Online Psychotherapist for agoraphobia

See a Therapist Online using Skype for effective online help and therapy for overcoming Agoraphobia, Anxiety, Panic Attacks and Social Anxiety Disorder.

If you want to recover completely from agoraphobia you must treat the underlying conditioned anxiety reactions.

Medications don’t address this. Medications only treat anxiety symptoms, but do very little 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 CBT to manage 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 highly effective and most of my clients see big improvements after 3-4 Skype Therapy 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 good communication and good 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.

Contact me to discover more about this online therapy service and schedule a Skype therapy session with me. Inquiries welcome!

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

"After 8 years, two therapists, many self-help books…..my hypochondria and OCD was worse than ever. I figured I would just have to live like this and deal with it. I put on a good show in front of people and cried alone. Then, I stumbled upon Peter’s website. I figured this was my last attempt. Peter is kind, understanding, and patient. He helped guide me out of the dark and see the light. He is truly there to help. He never looks at his time during sessions. I would have to remind him that time is up. His rates are reasonable so everyone cam get proper therapy. He gave me practical tools to use to overcome my anxiety. He is always available via email for advice. He truly cares about the progress of his patients. Peter changed my life and gave me the chance to enjoy my life again. I am eternally grateful to him."

VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE ME TO LEARN HOW TO START SKYPE THERAPY WITH ME TO HELP YOU OVERCOME AGORAPHOBIA

See an Online Psychotherapist for agoraphobia

Online Psychotherapist for help with agoraphobia

Welcome. My name is Peter Strong and I'm a professional psychotherapist specializing in mindfulness therapy for the treatment of anxiety disorders, including agoraphobia. So if you're looking for online support for agoraphobia then this is a good service for you to consider. Just go to my website and read more about this online therapy service and the mindfulness therapy approach for agoraphobia, and email me with any questions you may have.

So mindfulness therapy is one of the most effective ways of treating anxiety disorders such as agoraphobia. What it does is it teaches you how to break free from this central problem that we call Reactive Identification. This is where we become overwhelmed by thoughts and emotional reactions that get triggered, and it's very important to break this habit because every time we become overwhelmed and become identified with our thoughts and with our emotions we feed those emotions and they become stronger and this simply intensifies the anxiety.

The approach to overcoming agoraphobia is one of mindfulness-based exposure therapy. It's fairly straightforward. Basically, you will design a number of challenges that you will prepare for each and every day. And you start with very simple challenges that you can do with very little anxiety. But nevertheless you prepare for that challenge, whether it's walking outside into the garden or walking around the corner. That's often a big trigger for many agoraphobics when they can no longer see their house. Whatever the challenge we practice for it beforehand. And that's really what makes mindfulness-based exposure therapy for agoraphobia somewhat different than more conventional approaches.

We do this by playing through the challenge in our mind, we imagine ourselves doing the challenge, but we would then watch for any anxiety that gets triggered in the mind. And this is before we do the challenge.

When we notice that anxiety that gets triggered by the thoughts of walking around the garden, or around the block or whatever it might be. Then we focus our conscious awareness, our mindfulness skills on that emotion with two purposes in mind. The first purpose is to establish a relationship with that emotion which is conscious and in which you do not become overwhelmed, is not reactively identify with that emotion, you're able to be with the fear but not become afraid. So that's the first essential part of training and preparation before you do any of your challenges.

The second part of preparing for our challenge is to work with the emotion itself and help it heal, help it resolve, help it reduce its intensity, again before you ever do the challenge itself. And there's a number of ways that we do this, but yet again the most effective first step is to establish a relationship with your fear in which you are not afraid. So you are effectively being with your emotion and not feeding that fear. So you, in that process, develop more and more freedom from that fear. You become stronger by sitting with that fear.

We also work with other factors which contribute to the anxiety such as the imagery of the fear, how you see it and the mind is absolutely central to how the motion works. And typically the fear is very large and very close and that's what causes that fear to manifest. When we start to investigate this imagery we can change it because we have a conscious relationship with it. When you change the imagery you most definitely change the emotion. So that's another very important part of mindfulness therapy which is part of the training that you will do yourself before you do your challenge.

I will teach you how to do these two steps involved in preparation for your challenges. And when you practice this in this very strategic focused way and then you will most definitely diminish that anxiety until you feel completely confident and comfortable in doing your first challenge and then moving on to a harder challenge. And in this way we progress until we overcome the agoraphobia altogether.

So if you'd like to learn more about how to do all this simply go to my website and please send me an email and we can schedule some therapy sessions at a time that works for you.

GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION TO HELP YOU OVERCOME AGORAPHOBIA

Online Psychotherapist for overcoming agoraphobia

Talk to an Online Psychotherapist for agoraphobia

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 TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME FOR THE EFFECTIVE TREATMENT OF AGORAPHOBIA

Online Psychotherapist for treating agoraphobia

Speak to an Online Psychotherapist for agoraphobia

Welcome. My name is Peter Strong. I'm a professional therapist and I offer online therapy via Skype for a variety of emotional and psychological problems that don't require medical treatment, such as anxiety and depression and also agoraphobia.

So I offer online help for agoraphobia via Skype. And this of course is very convenient for many people who are suffering from agoraphobia, because it's so difficult to leave home.

So during these online therapy sessions I will teach you how to work with your anxiety and panic attacks using the well tested techniques of Mindfulness Therapy.

Mindfulness therapy is a form of psychotherapy that is very effective and very popular these days because it focuses on helping you learn practical ways of working with your anxiety and reducing your anxiety and eliminating your anxiety.

Mindfulness teaches you practical methods to do this, and during our online therapy sessions I will teach you how to work with your anxiety using these techniques.

The basic most important part of getting over agoraphobia is to really take it on as a challenge rather than recoiling from your anxiety with fear.

So fear of fear of course makes things worse. Trying to avoid fear makes things worse. But facing your fear is what will leads to success. However, facing your fear has to be done in a very strategic and careful and measured way and that's what we explore during Mindfulness Therapy.

So you will set yourself up a series of challenges that you can explore and develop each day and prepare for these challenges using mindfulness meditation.

Basically, this is where you meditate on the challenge that you're about to do and look for any anxiety that gets triggered, and then work on healing that anxiety, that very specific anxiety in that specific context, by building a conscious and non-reactive relationship with that anxiety. That's what I mean by facing your fear. It's not some general statement, that will not work. That's of little value. It's about facing the specific fear that is triggered in a specific situation.

For example, many people with agoraphobia find it very distressing when they try to leave their house and walk down the street to a place where they can no longer see the house. That's very common. There's also often a tremendous fear of having a panic attack away from the security of your home.

These are examples of triggers, and in the mindfulness therapy approach we use these triggers. We actually will meditate on them and work specifically to help heal that particular anxiety that is triggered in that situation. And then we do the challenge. And then we meditate after doing the challenge to again work with any anxiety that may have arisen.

So this is a very strategic approach which I call mindfulness-based exposure therapy. And if you do this consistently every day you will absolutely overcome your agoraphobia or any other anxiety disorder. The same approach works very well for OCD, for example.

If you'd like to learn more about this approach then please send me an email. Ask any questions you have about online mindfulness therapy for agoraphobia and I'll be happy to answer anything that you would like to explore with me.

When you're ready we can schedule the first Skype Therapy session with you and in that therapy session we will get started straight away on developing some of these mindfulness-based practices and develop a exposure challenge schedule for you to start your recovery process.

Most people see really quite outstanding results when they take this approach and typically you should expect to see significant improvements after three or four weeks when you practice in this way.

So if you'd like to learn more need to get started with me to overcome your agoraphobia using mindfulness then please email me.

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

Online Therapy for agoraphobia

Online Therapist for agoraphobia

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Online Mindfulness Therapy for Agoraphobia

Online Psychotherapist for agoraphobia