Hypnotherapy For OCD
If intrusive thoughts or obsessive thinking are wearing you down, hypnosis can help you find some calm.
At The Hypnosis Clinic, hypnotherapy has real, meaningful value to offer people living with OCD — particularly around the anxiety and nervous system activation that so often sits underneath obsessive thinking. If a thought has ever looped round and round in your mind, or you’ve felt driven to check something again and again even when part of you knows it isn’t necessary, you’ll understand how exhausting this can be.
I’ll be straightforward about where that value lies: the gold-standard, NICE-recommended treatment for OCD is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with Exposure and Response Prevention (CBT with ERP), sometimes alongside medication. Hypnotherapy works best as a powerful complement to that treatment, not a replacement for it.
Used this way, it can make a genuine difference to how manageable the whole process feels. We work together as a team; hypnotist and client, turning down the background anxiety that fuels the whole cycle.
Today could be the start of finding some calm.
Hypnotherapy for OCD:
Your step-by-step guide to taking control
Calming baseline anxiety, so intrusive thoughts have less to attach to
Reducing anticipatory anxiety around ERP work
Supporting sleep, when the mind is otherwise unoccupied
Building a sense of psychological distance from thoughts
Experiencing a thought as passing through, rather than something urgent
Reinforcing self-compassion around having intrusive thoughts
Working hand-in-hand with CBT and ERP
Turning down the background hum that fuels the whole cycle
Helping the whole process feel more manageable
Hello, I’m Jonathan Garside. To find out more about how hypnotherapy for OCD and intrusive thoughts can support you, book an appointment.
We work with clients managing every kind of OCD-related challenge, from obsessive thoughts and checking behaviours, to the anxiety and hypervigilance that sits underneath them. Whatever the cycle looks like for you, we can help turn down the anxiety that drives it.
At your initial free consultation, you can ask all the questions you want about how hypnotherapy can help you, and it gives us the opportunity to find out more about your experience of OCD and any treatment you’re already receiving. It is at this stage that we can work out how many sessions you will need.
Generally, I see most people for 2-4 sessions and the cost is £250 per one hour session. However, that reduces to £225 per hour when you buy a package of four sessions, saving you £100.
If you’d like some further reading on OCD and intrusive thoughts, have a look at our blog.
OCD affects an estimated 750,000 people in the UK at any one time — around 1.2% of the population — with about half of all cases classed as severe. Reported OCD among 16 to 24 year-olds has more than tripled over the past decade, rising from 1.8% in 2014 to 5.7% in 2023/24. Despite this, OCD remains widely under-diagnosed, partly due to stigma and partly because people don’t recognise their own experience in the “neat and tidy” stereotype so often portrayed in the media.
If you think you may have OCD and haven’t been assessed, your GP is the right starting point, and OCD-UK offers excellent, practical guidance on the condition and the NHS treatment pathway. If you’re already receiving CBT with ERP or medication, hypnotherapy can be a valuable addition to that care — working directly on the anxiety underneath your symptoms, alongside the treatment your clinical team has recommended, to help you get the most out of it.
We understand that OCD and intrusive thoughts show up differently for everyone; what the cycle looks like for one person may be entirely different for another. That’s why the support we offer is unique to you, working alongside whatever treatment your clinical team has recommended.
It’s just one of the reasons that makes us different: we take time to listen and find out what’s driving your anxiety, and what genuine calm would actually look like in your life.
From here, we progress, step-by-step, alongside your wider treatment, to find and build the calm and psychological distance for you to feel more in charge of your thoughts. For now, and the rest of your longer, happier, healthier life.
Of course, this may be all new to you, so have a look at some of the comments other people have been kind enough to write below.
Just click on the link to have full access to our appointment diary.
Your initial free consultation can be in our Regent St clinic, or via a Telehealth video call to your home.
Of course, change takes time, and to help the process, you may opt to have a specially recorded hypnotic programme to take away and use at home.
Tailor made to your exact needs, the 20 minute audio recording comes on a high quality memory drive for you to use in your own home.
The cost of each programme is £150.
Now is the time to make the permanent changes you want to give you a happier and healthier life.