Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a mental health condition that affects people across all age groups. It is marked by intrusive and recurring thoughts, images, or urges (obsessions) and repetitive behaviours or mental acts (compulsions). These symptoms can cause considerable distress and interfere with daily activities. Fortunately, there are effective treatments available that can help to alleviate and manage OCD symptoms.
What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is characterised by the presence of distressing, intrusive thoughts, images, or impulses, which trigger anxiety. These obsessions are involuntary, unwanted, and often generate significant discomfort. In response, individuals engage in compulsive behaviours or mental rituals to alleviate the anxiety. These compulsions can range from excessive washing, checking, or counting to mental rituals such as repeated reassurance-seeking or rumination.
While many people experience fleeting, unwanted thoughts. Those with OCD find that these thoughts persist, becoming a major disruption in their lives. The compulsions may provide temporary relief from anxiety but ultimately reinforce the cycle of obsessive thoughts. Creating a pattern that can be challenging to break.
Symptoms of OCD
The symptoms of OCD can manifest in different ways, but they typically involve obsessions and compulsions that interfere with everyday life.
Common obsessions include:
- fears of contamination,
- worries about harm coming to oneself or others,
- or an overwhelming need for symmetry and order.
Compulsions are the behaviours or mental acts carried out to neutralise the anxiety caused by these obsessions, such as repeated checking of locks, arranging objects in a specific way, or performing mental counting rituals.
The severity of symptoms can vary, sometimes worsening during periods of heightened stress. People with OCD may spend hours each day engaging in these rituals, significantly affecting their work, education, relationships, and personal life.
Causes of OCD
The exact cause of OCD is not fully understood, but it is believed to result from a complex interplay of genetic, neurological, and environmental factors. Research suggests that certain abnormalities in brain structure and functioning, particularly in the circuits involving the neurotransmitter serotonin, may contribute to the development of OCD. There is also evidence to indicate that the condition can be inherited, with OCD sometimes running in families.
Environmental factors, including stressful or traumatic events, may trigger the onset of OCD symptoms in individuals who are already genetically predisposed to the condition. Some research has also shown a link between OCD and infections, such as streptococcal infections, which may contribute to the disorder’s development in children through autoimmune processes.
Dr Jeffrey Schwartz’s Four-Step Method
Dr Jeffrey Schwartz, a prominent researcher in the field of OCD, developed a Four-Step Method for managing the condition. His approach focuses on neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to rewire itself through repetitive practice. Schwartz’s method empowers individuals to take control over their symptoms by retraining their brains.
The Four-Step Method consists of:
- Relabel: Recognise that the intrusive thoughts and urges are symptoms of OCD, not a reflection of reality.
- Reattribute: Understand that these thoughts and urges are caused by a biochemical imbalance in the brain, not a flaw in character.
- Refocus: Engage in a different activity for a few minutes to delay the urge to perform a compulsion. This helps to weaken the compulsive response over time.
- Revalue: Gradually reduce the significance given to the obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours by understanding their irrational nature.
Dr Schwartz’s approach has been instrumental in demonstrating how individuals can use cognitive techniques to change the brain’s response to OCD symptoms. It highlights the potential for recovery and management through self-directed neuroplasticity.
How Can Hypnotherapy Help with OCD?
Hypnotherapy is a therapeutic technique that uses relaxation and focused attention to access the subconscious mind, which can be beneficial for treating OCD. It helps individuals uncover the underlying beliefs and subconscious patterns that sustain their obsessions and compulsions. Through suggestion therapy, hypnotherapy aims to transform these ingrained thought patterns, allowing individuals to develop healthier responses to anxiety triggers.
In a hypnotherapy session, the therapist guides the individual into a deeply relaxed state, making the mind more receptive to positive suggestions and alternative perspectives. This process can help reduce the intensity of obsessive thoughts and weaken the urge to perform compulsive behaviours. By accessing the subconscious, hypnotherapy encourages the adoption of more adaptive coping strategies, making it easier to break free from the cycle of OCD.
What to Expect in Hypnotherapy for OCD
When undergoing hypnotherapy for OCD, the therapist will begin by discussing your symptoms and history to gain a clear understanding of your specific obsessions and compulsions. The treatment plan will be tailored to address your individual needs. It may involve guided imagery, suggestion therapy, and relaxation techniques to help you reframe your responses to triggers. Solution-focused therapy looks at the small changes one can make to get to an OCD free life.
The number of sessions required will depend on the severity of your symptoms and your progress. Some individuals notice significant improvements after just a few sessions. While others may benefit from a more extended course of therapy. Hypnotherapy can also be integrated with other treatments, such as Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Solution-focused therapy, mindfulness, to provide a comprehensive approach to managing OCD.
Why Choose Hypnotherapy for OCD?
Hypnotherapy offers a holistic approach to treating OCD, addressing not only the symptoms but also the underlying subconscious processes that maintain the disorder. It can be a gentle and supportive form of treatment. Making it suitable for individuals who may find other therapeutic methods too challenging. By working with the subconscious mind, hypnotherapy facilitates deeper changes in perception and behaviour, enabling you to respond differently to obsessive thoughts.
In addition to addressing OCD symptoms, hypnotherapy can help to boost self-esteem and confidence, which may be affected by the disorder. The skills and techniques learned during hypnotherapy sessions can be applied in daily life, providing lasting support and reducing the risk of symptoms reoccurring.
Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) and Its Link to OCD
Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is a related condition in which a person becomes excessively concerned with perceived flaws in their appearance. Although BDD is not the same as OCD, the two conditions share similar features, such as obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours. For example, someone with BDD may constantly check their reflection, seek reassurance about their appearance, or engage in excessive grooming.
Like OCD, BDD can significantly impair daily functioning and affect personal relationships, self-esteem, and quality of life. Hypnotherapy may be helpful for individuals with BDD. As it can address the distorted beliefs and self-perceptions associated with the disorder. By using relaxation techniques and suggestion therapy, hypnotherapy helps individuals reframe their body image concerns and reduce the impact of compulsive behaviours.
Get in Touch to Discuss How Hypnotherapy Can Help You
If you are struggling with OCD or BDD and want to explore how hypnotherapy could help, please get in touch for a confidential chat. We can discuss your symptoms and determine whether hypnotherapy is the right approach for you. Taking the first step towards seeking treatment may feel daunting. But it can also be the beginning of a path towards greater freedom and well-being.
Contact us today to learn more about how hypnotherapy can help you manage OCD or BDD, regain control, and live a more balanced life.
OCD Case Study
Megan was a social worker with a history of borderline personality disorder and OCD. She lived in a flat with her boyfriend and two cats. Her anxiety manifested in being obsessed about windows and doors being locked so the cats couldn’t get out. Also making sure her hair straighteners were switched off. She would often carry them around with her so she could make sure they were cold. When leaving the flat she would double check the cats were in and all the doors and windows were locked about 4 times, making leaving the flat take about an hour.
Throughout 5 sessions, she stopped carrying around her hair straighteners, reduced her window checking to just once and was able to leave the house with only one check.
BDD Case Study
Susan is 26, lives at home with her parents and came to see me with BDD. She was an obsessive skin picker and she would spend over an hour each morning trying to get her make-up right to hide her perceived flawed skin. This was a problem as she was often late for work as a result and her job was on the line.
Using a mix of solutions-focused hypnotherapy to reduce the anxiety and to focus on what she did want. CBT to be able to determine her goals and make a plan of action on reducing her rituals. She was able to change certain routines slowly but effectively over about 6 months.
She decided that going to the bathroom first. – She would not be able to spend the time she would normally in front of the mirror washing.
Step 2 was changing the position of the mirror in her bedroom. Something so simple was to make a big difference as she found she didn’t look into it every time she went in and out of her room.
Step 3 was to be mindful of when the urges came. She was able to recognise what they were and refocus on something else. She enjoyed knitting and jewellery making so when the urge got too much she would make another necklace.
After repeatedly side-tracking herself she found the urges diminished.
In the end, she was able to control her urges and used hypnotherapy to help her lose weight, she also moved out of her parent’s house, took up swimming and was able to socially interact much more. Her job was now safe and she felt she had understood and cracked the problem.
Intrusive thoughts
This form of OCD is much more common than at first thought. Intrusive thoughts fill the mind of a person that are negative and make them think they are a bad person or that they are going mad. Examples are often connected with upbringing and the last thing anyone would do. Such as having thoughts about harming their child, or a sexual fantasy that is completely outside their moral upbringing. Or blasphamous thoughts that go against their religion. For more information on obsessive thoughts then please read “Imp of the mind”.
Case Study
CB was born to a very religious family. By the time he was 7 he had realised that there was a gap between belief and what he was learning in the wider world about science and evolution. This gap in belief made him very anxious because it caused no end of problems with his family. That’s when his OCD started. He felt his father, who was a vicar was bullying him into the faith and so it caused a deep divide. Later as he got older these feelings of pressure from the family got so bad he had a breakdown. Any interference from religious people only made it worse.
CB had come for a whole range of issues, this being just one of the many. He found that the thoughts died down when he was feeling happier and more relaxed when he had hypnotherapy.
Also see: Anxiety
Psychology Today