How to overcome agoraphobia with online therapy

How to overcome agoraphobia with online therapy via Skype

Overcome agoraphobia through Online Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy via Skype.

You will learn how to work with your anxiety in a way that neutralizes your anxiety and prevents you from becoming overwhelmed by anxiety.

I will guide you through the process and you will see significant improvements after each therapy session.

Most people see significant improvements after 3-4 sessions.

Contact me to learn more about Online Mindfulness Therapy for agoraphobia and to schedule Skype Therapy sessions with me.

Online Therapy via Skype is available for the USA, Canada, UK & Western Europe.

Go to my main website to learn more and to schedule a Skype Therapy session: Online Therapy for agoraphobia

Main LinkedIn article: Online Therapy for Agoraphobia

Online Psychotherapist for help with Agoraphobia via Skype

Online Mindfulness Therapy for Agoraphobia and Social Anxiety Disorder without using antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications

See a Therapist Online via Skype for highly effective online help and treatment for overcoming Agoraphobia, Anxiety, Panic Attacks and Social Anxiety.

If you want to recover effectively from agoraphobia you must treat the underlying habitual anxiety reactions. 

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. To recover fully you need an effective form of psychotherapy that should include Exposure Therapy and Cognitive Therapy to overcome anxiety-based thinking. You also need to work directly on the anxiety that feeds those thoughts.

During Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy (Mindfulness Therapy) we work on neutralizing these habitual reactions directly at the psychological level. This approach is very effective and most of my clients see big improvements after 3-4 Skype sessions with me.

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 essential for effective communication and effective psychotherapy.

Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy for Agoraphobia

Avoidance is a major problem in agoraphobia, so any effective approach must include some form of Exposure Therapy. But, in order for Exposure Therapy to be effective, you must use a very focused approach to neutralize your habitual anxiety reactions BEFORE you do an exposure challenge, otherwise you risk reinforcing your anxiety instead of diminishing it.

During Mindfulness-based Exposure Therapy we imagine performing each exposure challenge before doing it and we work with any anxiety reactions that emerge and neutralize the anxiety through the techniques of Mindfulness Therapy, which include forming a positive and compassionate relationship with your anxiety, treating it with the same quality of love that you would give to a child who was afraid. Establishing this internal relationship with your fear is essential for healing anxiety and it is always the absence of such a relationship that feeds anxiety.

Working with imagery

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 find out more about this online psychotherapy service and schedule a therapy session via Skype with me. Inquiries welcome!

Everyone that I have worked with really likes the mindfulness approach that I teach for healing emotional suffering…

"Mindfulness therapy has helped me with my anxiety in a very significant way. No longer am I bound to my anxiety in a continuous circle. I’ve been able to see my anxiety for what it truly is, and it has liberated me. Thank you Peter."

VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION FOR THE EFFECTIVE TREATMENT OF AGORAPHOBIA

Online Support for Agoraphobia - Online Therapy via Skype

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 of 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 let's schedule a therapy session via Skype. Thank you.

VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION FOR THE EFFECTIVE TREATMENT OF AGORAPHOBIA

Find an online therapy to treat agoraphobia

How do I overcome my agoraphobia without medication? Online Mindfulness Therapy for Agoraphobia

Email me to schedule a Skype therapy session with Dr. Peter Strong, specialist in online mindfulness therapy for the treatment of anxiety disorders, including agoraphobia, and depression.

Welcome. My name is Peter Strong. I'm a professional online psychotherapist based in Colorado and I offer online therapy via Skype to help people manage anxiety and depression more effectively using the techniques of mindfulness therapy. 

This is a system of psychotherapy that I've been developing over the last ten or more years now that seems to be extremely effective for anxiety and also depression but basically is very effective for helping you heal the underlying anxiety itself directly. And it does this and a variety of ways one of which is by helping you work on those patterns of reactive thinking that feed the anxiety. 

So with agoraphobia the typical situation is that we get obsessed with anxiety producing thoughts about what will happen to us if we leave our safety zone for example that's a common kind of thought pattern. You know the fear of having a panic attack in public. The fear of fainting or being sick or anything else like that. These are these are fed by a whole system of internal dialogue that is relentless and feeding that anxiety. 

So I'm often asked how can I overcome my agoraphobia without using medication and to do this effectively you have to address this underlying psychological process of reactive thinking that's feeding your anxiety. Medications have their prey's place you know the selective serotonin uptake inhibitors you know these have their place but medications can change that underlying process. All the medication will ever do is reduce symptoms for a while. But that's not really healing the problem is not changing the essential underlying psychological habits that are creating your anxiety and fear. 

So this is why it is recommended that you look into process oriented psychotherapy like cognitive behavioral therapy or exposure and prevention type protocols. Because these help you actually deal with that underlying reactive process. 

I teach mindfulness based exposure therapy which is really great very effective indeed for agoraphobia specifically. It really helps you develop a strategic approach to overcoming your anxiety. So some of the exposure therapy models are OK up to a point but they don't really tell you how to process the anxiety itself directly. What to do with that emotion? In mindfulness work we work exclusively on reprocessing that emotion, that habit that gets activated. 

If you'd like to learn more about the mindfulness approach for healing anxiety including agoraphobia then simply go to my website. Learn More and e-mail me with any questions you may have. Of course it's very convenient to be able to do your psychotherapy sessions online if you're suffering from agoraphobia, and that's one of the reasons why I specialize in Skype Therapy. It's very important that you can see each other. That's why we use Skype. This improves the quality of communication and makes the therapy sessions much more effective. 

So during our sessions together I will teach you how to develop a strategy for overcoming your anxiety using mindfulness based exposure therapy. So what does this entail? Well it it entails designing a series of challenges that are manageable but that tend to produce anxiety. So it might be simply leaving the comfort of your own home and walking to a shop or going to a mall or any number of things. You will know what those triggers are that trigger your anxiety and panic attacks. 

We design a series of challenges where we basically take one challenge and we prepare for it using mindfulness methods. This basically means playing the challenge through in the mind, visualizing going to the mall for example, and then watching for the anxiety reaction and all of the reactive thoughts that get triggered when that anxiety is triggered in the mind. 

When we find those anxiety thoughts and the emotion itself we then start to build a different kind of relationship with it that is based on consciousness, on mindfulness, where we can become the observer of these thoughts and emotions but without becoming identified with them. In this way we break the habit that causes our anxiety.

Let me help you break free from your agoraphobia through Mindfulness Therapy.

VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR THE EFFECTIVE TREATMENT OF AGORAPHOBIA

Online Therapist for Agoraphobia - Psychotherapy via Skype

Online Therapy for housebound agoraphobia

Welcome! My name is Peter Strong and I provide online therapy via Skype for the treatment of anxiety and depression and also for agoraphobia. 

So if you are interested and getting help to overcome your agoraphobia, then you might consider seeing an online therapist like myself. I have made it a mission to try and provide effective practical ways of working with the anxiety and panic attacks associated with agoraphobia, and that's why I offer this online therapy service. 

The central method that we use is called mindfulness-based exposure therapy. As you will undoubtedly understand by now, it is extremely important that you not fall into the trap of avoidance. You must face your anxiety and face those situations that trigger that anxiety, but you must do it in a strategic way with appropriate training.

So if you want to be successful with exposure therapy, you need to take a strategic approach with a lot of training, and so this is the theory behind mindfulness-based exposure therapy for agoraphobia. 

We start by setting up a series of challenges and then we work through each challenge in a systematic way starting with easy challenges and progressing to harder challenges. But the important thing is that you do each challenge well and that you reach your goal of being able to do that charge without being overwhelmed by anxiety. 

The primary way we go about doing this is through mindfulness meditation. We meditate on that challenge. You play it through in the mind. And we watch for the anxiety reactions. When we find an anxiety reaction, we respond to it with mindfulness.

One of the first things we learn is to work with is the outer structure of the anxiety, which is in the form of reactive thoughts. These are conditioned habitual reactive thoughts that get triggered when you encounter the situation, the particular triggers in that challenge. They get triggered from conditioning and then produce an anxiety reaction. 

So we need to work with those thoughts because the thoughts are a very important part of the structure of anxiety. Thoughts do not cause anxiety, that is a common misconception, but thoughts are a very powerful fuel source that feeds anxiety and increases its intensity. 

So we learn to work mindfully with those thoughts. We learn to not identify with those thoughts. We learn to see them as objects. And not become lost in that series of habitual thoughts.

So we find each emotional reaction and we help it heal by the quality of our relationship to it, developing more compassion and more consciousness. 

Then we replay the scene in our mind of the challenge and look for other anxiety reactions and other triggers. We work with those in the same way until we can go through the entire challenge in our mind without anxiety. Then after this training period, which may be half an hour of meditation before the challenge, we then go and do the challenge and we put it into practice. 

We put the training into practice. We recognize the anxiety it arises. And the training will help it resolve during the challenge. 

We then meditate after the challenge on any fresh anxiety that did not resolve. So we train with that anxiety and help it resolve in the same way. 

And after that we repeat the charge again. And we keep cycling through meditating before the challenge. Doing the challenge. Meditating after the challenge. Taking a break and then repeating until we can do the challenge with zero anxiety. 

So this is a brief introduction to mindfulness-based therapy for agoraphobia. If you would like to talk to an online therapist like myself for help overcoming your agoraphobia, then please reach out to me by email and lets schedule a Skype therapy session. 

Most people see results very quickly when they take this strategic and very in-depth approach to working with anxiety. So you can expect and you should expect to see significant changes within three to four sessions. And then when you start to apply these methods yourself you will continue that progress and eventually you will get to that position where you do not feel overwhelmed by anxiety or panic attacks. So that is our firm commitment. Our firm goal in Mindfulness Therapy it is not to tolerate or manage anxiety, it is to eliminate it. It is to heal it. So if you'd like to get started please contact me. 

VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR HELP WITH AGORAPHOBIA, PANIC ATTACKS & ANXIETY

Online Therapy via Skype is available for the USA, Canada, UK & Western Europe.

Go to my main website to learn more and to schedule a Skype Therapy session: Online Therapy for agoraphobia