Something I am often asked is ‘can Hypnotherapy help with OCD?'. It helps to define OCD and those of you who read my blogs regularly will know that I like to understand precisely what we are talking about.
According to the NHS website - ‘If you have OCD, you'll usually experience frequent obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours. An obsession is an unwanted and unpleasant thought, image or urge that repeatedly enters your mind, causing feelings of anxiety, disgust or unease. A compulsion is a repetitive behaviour or mental act that you feel you need to do to temporarily relieve the unpleasant feelings brought on by the obsessive thought.’
Many people turn to Hypnotherapy for obsessive thinking. For example when they become obsessed by a particular thought, turning it over and over in their mind, ruminating and catastrophising. And of course, like a cut that is being fiddled with and poked, the thoughts get more and more troublesome the more they are engaged with.
This way of thinking is also associated with anxiety and the two are closely linked. The obsessive thought can go on to become a compulsive action which the subconscious develops to retain a feeling of safety from the obsessive thought.
Hypnotherapy is extremely effective in dealing with those actions over which we seem to have no conscious control such as habits and addictions. It accesses the subconscious mind which governs the thoughts and actions we are not consciously in control of. That is why it is so effective in the treatment of addictions and phobias and any sort of compulsive or habitual behaviour.
Is short, yes Hypnotherapy can help greatly with OCD.
