How does cbt help ocd

Some CBT therapists will conduct sessions by phone, online, or via webcam technology such as Skype, if needed. They will also design homework exercises for you to do between sessions. Although there are self-help books on CBT, it is highly recommended that you work with a trained professional to get the most effective treatment. If your student health center or counseling service is unable to help you find a cognitive behavior therapist, Beyond OCD can help you find a treatment provider in the Chicagoland area, or check the International OCD Foundation web site to find a cognitive behavior therapist close to where you are.

Sometimes medication is prescribed in combination with CBT. If your cognitive behavior therapist thinks you would benefit from medication, he or she will refer you to a psychiatrist who will prescribe it.

Sometimes a doctor on campus at the student health center or in private practice will prescribe a medication that reduces general anxiety without suggesting CBT. And, sadly, when people who have only used medication stop taking the meds, they generally find that the symptoms come back. Learn more about OCD medications. Cognitive behavioral therapy for OCD focuses on negative thoughts and the experiences attached to them.

While most people can easily dismiss certain thoughts, others have certain beliefs and thoughts that are always important or set in stone. OCD can be an extremely stressful condition that can prevent a person from living their life. Their relationships and ability to carry out daily tasks can suffer as a result of untreated OCD. Our inpatient mental health rehab offers a variety of mental health treatment methods and disorder-specific treatments that work in tandem to create an effective recovery plan for patients.

Call us today at for more information. How to Overcome Agoraphobia September 13, Cognitive behavioral therapy is a type of treatment that helps people cope with and change problematic thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Understanding OCD Obsessive-compulsive disorder OCD is a type of anxiety disorder in which people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, sensations obsessions , or ideas that make them feel driven to do something repeatedly compulsions. What Is CBT? Using problem-solving skills to cope with challenging situations.

Learning how to develop confidence in your abilities. Facing your fears. For example, individuals with OCD might become intensely anxious about the thought of their house catching fire, being possessed by the devil, or contracting AIDS. The intense anxiety prevents them from making rational and informed judgments about how risky a situation really is and what they can do to protect themselves or others. To be on the safe side, the person with OCD will avoid or ritualize to prevent even the most remote possibility of harm.

Consequently, the individual does not have the opportunity to learn that the feared situation is actually quite safe. Exposure works against this type of mistaken idea. Thus, you recognize that the risk is remote and you learn to ignore it. For example, Stacy was afraid that her house would catch fire, so she refused to use her central heating even in cold weather.

For therapy, she practiced starting the heater and leaving it on while she was away from home. After 24 hours, the house was comfortably warm inside, but did not catch fire and Stacy learned that her fear was unfounded. The second mistaken idea people with OCD tend to have is the belief that they must avoid the distressing situation or they will be distressed forever. This leads them to avoid many situations or to ritualize if they can not avoid them. However, during prolonged exposure, intense anxiety gradually decreases.

If someone confronts a distressing situation for a prolonged period of time such as hours , the individual will experience a gradual decrease in distress until the distress is gone. As the distress drops, it becomes easier to see whether or not a situation is actually dangerous. When the same or similar situation arises later, there will be far less distress than experienced previously. For his therapy, Ray purposely disordered his office and bedroom and did not put things back in order even though he became distressed.

Instead, his discomfort eventually decreased and he did not lose his mind. He learned that anxiety did not produce insanity. A program that involves prolonged exposure is designed to help you, whether you are afraid of contracting a disease from public bathrooms, causing automobile accidents, discarding something important, saying inappropriate things, or hurting someone with a knife.

When you first confront a feared situation, you will become distressed. However, if you remain long enough in the situation, and do so repeatedly, the distress will diminish. For in vivo and imaginal exposure to be helpful, you must become emotionally involved during the exposure exercises. Specifically, the exposure situation must evoke the same kind of obsessional distress that you experience in your daily life.

To promote emotional involvement, we will develop exposure exercises that are a good match to the real-life situations that provoke your obsessions and urges to ritualize.

For example, if you are distressed by contamination related to cancer and you visit a hospital with no cancer ward, the exercise will not be helpful. The situation does not match your fear. Thus, it will be hard for you to become emotionally involved when your exercises are not matched to your obsessions.

During the exposure exercises that are matched to your obsessions, you must involve yourself emotionally. The first step in ERP is for the person with OCD to provide the therapist with a detailed description of his or her obsessions and compulsions, which are then ranked from the least bothersome to the most difficult. Through repeated exposures, individuals with OCD realize that when they avoid performing compulsions, their anxiety increases temporarily, peaks and then decreases.

In cases where creating the actual situation that triggers a compulsion is impossible, therapists can use imagined exposures, visualizations and recordings that can effectively increase anxiety levels for ERP exercises. When therapeutic exposures are repeated over time, the associated anxiety decreases until it is barely noticeable or actually fades entirely. The person then takes on more challenging exposures until they, too, become manageable.

If you have an obsessive fear of germs, for example, a therapist conducting ERP therapy may work with you to encourage you to touch the top of a desk — which you believe is contaminated — and then wait longer and longer periods of time to wash your hands.