How to get online help for agoraphobia
How to get online help for the treatment of agoraphobia
Looking for online help to overcome your agoraphobia?
Online Mindfulness Psychotherapy for Overcoming Agoraphobia and Social Anxiety Disorder without using drugs.
See a Psychotherapist Online using Skype for highly effective online help and mindfulness-based therapy for overcoming Chronic Agoraphobia, Anxiety, Panic Disorder and Social Anxiety.
If you want to recover fully from agoraphobia you must treat the underlying conditioned anxiety reactions.
Anti-anxiety medications don’t do this. Medications only provide a temporary relief from anxiety symptoms, but do nothing to change the underlying psychological cause of your anxiety.
During Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy (Mindfulness Therapy) we work on neutralizing these habitual reactions directly at the psychological level. This approach is extremely effective and most people see significant improvements after 3-4 Skype sessions.
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 necessary for good communication and effective psychotherapy.
What Treatment Methods work Best for Agoraphobia?
In my experience, the best therapeutic approach for helping people overcome agoraphobia is a combination of Cognitive Therapy (CBT) and Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy (Mindfulness Therapy).
Cognitive-based therapy helps you identify the underlying habitual and reactive thoughts and beliefs that create anxiety. Developing awareness of these habitual negative thinking patterns is a very important first step in changing them.
Mindfulness Therapy helps you neutralize and resolve the underlying emotional panic anxiety and fear that fuels the thoughts and beliefs. Learning how to diffuse and resolve the underlying emotions is essential and mindfulness is one of the best awareness tools for doing this.
With practice, you begin to completely change your relationship to the emotions from being a victim to being aware. the more aware you are, the less reactive you become. As you become less reactive, you can begin to explore ways to heal the anxiety-fear directly. Instead of fighting your emotions or avoiding them, you learn how to be with them as a friend. Mindfulness training makes this possible.
The combined approach teaches you how to work with panic anxiety thoughts without becoming overwhelmed by them and this makes it possible to do Imaginal Exposure Exercises, where you imagine leaving your house or going on a journey or being in a crowded place. Through repetition you quickly learn how to process any anxiety reactions as they arise and you prepare yourself for an actual real-life challenge.
At first, we make the challenge small and manageable. We begin to build direct experience and confidence and build on what we have achieved. This very systematic process of preparation through guided Imaginal Exposure followed by real challenges is a proven and effective method for breaking free from agoraphobia and panic attacks.
Contact me to learn more about this online counseling service and schedule an online therapy session with me. Inquiries welcome!
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME FOR THE EFFECTIVE TREATMENT OF AGORAPHOBIA
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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.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR THE EFFECTIVE TREATMENT OF AGORAPHOBIA
Online treatment plan for agoraphobia using Mindfulness Therapy
Find an online therapist for agoraphobia
Exposure Therapy is an essential part of the recovery process, but is not sufficient by itself. You have to engage in thorough training before you do each exposure challenge to prevent simply re-traumatizing yourself. Hence the development of Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy, an approach that I developed several years ago and have found to be very effective when working with clients suffering from agoraphobia.
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong. I'm a professional psychotherapist and I offer online therapy, which of course, is very convenient and necessary if you're suffering from agoraphobia or other anxiety condition that keeps you housebound.
So I'm often asked, "What is the best treatment for agoraphobia?" "What's the best way to overcome the anxiety and panic attacks that accompany agoraphobia?" From my experience working with people suffering from agoraphobia, over the last ten years or so now, I find that the best approach is what I call Mindfulness Therapy. This is a system of work that I've been developing for many years which really works at the underlying core level of your anxiety. It helps you break free from those patterns of habitual reactivity that cause your anxiety. It works by changing the anxiety directly so that it is not habitually triggered by the common triggers that you encounter in your agoraphobia.
We have to uncover these underlying anxiety habits and then work on changing them. And the best way to doing this is what I call Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy. So this means that you actively create a series of exposure challenges. That might be walking around the block or driving a short distance if you can still drive or even just stepping outside the front door. But it doesn't matter what the challenges are. But it is essential that you identify challenges that are accompanied by a degree of anxiety and then start working on those challenges and training yourself out of the reactive anxiety that has become habitual.
The way that we train ourselves out of the anxiety reactions is not by simply repeated exposure as is often taught. Repeated exposure is very inefficient and you risk intensifying the anxiety.
So in mindfulness-based exposure therapy we prepare for each challenge in a very thorough way before you do the challenge, and this preparation is called a rehearsal meditation. It's all about training. So in a rehearsal meditation you imagine doing that challenge and then you look specifically for any anxiety that gets triggered. And then you start to work with that anxiety, working with its structure and helping change that anxiety directly.
So if you would like help with your agoraphobia, please contact me and let's schedule some therapy sessions over Skype and I will teach you exactly how to apply mindfulness to overcome your agoraphobia. So please contact me if you'd like to get started with the mindfulness approach for overcoming agoraphobia.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION FOR HELP WITH AGORAPHOBIA, PANIC ATTACKS & ANXIETY
How to get online help for agoraphobia