Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a very challenging form of anxiety. It includes intrusive thoughts which are most often ego-dystonic (not truly embraced by and incongruent with a person’s beliefs and logical thinking), but still sets off feelings of angst, impending doom, and free-floating anxiety. It is difficult to diminish when it is active, and is often exacerbated by general life stress. Themes of worry often occur, and to try to cope with the anxiety, the individual may use compulsive actions (behaviors that occur following obsessions that, although not effective for the long-term, provide at best a minimal relief for a brief moment).

Dr. Allen approaches treatment for OCD through several protocols, which include Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, mindfulness and meditation, biofeedback and self-regulation of anxiety, and exposure therapy approaches that include stress inoculation and anxiety desensitization. His treatment objective is to help empower a client to use natural world approaches to release attachments toward the temptation to push away or pull into a thought-worry-behavior loop. Retrain the brain to adapt to threat-related thoughts, diminish the compulsive behaviors, and reduce the moment-by-moment anxiety.

The Yerkes-Dodson Curve theory states that as a threat response increases to a difficult level, logic reasoning can become overpowered by fear-based reasoning. Such reasoning can lead to greater obsessional thought processes and greater threat response activity, thus supporting a vicious cycle of anxiety – OCD. Dr. Allen teaches life skills and a philosophy that can cope with and adapt to the tendency or condition of OCD.

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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)