Treating obsessive-compulsive disorder with hypnosis: What about it?
You may suffer from feeling like you have to do everything, but you can also really `must' do everything. If you have an obsessive-compulsive disorder, you have thoughts you don't want or you have to perform certain actions. Are you not performing the actions? Then you feel anxious or worry that bad things will happen now because you didn't do an action.
Most people with a compulsive disorder understand that what they do does not really have the effect for which they perform the action, yet they continue to do it because it provides relaxation and less anxiety[1].
Compulsive thoughts can be about people getting sick or dying. You don't want to have them, but you still get those thoughts.
What is a compulsive disorder?
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), obsessive-compulsive disorder is one of the disorders with the greatest impact on a person's life. You can suffer from a compulsive disorder at any age, but younger people are more likely to suffer from it.
Shame about the compulsive disorder often prevents people from seeking help.
After depression, substance abuse, and social anxiety, most people suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is a disorder that can also be seen as neurological, but again, researchers are still not entirely clear about this[2]. In fact, about 1.6% of people may suffer from this disorder throughout their lives.
In the process, the obsessive-compulsive disorder can cause negative consequences, such as having less contact with friends and family to hide the disorder. Depending on the anxiety, you may also experience other symptoms because of it.
For example, are you afraid of getting infected? If so, this might prevent you from seeing a doctor, or it could cause you to develop eczema from washing your hands too often.
If you develop OCD at a young age, it can prevent you from making friends or from living independently[3].
What is OCD?
OCD is the English abbreviation for obsessive-compulsive disorder. In the Netherlands, the abbreviation OCS is used. Actually, this is about the same thing as a compulsive disorder, but you have a more difficult name for it.
If you suffer from compulsive thoughts and actions, it does not necessarily mean you have OCD. In fact, the symptoms also overlap with:
- Schizophrenia
- Bipolar Disorder
- ADHD.
Or people may suffer from the above conditions as well as a compulsive disorder.
It is therefore important to see a doctor so you can receive the correct diagnosis. This will also help you get appropriate treatment for the problem you’re facing.
Causes
There are a number of factors that can contribute to the development of obsessive-compulsive disorder. For example, if one of your parents suffers from such a disorder, you may begin to mimic their behavior[4].
Research on twins shows that genes also influence the development of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. The genes that affect it do something to calcium and affect gut flora (source 4). A healthy diet is recommended for that reason.
Compulsive disorder treatment
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is treated with lifestyle advice, such as eating healthy and staying active, and with the recommendation to, above all, keep living your life.
Doesn't that work well (enough)? Then you can get psychological treatment, and if that doesn't work either, you can get medication from a psychiatrist.
Psychological treatment usually involves cognitive behavioral therapy, but research is also being conducted to determine whether other types of therapy, such as hypnotherapy, are effective as well .
A case study describes how the combination of hypnosis, confronting anxiety and preventing compulsive behavior, restructuring thoughts, and acceptance and commitment therapy helps against a compulsive disorder.
Standard treatment had not helped this person for 4 months, so he was given an audio recording for self-hypnosis that provided suggestions to address the aforementioned combination of issues. He listened to this recording daily.
After 3 weeks, he had cut his symptoms in half. Reason enough for the researchers to recommend additional research into hypnotherapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder[5].
A particular fear is the cause of a compulsive disorder, and therefore hypnotherapy aimed at eliminating that fear can make the compulsive disorder disappear as well[6].
To alleviate anxiety, a hypnotherapist may use relaxation techniques, identify the root cause of the anxiety or obsession, and then employ techniques to help the person with OCD break free from it (source 6).
In cognitive behavioral therapy, some form of mindfulness is important. This is because the idea is to realize when your thoughts are going in the wrong direction, then stop those thoughts and say something positive to yourself. The "training" you get for this works better if this is done while you are in hypnosis (source 6).
Progressive relaxation
Progressive relaxation also happens to be an important step during a hypnotherapy session. In fact, relaxation is also important for reaching and deepening the hypnotic state.
To do this, a hypnotherapist can use visualizations. What is seen in those visualizations depends on the client's preference.
Usually someone is suggested to go to a building, walk down a flight of stairs, then walk through a door and tadaa.... They are at their favorite place for relaxation. This may be an actual place, or a place in their mind.
Then visualization for relaxation continues by feeling, for example, how the sun warms their skin, how a breeze keeps it from getting too hot. It's just absolutely perfect.
This alone can take a lot of tension out of the body, reducing the tendency for compulsions.
Pinpointing the cause of anxiety
Then, when someone with a compulsive disorder is nice and relaxed and in deep hypnosis, they can be suggested to go to the first moment in life when they felt the feeling, which is now taken away with the compulsions.
This may even be a moment in life well before the compulsive disorder becomes apparent. It may be that something happened once and repeatedly things went wrong until the compulsion treatment "made sure" things went right.
So it could just be a moment in childhood, or you watched someone do something in childhood and as a result prevented something "bad" from happening.
Through the suggestion, the person with OCD is guided back to that moment—the moment when a limiting belief first arose.
Removing fear
Once the moment is identified, the hypnotherapist can do something to "fix" the impeding belief[7].
There are again several techniques for this and it all depends on the fear and what was happening during the moment.
For example, if you are a child of someone with a compulsive disorder, you may very well be unconsciously copying your parent's behavior. In that case, empathizing with the other person can already do a lot to get a new perspective on the moment and thereby change the unconscious belief.
You can even be encouraged to have mindful conversations with your parent, as if you were small at the time and with the parent how they were at the time.
Or you can have a conversation with your inner child yourself, to tell your inner child that everything has turned out all right. That you’re no longer in the same situation as back then and that you have people around you who support you. If only you’ll let yourself believe it.
Sometimes you may also have experienced something exciting, and that tension it created just never went away. The exciting event may be over rationally, but to your subconscious it feels like that moment is still not over. Even decades later!
In this case, the fast-phobia technique can be used. This is a technique that uses visualizations in a very different way than a relaxing visualization, but it makes it clear to your subconscious that the moment is really over and that you can just relax, without the need for any actions.
The very best part about this exercise is that it is also quite funny and you may even end up laughing at the problem.
And I always say, if you can laugh about it, it's no longer a problem.
Thoughts and hypnosis
In addition to exercises to eliminate anxiety, you can also get help to break thought patterns, such as compulsive thoughts, and even change your behavior.
Visualizations can again be used for this purpose (but again in a different way than for relaxation).
And repetition of affirmations can be used while the person with a compulsive disorder is under hypnosis.
For example, as a client, you may be suggested to repeat certain statements out loud and with full conviction, such as:
"I'm good enough."
"I'm safe."
"Everything is love."
These are just examples. Depending on your thoughts, you may get other suggestions. You can then also repeat these while you go about your daily business and notice that you are getting compulsive thoughts.
Although resolving anxiety won't get you those anymore.
Often, you will still get suggestions that will help you boost your self-confidence, as this will also help you hold the changes in your brain well.
Learn Hypnosis
Do you want to help people with hypnosis? Then you can learn hypnosis, who knows, you might just solve someone's compulsive disorder. If you take all our courses, you can then officially call yourself a hypnosis practitioner, but before that you can already start using the techniques as a coach. You just can't get reimbursement from insurance then.
Would you like to learn more about hypnosis? Then join our free online masterclass.
Or register for one of our events or trainings.
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P.S.: Please also support our petition to incorporate hypnosis into mental health care. Waiting lists need to be shorter, and hypnotherapy can play a role in that.
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