How to get help for someone with agoraphobia
How to get help for someone with agoraphobia
Agoraphobia Help from Home - Online Mindfulness Therapy
See a Psychotherapist Online over Skype for highly effective online help and mindfulness therapy for Agoraphobia, Chronic Anxiety, Panic Attacks and Social Anxiety.
Contact me to learn more about this online therapy service and book an online Skype counseling session with me. Inquiries welcome!
Online help for anxiety and agoraphobia - Online Mindfulness Therapy
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong and I'm a professional mindfulness-based psychotherapist and I offer online therapy via Skype for help with anxiety and depression. If you would like online help for anxiety or depression then please go to my website and learn more about the online therapy service that I offer via Skype.
This service is available worldwide. I'm based in America and most of my clients live in the USA, but I also see clients in Canada and as far away as Western Europe and Australia. If you're interested in learning how to work with anxiety and depression using mindfulness then please contact me.
Mindfulness is extremely effective for treating anxiety and depression and mindfulness therapy is a process of teach you how to do this, how to Use mindfulness effectively.
We actually learn how to meditate on our anxiety and depression. Learning to meditate on our emotions is a central feature in mindfulness therapy. Generally, we tend to do the opposite. We spend all our time trying to avoid anxiety or depression, even using meditation as a distraction from our emotional pain, trying to get away from the mind in every way we can, and most of us generate internal aversion towards our emotional pain. We don't like anxiety, we don't like our depression, we don't like our loss of control, we don't like these compulsive drives that seem to ruin our life.
So, really, from a mindfulness perspective, avoidance and aversion are your main enemies and they are the main forms of reactivity that actually feed anxiety and depression and prevent it from healing. So this is why we learn to meditate on our anxiety or depression.
We actually learn to develop a friendly and conscious relationship with our emotions because this is essential for their healing. You cannot overcome anxiety if you try to avoid it, or if you try to avoid situations that might trigger anxiety. That is not recommended. In fact, I will teach you the opposite - you need to face your anxiety. You need to go to those very situations that cause anxiety or trigger anxiety and you need to practice with those situations using mindfulness until you have overcome the anxiety habits, because it is habit that causes our anxiety or our depression and these habits thrive on not being seen, on ignorance, unawareness.
So that's what we overcome by meditating on our emotions. We actually bring conscious awareness to them and non reactivity to see our emotions very clearly. This is the first part of mindfulness training.
THe second part of mindfulness training is actually interacting with your emotions and helping them change. This is the response of compassion, which is an essential feature of mindfulness.
If you would like to learn more about how to get help for your anxiety or depression online using mindfulness then simply go to my website and learn more about the mindfulness approach to healing anxiety and depression, and then contact me to schedule a therapy session. I have many spaces available and we simply email each other to find the time that works, taking into account your timezone, etc. So if you'd like to learn more about how to use mindfulness to overcome anxiety and depression do please send me an email. Thank you.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE ME TO LEARN HOW TO START SKYPE THERAPY WITH ME TO HELP YOU OVERCOME AGORAPHOBIA
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Visit main site: Online Help for agoraphobia
Online Therapy via Skype for treating Agoraphobia
Welcome. My name is Peter Strong and I'm a professional psychotherapist specializing in online therapy and I offer online therapy for agoraphobia.
So, agoraphobia online therapy is very effective for people who really can't get out of the house to work with a therapist in their local area.
So, during these sessions that I offer via Skype, I focus on teaching you very effective mindfulness-based methods of working with your anxiety and panic attacks.
The real important thing to understand here is that Agoraphobia is really a psychological habit. I prefer to call it a habit rather than a disorder because when you start labeling these psychological states as disorders that tends to reinforce your sense of helplessness as a victim, and we don't want to do that.
The actual mechanism that generates the anxiety and panic attacks of agoraphobia is a habit and habits can be changed. So during online agoraphobia therapy sessions I will guide you in how to work with the underlying emotions and thought patterns that supports that anxiety.
We do this in a surprising way. We actually learn to make friends with our fear. This is very, very important. You can't change the belief when it has a very strong emotional charge based on fear. No amount of rational arguments or persuasion that you don't need to feel this way is going to change that anxiety. You have to learn to work with the anxiety directly. And that's what you do during mindfulness therapy. We actually learn to meditate on your own fear as you imagine walking or traveling out of your safe zone.
So, we set up a series of challenges, exposures, if you like, where you choose to do a particularly difficult exercise but one that you can manage. But then we prepare for this by playing it through in the mind it might be walking around the block or just simply leaving the house for a few minutes, whatever it might be.
We design a challenge and then we prepare for it by meditating on it. We play it through in the mind and then we look for the fear reactions and we look for the thought reactions that feed that fear and then we develop a mindfulness-based relationship with these emotions and thoughts, and that relationship is based on friendliness.
You learn, essentially, to sit with your emotions and thoughts without becoming overwhelmed by them, without losing your balance. This is central. This is a central part of mindfulness training, that you can be with your thoughts and emotions but not be overwhelmed by them. When you can do dance then you start to break the habits that get reinforced by re-traumatizing, essentially, that fear.
So, we learn to sit with our emotions without becoming reactive and without identifying with those emotions. We learn to develop this other side of our identity, which we call the True Self, the Observer Mind, that which can be conscious of thoughts and emotions but is not identified with thoughts or emotions.
We then work with those emotions and begin to treat them very much as you might treat a child that's afraid. we learn to comfort the emotion itself, the fear. you build a strong relationship with it, rather like a parent to a child. And in this way the fear reaction, that we might call the Little Self is able to let go of its fear by proximity to your True Self which is fearless nature.
So, in this way we begin to build resolution pathways in the brain. You learn, basically, how to help the emotions resolve themselves, so that if they get triggered they simply resolve instantly, on the spot, through the training that you've done before you do the challenge And then you go out and walk around the block or whatever and put this training into action.
So, we repeat this process over and over again. Meditation before challenge and we do the challenge and we may come back and meditate some more and then we repeat the challenge until we no longer feel any fear in doing that challenge. Then we move on to a harder challenge. And in this way we gain more and more confidence in the process.
So, when you are able to neutralize these emotional reactions then the beliefs begin to change quite automatically. We don't need to try and change our beliefs. We simply need to change the emotional content that fuels those beliefs and makes them so powerful.
If you would like to learn more about agoraphobia therapy online do please send me an email and we can schedule a Skype Therapy session. Thank you.
Mindfulness-based Online Help for Agoraphobia
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR THE EFFECTIVE TREATMENT OF AGORAPHOBIA
Agoraphobia Therapy Online through 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.
Speak to a therapist online for help overcoming agoraphobia
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE ME TO LEARN HOW TO START SKYPE THERAPY WITH ME FOR THE EFFECTIVE TREATMENT OF AGORAPHOBIA
Agoraphobia Help from Home - Online Mindfulness Therapy
Welcome. My name is Peter Strong. I am a professional psychotherapist and I specialize in Mindfulness Therapy, which I teach online over Skype.
I specialize in Mindfulness Therapy for anxiety disorders but I also treat depression and PTSD and many other emotional conditions that respond well to Mindfulness Therapy.
In particular, I offer online therapy for people suffering from agoraphobia. So if you're interested in online therapy for your agoraphobia from home then please email me and ask any questions you may have about this service and I'll be happy to explain to you how I can help you overcome your agoraphobia using Mindfulness Therapy.
This approach is very effective indeed, especially for anxiety disorders. Basically what we will do during these sessions is we will learn how to work with your anxiety in a very practical and very focused and very strategic way. That's what makes the difference.
So this begins by establishing a routine of exposure challenges. So these are challenges that you can determine for yourself that you want to use to train yourself out of the anxiety habit, if you like. You want to find a whole range of challenges that you can go through one by one and develop more and more confidence and learn how to defuse that anxiety. So that might be as simple as walking to the end of your driveway. Or it could be going into a mall or some challenge like that.
Now the important thing with exposure challenges like this is that you prepare for them well, that you prepare ahead of time. It is not sufficient to just throw yourself into the challenge and hope that you will survive and overcome your anxiety. The chances are you will simply re-traumatize yourself and make that anxiety worse.
But if you train for it well, then the exposure challenges can become very effective indeed. So I call this mindfulness-based exposure therapy.
So if you are going to the mall for example, you would sit down and meditate on that scenario. You would play it through in the mind like a movie, watching yourself going to the mall, with all of the particular triggers that are there, and then you look for any anxiety that gets triggered as you play through this scene.
When you find the anxiety you then consciously build a mindfulness-based relationship with that anxiety. And this is based on compassion and friendliness, and really, learning how to comfort that anxiety as if it was like a small child that's coming to you for comfort after being scared by something.
So we need to learn to approach our emotions in the same way. We need to see them as being visitors, if you like, that get triggered in the mind that really need our help to help them resolve their anxiety.
Technically speaking, you are not anxious; it's the emotion itself that is anxious. so we learn to see it this way. We built this mindfulness-based relationship with the emotion and we help it basically heal so it can overcome its own anxiety.
Then we can rehearse them further with those triggers and we can imagine being in the mall and not feel any anxiety, because the anxiety has resolved itself. We have given it what it needs to resolve itself by being a friend to the anxiety, if that makes any sense.
So we do this in a very detailed strategic way before we do the challenge. Then we do the challenge and then after the challenge we might do another meditation where we replay the scene again, which will now be fresh and we'll be even more contextualized, and we look for any anxiety that got triggered and we work with that in the same way.
So in this way we we progressively train the anxiety to resolve itself over and over again until basically it doesn't arise. So this is what we mean by a strategic approach. And if you do this in this kind of strategic way you will see results in a very short time. And most people see quite significant improvements after the first three to four sessions of this mindfulness-based exposure therapy.
So if you would like to learn more, please go to my website and then contact me by email to schedule a Skype therapy session in which I will go through this process in great detail and help you learn how to build an exposure challenge routine and how to meditate on your anxiety yourself so that you can do this via self between sessions. So if you would like to learn more please email me.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME
Psychotherapy over Skype
Welcome. My name is Peter Strong and I'm a professional psychotherapist and I specialize in online therapy that I provide over Skype for the treatment of anxiety and depression and other emotional problems without the use of medications.
This is not a medical treatment. This is a form of psychotherapy called mindfulness therapy that I've developed over the years and found to be particularly effective for anxiety and depression. So I'm often asked is online therapy as effective as in person therapy? And the answer is yes it is, certainly.
For the vast majority of people online therapy is just as effective as therapy in person, especially if you use Skype or similar video platform so you can see each other. That's the key ingredient. You must be able to see each other to really have good communication which is so important for effective psychotherapy. So if you can see each other then in my opinion there is no appreciable difference between online therapy and therapy in the therapist's office.
Now online therapy does offer some advantages. Clearly it's more convenient for you the client, because it means you can conduct your therapy sessions from home or from work or even in your car. All you need is a quiet place and a good internet reception and then you can conduct online therapy.
So people like the convenience, and people living in remote areas or for people living abroad, if you're based in a foreign country, you may not have access to the right kind of psychotherapist. And so online therapy gives you greater options for getting the kind of help that you are looking for from managing emotional problems such as anxiety or depression or addiction.
A lot of people like the greater privacy offered by online therapy. You don't have to wait in a therapist's office or similar public environment like that. You can conduct your sessions in the privacy of your own home and that's a big factor especially if you are struggling with a difficult set of emotions that you might be experiencing such as with depression or with addiction. So that greater level of privacy from your point of view is often just what we're looking for.
The other advantage of online therapy is that it's more comfortable for you as well. It's much less intimidating than the more typical clinical based therapy that's offered in a psychotherapist's office setting. From my point of view, my philosophy, is that we want to make psychotherapy as comfortable as possible. It should not be clinical in nature.
I personally do not advocate a medical approach for treating anxiety or depression. Medications may have some value in controlling symptoms but medications will do very little indeed to change the underlying cause of your anxiety or depression or addiction. That requires the right kind of psychological help, working with the underlying habits that cause your anxiety or depression or other emotional problem.
So the style of psychotherapy that I specialize in and find works best for the vast majority of people online is mindfulness therapy. This is a particular system of psychotherapy that I've developed over the last ten years or more that really focuses on working with those underlying habits which are primarily based around habitual reactive thinking.
So anxiety and depression are habits. They are learned habits. We are not born with anxiety or depression. We acquire these habits through time and often through trying to cope with emotional trauma in childhood. It's very common as a common starting point for the anxiety habits of the depression habit. Addiction often flows from that underlying anxiety or depression.
So we work on these habits very, very systematically in a focused way. We learn to dis-identify from the reactive thoughts. We learn to establish a healing relationship with the emotions based on compassion, which is a very important part of mindfulness teaching in general.
So if you'd like to learn more about Skype counseling therapy for anxiety or depression. If you would like to start sessions with me, then reach out to me by email. Simply contact me through my website and we can schedule a Skype counseling session at a time that works for you.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME FOR HELP WITH AGORAPHOBIA, PANIC ATTACKS & ANXIETY
How to get help for someone with agoraphobia