produces anxiety and excessive worrying. A traditional CBT therapist will then try to show you through a series of behavioral challenges and “reality checks” that those beliefs are unfounded and gradually help you replace the dysfunctional beliefs with more positive and realistic beliefs.
However, as explained above, many of our beliefs are very tightly held and are not always amenable to change through rational argument alone, even in the face of objective evidence. This is because besides having a cognitive component in the form of thoughts and words, a belief has an emotional component, which is actually far more important. The emotional intensity of the belief is what gives it meaning and power. Without the emotional affect, beliefs and thoughts are little more than shallow words that have no power at all to convert into action.
In Mindfulness Therapy, which is available online via Skype sessions, we focus on changing the emotions beneath the words, because we recognize that if you can neutralize the emotional energy invested in a thought or belief then the belief will cease to have power and will change by itself. In other words, the problem of hypochondria is not so much in the beliefs as it is in the emotional energy underneath. Change that and you free yourself from the hypochondria.
Online Treatment for Hypochondria
If you would like to learn more about Online Therapy for Hypochondria or other forms of obsessive compulsive behaviors and for help overcoming chronic health anxiety, please email me and ask any questions that you may have.
During our online Skype therapy sessions, I will teach you how to overcome your anxiety reactions using the methods of mindfulness therapy. This approach is very effective and you can expect to see significant improvements within the first few sessions with me, once you learn how to apply mindfulness effectively.
What makes all the difference is when you learn how to meditate on your anxiety. We don’t use meditation to escape our anxiety but rather we use meditation to change our relationship to our anxiety and to our intrusive and obsessive thoughts. The thoughts are actually not the problem; the problem is in your relationship to those thoughts. This is one of the many profound insights of Mindfulness Therapy that make all the difference.
Develop a conscious relationship with your obsessive thoughts
Instead of pushing obsessive thoughts away or trying to avoid them we must do the opposite, we must develop a conscious and welcoming relationship with those thoughts. If you react with aversion to those thoughts you will simply reinforce the underlying fear associated with those thoughts because aversion is itself based on fear. So, reacting with fear to fear is not going to help.
By the same token we do not want to blindly indulge in those thoughts either because that too will feed the underlying fear.
Instead, we focus on developing what is called Objective Consciousness with those obsessive thoughts. That means that we train ourselves to see the thoughts as objects in the mind instead of becoming identified and overwhelmed by our thoughts or reacting to our thoughts. We learn to see them as objects whilst we remain as the Observer. The Observer is NOT the thoughts observed. When you approach your thoughts in this way through mindfulness training you reverse the habit of becoming overwhelmed by your thoughts. This is a central teaching in Mindfulness Therapy.
A thought loses its power when we stop identifying with it and when we see it, instead, as an object in the mind.
Thoughts only have power when we blindly identify with them, when we literally become the thoughts. When we break this habit, called Reactive Identification in Mindfulness psychology, then the thoughts are reduced to mere object, and as objects they have NO POWER to cause fear or anxiety.
The key point here is to train with your intrusive thoughts and the fear beneath those thoughts. This is what we do during mindfulness meditation, and it is very powerful indeed.
Contact me if you wish to learn more about online Mindfulness Therapy for OCD.
Looking for an online therapist for help with health-related OCD and overactive worrying about your health?
Go to my Contact Page to schedule online therapy via Skype for OCD
Peter Strong, PhD is a Professional Psychotherapist, Online Therapist, Spiritual Teacher and Author, based in Boulder, Colorado. Peter developed a system of psychotherapy called Mindfulness Therapy for healing the root cause of Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Depression, Traumatic Stress and Emotional Suffering.
Online Therapist for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Health Anxiety
Also see: Online Therapist for OCD
Online Mindfulness Therapy 