Hypnotherapy Information Exchange

Obsessive com­pulsive disorder (OCD) is unfor­tu­nately a very common anxiety disorder nowadays, its main char­ac­ter­istics being recurrent intrusive thoughts that have a good chance to result in repetitive behavior

The patient gets unwanted thoughts or obsessions that keep coming to his or her mind in the form of fears, worries and even a strong need to do things These obsessions are likely to worsen if the person is under stress

The behaviors res­ulting from someone’s obsessive thoughts are called com­pulsions and look like some rituals; the patient repeats certain actions (such as washing hands, as most of them seem to be bothered by the existence of germs) in an obsessive manner

While the obsessive com­pulsive disorder symptoms are not dif­ficult to detect (in most cases, the description of the behaviour made by the patient is enough, while in other cases psy­chiatric eval­uation through tests is a must), the exact cause of this anxiety disorder is not known

For many years it was thought to be a rare disorder but recently tests have shown that it is rather widely spread Sci­entists are inclined to believe it is a bio­logical abnor­mality (though it was ini­tially con­sidered to be the result of head injury or infections) because a certain type of tomo­graphy that uses an imaging pro­cedure shows abnormal chemical activity in some regions of the patient’s brain

The symptoms of this disorder may be mild or serious and they usually appear early in life, mostly between the ages of twenty and thirty, striking men and women alike, irre­spective of their race People with mild obsessive com­pulsive disorder sometimes manage to control them­selves and conceal this con­dition when they are at work for example but will most likely manifest in private

There is a wide range of other dis­orders that accompany OCD: anxiety, depression, eating dis­orders etc Some of the patients are luckily able to understand how unrealistic and inap­pro­priate their thoughts and beha­viours are and maybe that is why they can control their impulses a lot better than others, but on the whole, this disorder is not easy to control

Anti­de­pressants and beha­vioral therapy are effective for most patients and these are the basic remedies that control OCD Psy­cho­therapy is used to reduce anxiety and resolve inner con­flicts but at the same time it is very effective against stress A thought-​​stopping technique is used to teach the patient to stop any unwanted thoughts and focus attention on relieving the anxiety symptoms

An addi­tional technique of exposure/​ response pre­vention applied in obsessive com­pulsive disorder consists in repeatedly exposing the patient to a certain situation known to trigger anxiety symptoms, until he or she has learned to resist the need to perform the compulsion

Unfor­tu­nately, patients with obsessive com­pulsive disorder cannot always be cured Once the disorder has settled in, the patient can be helped to keep it under control with med­ication and therapy but sooner or later the old symptoms will come back and a new therapy session plus appro­priate med­ication will be needed What regular treatment can do is keep this disorder in its mildest possible form so that the patients won’t feel disabled because if it

This article was ori­ginally pub­lished on www.HypnotherapyClinic.info by Con­sultant Clinical Hyp­no­therapist & Pys­cho­therapist Noel Bradford –

As a pro­fes­sional therapist Noel help people with everything that you would expect including giving up smoking, con­trolling their weight, dealing with fears and phobias. However his services go far beyond this and encompass things that affect everyone at some time in their life, such as depression, anxiety, panic attacks, stress, and low self esteem.

He  also has detailed spe­cialist training in several areas including but not limitted to Irrittable Bowel Syndrome and Pyscho­sexual matters that affect men such as Errectile Dys­function and Pre­mature Ejac­u­lation as well as those affecting women such as Hyper Desire Disorder, Vaginisums, and Dys­pareunia.

Ori­ginally posted 2009-​​03-​​27 19:49:12.