Psychotherapies As A Form Of Treatment For OCD
Psychotherapies As A Form Of Treatment For OCD
Once you have had a formal OCD diagnosis, it will be natural to find out what can be done to help you. It is time to look at the treatments for OCD and decide which one is right for you to start with. Obviously your physician will want to make professional suggestions and it may be wise to consider his experienced opinion, but is a good idea to arm yourself with information so you know what he is likely to be suggesting.
The course of treatment offered will depend on the severity of the symptoms and the effect these are having on your ability to live a normal life. A good starting point for the treatment of OCD is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). This can be helpful for both mild and moderate OCD, and is based on the idea that with the help of a therapist you can identify the behaviours that have built up to cause problems, and replace them with a new more healthy set.
This is itself may be enough for you, if the problems that you are having are mild. It will take a few sessions, and the improvements may seem slow and gradual, but in many cases this is excellent treatment for OCD that is mild in nature.
Exposure Therapy As The Next Step.
For some, treatment for OCD may need to be more intensive, and simply talking about the behaviours may not be enough to successfully retrain the brain into stopping. The next approach may well be to try something known as exposure therapy. Again working with a trained professional, you will be encouraged to go through some exercises, based both in visualisation and in reality.
You may be asked to imagine that you have left the door unlocked, which will naturally cause you to want to run to the door and check that it is safely secured. However in this exercise you will be taught methods to try and avoid rushing off. These can include reason and logic, but are designed to try and lower the amount of times you partake of your behaviour.
In a reality exercise, a very tough treatment for OCD for many patients, you may be asked to do something that would normally result in you needing to wash your hands, for example after taking a handful of change off the therapist. In this case you will be encourage to remain where you are, distract yourself, or again rationalise with the therapist why it is safe not to wash your hands this time, however actually doing it in the first place can take tremendous strength.
Fundamentally the idea behind both these treatments for OCD, the CBT approach and the exposure approach is to retrain the brain over a period of time. The result may not be instant, however, by gradually phasing out the behaviours the long-term chances of the OCD returning are hopefully minimal.
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