What is OCD?
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is common, affecting the brain and behavior, and often causing severe anxiety. The disorder involves both obsessions and compulsions that swallow up time and impact necessary activities in that person’s life. Those filling online therapy jobs play a key role in alleviating the suffering from those desperately trying to escape paralyzing anxiety.
Obsessions
These are thoughts or reflexive impulses that seem to occur without end and beyond the sufferer’s control. While the victim understands that they are irrational, nonetheless the experience is both intense and very uncomfortable. Moreover, they are often accompanied by anxiety and plaguing doubt that something terrible will happen if things aren’t done “just right.”
Compulsions
These are behaviors or thoughts that the OCD sufferer implements in attempting to ameliorate or somehow eliminate the painful obsessions. While the victim fully understands that the solution is temporary at best, lacking any betting coping mechanism at least it provides temporary relief. Avoiding situations that trigger obsessions can also be considered compulsions.
Effective Treatments
The most effective form of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) treatment is what is known as Exposure and Ritual Prevention (EX/RP). EX/RP involves both cognitive and behavioral techniques although it is behavioral-based. Sometimes when a patient does not see success with EX/RP, having difficulty with the behavioral piece, “Cognitive Therapy (CT),” is prescribed.
Exposure
Clinical data demonstrates that Exposure, or In Vivo Exposure lessens stress-related obsessions. Exposure requires confronting the sufferer with his anxiety by subjecting him to the situation in a repeated and prolonged manner. This seems cruel! But if the patient remains long enough to feel reduced anxiety, he realizes that feared “disastrous” consequences do not occur.
Exposure technique is most successful when implemented both within the session and between sessions. The patient experiences that the dreaded consequence did not happen. This empowers him to tolerate the anxiety more effectively while helping to reduce the stress over time without resorting to the rituals. Every subsequent ritual becomes easier to eliminate.
Ritual Prevention
Since the patient believes that the performing the ritual will avert the feared outcome or occurrence, the patient must be instructed by the therapist to avoid indulging in any ritual or compulsion that risks raising the patient’s anxiety. There is no middle ground her. The patient must experience that ritual performance will not alleviate the concerns born of obsession.
However, there are instances where the patient doesn’t connect performing the ritual with any particular adverse outcome. In other words, the sufferer performs the ritual for no other reason, than just “feeling it’s the right thing to do”. And the proof is that indulging in the ritual relieves the discomfort or anxiety. Even here the patient must cease the ritual “cold turkey”.
Cognitive Therapy (CT)
The primary cause of distress and anxiety for those suffering from OCD is rooted in the fictional understanding that these compulsive thoughts somehow warn them of or ward off impending danger. Effective CT enables the patient to recognize these seemingly uncontrollable thoughts and thereby create the possibility of reinterpretation. This reduces distress and anxiety.
Online therapy jobs allow the therapist to help the patient to see anxiousness as obsessions and compulsions woven into their rituals. Often the patient keeps a daily (thought) record that is reviewed together. During this examination the therapist helps the patient see how thoughts were interpreted incorrectly, opening the door to changing the incorrect assessment of danger.
Growing Importance of Online Therapy Jobs In OCD Treatment
Certainly, you may wonder how those in online therapy jobs are effective in curing OCD. While this is certainly a reasonable concern, a brief internet search will yield a plethora of research studies demonstrating the success of online treatment for OCD, and many other psychological disorders as well. If the goal is to reduce suffering, perhaps it deserves a closer look.
