Online Therapy for Agoraphobia Massachusetts
Online Therapy for Agoraphobia Massachusetts
Online Mindfulness Therapy for Agoraphobia is available via Skype for Massachusetts, including: Boston, Worcester, Springfield, Cambridge, Lowell, New Bedford, Quincy
Online Mindfulness Therapy Massachusetts
Online Therapy for agoraphobia
Main site:
Online Mindfulness Therapy for Agoraphobia
Online Therapist to treat Agoraphobia
Online Mindfulness Therapist for Overcoming Agoraphobia and Social Anxiety Disorder without relying on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications.
Speak with a Psychotherapist Online via Skype for highly effective online help and mindfulness-based therapy for overcoming Agoraphobia, Chronic Anxiety, Panic Disorder and Social Anxiety.
If you want to recover completely from agoraphobia you must treat the underlying habitual anxiety reactions.
Anti-anxiety medications don’t do this. Medications only provide a temporary relief from 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 healing these habitual reactions directly at the psychological level. This approach is extremely effective and most people see measurable decrease in anxiety symptoms 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 good 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 learn more about this online therapy service and arrange for a Skype therapy session with me. Inquiries welcome!
Everyone that I have worked with really benefits from the mindfulness approach that I teach for healing emotional suffering…
"I came to Peter desperate, my last hope. I had tried other therapies that failed me: Peter’s approach is just what I needed. Instead of fighting the anxiety and trying to push it away or cover it up, you become conscious of it and give it the space that it needs. Eventually it dissipates. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it is the key… and it works! I am real proof. I am now happier and more content than I have ever been in my life."
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME TO HELP YOU OVERCOME AGORAPHOBIA
Agoraphobia Therapy Online over Skype
Welcome. My name is Peter Strong and I'm a professional psychotherapist specializing in online therapy. 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 this, then you start to break free from the reactive habits that feed our anxiety and 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.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE TO SCHEDULE ONLINE THERAPY WITH ME TO HELP YOU OVERCOME AGORAPHOBIA
Looking for online help to overcome agoraphobia?
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong. I provide online therapy via Skype. So if you're suffering from agoraphobia then Skype therapy can be a wonderful opportunity for you to get the help that you need to uncover these awful habitual patterns of reactivity that keep you imprisoned in your home or in a very restricted area.
So it's very important to find a way of overcoming these habitual anxiety reactions and I have been developing an approach that's called Mindfulness Therapy that's very effective for agoraphobia and other anxiety disorders.
Whatever style of psychotherapy you select, it's important that you find one that's very practical, such as cognitive behavioral therapy or Mindfulness Therapy, which is my specialty, and whatever approach you use must include some form of exposure therapy that enables you to start pushing those boundaries out to start overcoming your habitual anxiety reactions.
So I've developed a system called mindfulness-based exposure therapy for agoraphobia, which works extremely well and is very easy to learn via Skype. I will teach you how to approach your anxiety using mindfulness techniques that you can practice yourself and start to push back those boundaries.
So typically I see people once a week and then they practice the methods that I teach between sessions, and you should expect to see significant changes and improvements after the first three or four weeks.
Once you start applying the methods I will teach you, you will rapidly overcome your anxiety and start to break free from the prison of habitual anxiety.
So the online therapy option of course is very beneficial if not completely necessary if you're suffering from agoraphobia because it's so difficult for you to leave home or travel to see a therapist in their office; it's often impossible.
So if you would like to learn more about Skype therapy for agoraphobia, then do please contact me. Just ask me any questions you have; anything that you want to discuss about this approach. I'm happy to answer questions.
When you're ready though, let's schedule a trial session. I offer a no risk policy. That is that if you don't like the session, you don't like this approach or it doesn't feel right for you, then there's no charge. There's certainly no upfront charge for my sessions. The sessions are based entirely on your satisfaction with the results. So you pay after each session but on condition that you are happy with the results of that session. So it's a no risk approach and I think that's very important.
So if you would like to schedule a trial session with me and get started on a treatment plan that will help you overcome your anxiety and allow you to develop greater freedom from agoraphobia, then do please contact me and we can get started.
I see people throughout North America, but also in Western Europe as well. I am from the UK originally. I now live in Colorado but I see people all over the world and especially people who want to take a very practical and focused approach to working with their anxiety. In my opinion Mindfulness Therapy is one of the most effective approaches there is, followed by CBT. So please contact me if you'd like to get started.
VISIT MY CONTACT PAGE ME TO LEARN HOW TO START SKYPE THERAPY WITH ME FOR THE EFFECTIVE TREATMENT OF AGORAPHOBIA
Online Therapist for Agoraphobia - Mindfulness Therapy through Skype
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong. I'm a professional online therapist and I specialize in Mindfulness Therapy for the treatment of anxiety disorders including agoraphobia.
So if you're interested in seeing an online therapist for help with your agoraphobia then please do contact me. Go to my website. Learn more about the Online Mindfulness Therapy service that I provide and then reach out to me by email. Feel free to ask any questions you may have about online therapy and the mindfulness approach that I use.
Mindfulness Therapy is very effective indeed, and in this treatment plan that we will work out together you will basically learn how to apply mindfulness to progressively overcome your fear of leaving your home.
So the way we go about this is called mindfulness-based exposure therapy.
You then work using mindfulness to completely change your relationship to that anxiety to prevent it from overwhelming you and to prevent it from proliferating, but also to help it heal and resolve itself so that you can imagine doing the challenge with no anxiety at all before you go on to do the exposure challenge. So that's the secret.
Exposure therapy by itself is not sufficient. You must do some kind of training to neutralize the anxiety before you actually do the live challenge, and that's what makes the difference. So when you take this very strategic approach you will see changes quite quickly. I have worked with people who have suffered from agoraphobia for sometimes many years and they have been able to progressively expand their area of activity in the matter of a few weeks and usually within a month they are able to go to the supermarket, the mall and other places that would have been impossible before.
So anxiety is simply a habit. It's a condition reactive habit and we need to change these habits and the first way you change any habit is by bringing more mindfulness to it, more consciousness. Habits operate automatically, unconsciously. So you must make those habits conscious.
First of all we do that through this process of mindfulness meditation on the emotions and the triggers that form those habits.
We work on changing our relationship to that anxiety so that instead of just becoming overwhelmed by it we change the relationship to becoming the Observer. This is a critical shift. When you can observe your fear without reacting, then you are well on the way to changing that anxiety habit.
But the primary focus really is on developing a compassionate relationship with that fear. So the reactive habit is usually based on hatred, on fear itself. Fear of the fear is the real problem here. When you can change that relationship to one of compassion towards that fear that you're now observing instead of reacting to, then you can begin to help it heal.
You can think of the fear as being like a child. The child is not very capable of solving its own suffering. If it’s afraid it can't heal that fear very effectively by itself. It needs to make contact with the child's father or mother in order to make a connection between the fear in the child and the fearlessness in the parent. So when that bond is strong then the child is able to overcome his or her fear by absorbing the fearlessness of the child's parent.
It's the same process that we will be applying to work with our internal fear. We build a compassionate relationship with our fear, and in a sense, we become the parent to that fear. And when that fear feels the connection to that part of you that is not reacting, that is your observer self, your True Self, then that is what allows the fear to heal. So the fear learns how to heal itself through this internal relationship that you build through meditation on the fear.
This may be novel for you. It's a different way than is typically taught by other therapists, but it is very effective, and I have helped many people over the years now using this mindfulness-based exposure therapy.
If you would like to get started is on a treatment plan using mindfulness-based exposure therapy, then contact me and let's schedule a therapy session via Skype. I do all my online sessions using Skype and it works extremely well.
GO TO MY CONTACT PAGE FOR DETAILS AND TO SCHEDULE AN ONLINE THERAPY SESSION WITH ME FOR HELP WITH AGORAPHOBIA, PANIC ATTACKS & ANXIETY
Online Therapy for Agoraphobia Massachusetts