Agoraphobia Help from Home - Online Therapy
Agoraphobia Help from Home - Online Therapy
The best agoraphobia treatment without medication
Online Mindfulness Therapy for Controlling Agoraphobia and Panic Attacks without relying on medications.
Talk to a Psychotherapist Online over Skype for effective online help and therapy for Chronic Agoraphobia, Anxiety, Panic Disorder and Social Anxiety.
If you want to recover fully from agoraphobia you must treat the underlying habitual anxiety reactions that cause your agoraphobia. Anti-anxiety medications don’t do this because medications only treat symptoms and can not change the underlying psychological process that causes anxiety. You will need an effective form of psychotherapy to do that. During Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy (Mindfulness Therapy) we work on healing these habitual reactions directly.
Online therapy is very effective as long as you use Skype, FaceTime or Zoom so that you can see each other. Being able to see each other is required for good communication and good psychotherapy.
Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy for Agoraphobia
Working with Inner Imagery – The secret to healing Agoraphobia.
Internally, every emotion is structured around imagery – inner pictorial representations that resonate with the emotion. For example, anger is usually associate with the color red and anger is structured around imagery that is red in color and probably hot as well.
We can learn about the structure of our inner imagery by observing our emotions with mindfulness. From what we learn, we can intuitively see what changes in the imagery might be helpful. Change the imagery and you change the structure of the emotion.
People with agoraphobia typically have a great deal of inner imagery, very often based on the feeling of emptiness, an inner void or black hole that threatens to swallow up everything.
Discovering the structure of this imagery provides a very powerful tool for changing the intensity of the anxiety underlying agoraphobia. This approach is one of the most effective treatment for agoraphobia and was pioneered by Dr. Strong in the 1980s.
Email me to discover more about this online counseling service and schedule a therapy session via Skype with me. Inquiries welcome!
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE ME TO LEARN HOW TO START SKYPE THERAPY WITH ME TO HELP YOU OVERCOME AGORAPHOBIA
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How to overcome agoraphobia without medication - Online Mindfulness Therapy for Agoraphobia
Contact me to schedule a Skype therapy session with Dr. Peter Strong, specialist in online mindfulness therapy for anxiety and depression.
Online Mindfulness Therapy for Agoraphobia
Welcome. My name is Peter Strong. I am a professional psychotherapist specializing in mindfulness therapy for the treatment of anxiety disorders and depression and addictions and many other emotional problems that respond well to mindfulness therapy. One particular anxiety disorder that I work with a great deal is agoraphobia. So if you're interested in overcoming agoraphobia without the use of medications but through learning the strategic methods of mindfulness training and therapy then do please contact me and tell me more about your condition and I will be happy to answer any questions you have.
When you feel ready you can schedule a Skype Therapy session with me and I will teach you how to overcome agoraphobia without medications.
It's important to understand that medications are only a temporary solution. They do not and are not designed to change the underlying psychological habitual process that generates anxiety. Medications simply reduce symptoms but really they are not really a good choice in the long run because they leave you vulnerable to those underlying psychological habits that create the anxiety. You want to change those habits and that's the focus of mindfulness therapy. I will teach you how to neutralize those underlying habits that create anxiety.
So what triggers anxiety in agoraphobia? Well is generally triggered by thoughts and beliefs and anticipation and rumination whereby you get trapped in cycles of fear-based thinking.
What will happen if I have a panic attack away from home? How will I get home? The fear of being trapped, the fear of not being able to get back to a secure zone, basically.
So agoraphobia is characterized by being a prisoner of a comfort zone which often gets smaller and smaller as the disorder progresses. So we have to work on building strategies to get you out of that prison, and we do that by working on those emotional habits directly. Typically we are not really aware of our anxiety producing habits. They operate unconsciously like most habits and we just blindly accept them. We identify with these habits and we suffer because of that.
So the first thing that we do in mindfulness therapy is identifying those thought reactions themselves that trigger the anxiety. We then work in a very specific way with those thoughts reactions and beliefs using various techniques. The first and most important one is learning to overcome this habit of identification so that we can hold the thought in our mind whatever it might be. The fear of fainting, the fear of being out of control, the fear of having a panic attack, whatever it might be.
We do this by meditating on those thoughts. We make every effort not to avoid those thoughts.
So that's very important. That is the first part of training. We call this mindfulness-based exposure therapy. We are exposing ourselves to those thoughts; those triggers and we train ourselves out of the habit of blindly identifying with them and feeding the anxiety.
The second way we work with the anxiety thoughts is to work with their imagery. We look at the imagery of the thoughts, how we see the emotion in the mind that gets triggered by these reactive thoughts is very important. That imagery is what actually creates the identity. And we work with that imagery in a way that neutralizes the anxiety.
Now the next part of our approach to overcoming agoraphobia that doesn't require medication is to design a schedule of daily challenges. So this is where we will expose ourselves to a particular situation that would tend to generate those reactive anxiety-producing thoughts.
And with the mindfulness-based exposure therapy that I've been describing, you can expect to see really effective progress within a few sessions. Usually after the first three or four weeks of applying the mindfulness techniques that I will teach you, you will notice significant reduction in anxiety and the ability to now start extending your range out of that prison.
So if you'd like to learn more about how to overcome the agoraphobia without using medication, then please email me and let's schedule a Skype Therapy session.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION TO HELP YOU OVERCOME AGORAPHOBIA
Online Psychotherapist for treating Agoraphobia via Skype
Agoraphobia Therapy Online via Skype
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong. I provide online therapy via Skype for the treatment of anxiety disorders, including agoraphobia.
So if you're interested in online psychotherapy for agoraphobia, then I invite you to learn more by visiting my website and then simply e-mail me. Feel free to ask any questions you may have about online therapy and this approach that I specialize in for treating agoraphobia, without the use of medications. I'm happy to answer any questions you have, and if you feel comfortable with this approach, then we can schedule a Skype therapy session and you can evaluate for yourself if this is the right approach for you. It certainly is for the majority of people that I've worked with over the last 10 or so years.
I see a lot of people who suffer from agoraphobia, not surprisingly, since it's very difficult to leave the security of home when you're suffering from agoraphobia.
So the approach that I have developed over the years is called mindfulness therapy and specifically mindfulness-based exposure therapy. So you know already that you need to face your anxiety, you need some form of exposure therapy plan and protocol; that's going to be an essential part of your recovery process. But it's how you go about that that makes all the difference.
So I do not advocate straightforward exposure therapy in its usual form, which simply means exposing yourself incrementally to your challenges until you develop more comfort with them through familiarization. I think that is a rather ineffective and crude approach to exposure therapy.
It Is much, much more effective when you do a lot of detailed preparation and training before you do each of your exposure challenges, whatever that might be.
So many people that I've worked with suffering from agoraphobia feel very uncomfortable in public places where there are lots of other people around. The real underlying fear for most people with agoraphobia is the sense of being out of your comfort zone and worrying about having a panic attack in that environment and not feeling that you have an escape route. You feel trapped in that environment. That's very common.
There are many different types of agoraphobia. A lot of people just feel very uncomfortable driving, for example. They can leave their house, but they just cannot drive on a busy road. That's a different quality of agoraphobia. But it's basically any situation where you feel trapped.
So in the mindfulness-based exposure therapy approach we identify all of our challenges, all of our triggers. That's the first step. It's very good to write those down, make a list of your triggers. And then we set up a strategy of exposure challenges each day. And we make sure that we stick to that strategy.
We do not skip the practical challenges because avoidance, of course, is one of the big problems with agoraphobia, and the more that you avoid anxiety-producing situations, the more you're likely to reinforce that anxiety. I also don't recommend medications, because, really, medications are simply another form of avoidance. They're not really equipping you with new ways of working with your anxiety that resolve that anxiety; it is just covering up the symptoms. And that's not really an effective treatment.
The only effective treatment is to strategically and intelligently design an exposure protocol that you follow through, religiously. So how do we go about doing this in the Mindfulness-based exposure approach?
Well, we choose one of those challenges that we're going to work on. It doesn't matter how big or small it is, something that you feel is a good challenge, not too stressful, but sufficient that it creates anxiety.
We then prepare for that challenge by learning how to apply mindfulness to work with that anxiety.
This approach is very effective and most people see very big changes within quite a short period of time. This is quite different than the classical talk therapy or counseling. It's actually working at the deep process level that creates your anxiety. It works at the psychological level directly. That's the important thing.
So please contact me if you are struggling with agoraphobia and you are committed to overcoming your agoraphobia.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME TO HELP YOU OVERCOME AGORAPHOBIA
Agoraphobia Help Online by Skype
Online Treatment for Agoraphobia through Skype
Through progressive challenges and mindfulness training you will soon make progress in overcoming your agoraphobia. Email me if you would like online help for your agoraphobia.
Welcome. My name is Peter strong and I'm a professional psychotherapist and I offer online help for agoraphobia and other anxiety disorders that may be affecting the quality of your life. I offer online therapy, which is of course very convenient if you're suffering from agoraphobia.
The style of therapy that I offer is called mindfulness therapy and this is a very practical hands-on approach that gives you tools that you can use between therapy sessions to progressively overcome your agoraphobia.
So, mindfulness therapy consists of a combination of two important aspects. The first is designing a series of progressive challenges. That's very important, of course, that you try to face your fears and not simply give into them. But you need to do this in a progressive way starting simple and then progressing to more difficult challenges.
The other part of this approach is to do training before you do any kind of exposure challenge. You need to prepare yourself so that if anxiety gets triggered, that you will have trained such that that that anxiety will dissipate or resolve itself on the spot in the presence of the particular triggers that trigger the fear, anxiety or panic attacks. So we train beforehand.
We do this by developing a very different quality of relationship to our anxiety and this is the hallmark of mindfulness therapy. The real problem is not so much the anxiety itself but our reactions to that anxiety. We tend to develop patterns of fear-based reactions to our anxiety and other emotions that tend to feed that underlying anxiety and stop it resolving itself.
So, during the preparation step before a challenge you actually will be learning how to meditate on your anxiety. So you will play through the scene of perhaps walking around the block or whatever challenge you decide to start with. You look for the anxiety that gets triggered in your mind and then you change the way that you relate to that anxiety. And the most important thing is not to become identified with the anxiety; to see the anxiety as if it was a visitor or simply an object in the mind. Then we can learn to develop balance in relationship to that object. So you can sit with your anxiety without becoming anxious. That's the most important first step in the training before you do any challenges.
The second step is to respond to that anxiety with a quality of friendliness and compassion. This also is a vital part of the mindfulness approach. Mindfulness is this combination of consciousness and friendliness.
Friendliness is immensely powerful in overcoming fear. So you could think that of the fear emotion itself as being like a child. It feels isolated. It's scared. And what does it need? The most important thing it needs is to feel a connection with its parent. The parent is not afraid. During meditation on our anxiety we establish this kind of internal parent which we call our true self. It is not afraid it is able to establish a relationship with the anxiety that is not based on fear based on compassion. This is exactly what the fear needs in order to resolve itself. And that is what we call the True Self-Little Self Alliance.
So when people are stuck in patterns of anxiety it's because that alliance is missing within. So building that is essential. And there are many other things that we do during the training before each challenge session, but that's a taste of Mindfulness Therapy. It is very, very effective in deed, and most people see significant improvements after three or four weeks practicing the techniques that I will teach you. So, if you're interested in online help for your anxiety and your agoraphobia do please send me an email and schedule a therapy session via Skype.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME FOR HELP WITH AGORAPHOBIA, PANIC ATTACKS & ANXIETY
Agoraphobia Help from Home - Online Therapy