Online Therapy via Skype.
Dr. Peter Strong is a pioneer of Online Mindfulness Therapy, which is a very effective treatment for anxiety disorders, panic attacks, depression, stress & PTSD, and for recovery from addictions.
Visit : https://pdmstrong.wordpress.com to book a Skype therapy session.
The number of people suffering from anxiety
disorders, panic attacks and depression is reaching epidemic proportions.
People are looking for help, but many are uncomfortable with seeing a therapist
or counselor in their local community. Now the internet offers people the opportunity
to get the help that they need, but in the privacy of their own home. Online Therapy or Internet Therapy is becoming more and more popular as a first
choice for learning how to manage anxiety, non-clinical depression and general
emotional stress.
Now, with the advent of Skype, people can
hold face-to-face counseling therapy sessions with a therapist as if they are
in the therapist’s office.
There are of course some forms of
psychotherapy that might not work well using the online format, but for the
cognitive therapies such as Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Mindfulness
Therapy, which I developed many years ago, the online video format is
excellent. In my experience, there are even some benefits, because clients do
feel substantially more comfortable when working from home. For clients
suffering from agoraphobia and social anxiety, this format has obvious
advantages.
Online
Therapy for Anxiety – Mindfulness Therapy
During sessions of Mindfulness Therapy,
clients learn how to form a stable, non-reactive relationship with their
emotions. This is called the Mindfulness-Based Relationship, or “sitting” with
our emotions, a central feature of Mindfulness Therapy. Our habit, of course,
is not to “sit” with our pain, but to avoid it or run away from it, or to
resist it and try to suppress it. This is our instinctive biological
conditioning – the fight or flight reaction that is part of our biological
makeup. This primitive reaction may work for managing physical attack from wild
beasts, but this kind of conditioned reactivity does not help us process and
resolve our emotional suffering.
In fact, experience shows us that
avoidance, which is simply the cultivation of unawareness, is probably the
worst thing we can do. Resistance or aversion is also generally very
ineffective and actually feeds the problem. The truth is that any form of
reactivity simply makes the problem worse, causing the unresolved emotion to
solidify and harden in the mind. Whenever a mental formation hardens in this
way it starts to become resistant to change and it cannot heal itself.
Mindfulness Psychology teaches us that healing and resolution requires inner
freedom and fluidity of mind, so we can see that reactivity simply inhibits
change and inhibits healing, transformation and resolution.
Unresolved emotions become suppressed and
continue to generate inner suffering and anxiety deep within the psyche, which
in turn generates even more reactivity at the cognitive and behavioural levels.
These unresolved core emotions don’t go away, and in fact they often pass on
from one generation to another, and will propagate themselves indefinitely –
until we have the courage to reverse the unawareness and avoidance, resistance
and aversion. This is the central direction in Mindfulness Therapy.
The object is not to try and change our
anxiety or pain, but to learn how to sit with it in exactly the same way that
you would sit with a friend or with a child. We create a safe space for the
emotion, we allow it to exist, but we train in not becoming reactive and in not
becoming overwhelmed by the anxiety. Mindfulness is simply the process of
learning how to stay present – that is, present for the emotion itself. We
learn how to hold the emotion in the inner space of our awareness, the field of
awareness, and be with the emotion, watching and learning about the emotion.
Does it have a color? Shape? Where do we feel it in our body? It is through
getting to know our anxiety in this way, through direct seeing, that we learn
what can help the emotion become fluid again so it can continue its natural
process of healing – of resolution.
When your friend comes to you, distressed
and agitated, you know that what is most important is to make the space and
time to simply sit with him or her. You sit together, not saying much at first,
but simply experiencing being present – You being totally present for your
friend. It is only when you get this state of relationship right that he or she
feels able to talk. Just a few words...then more...and before long, your friend
is expressing herself at a very deep and subtle level. This is resolution in
progress; this is the return of fluidity that allows the change process
required for healing. This too, is what we need to establish internally with
our anxiety, our panic and fear, our depression, anger or any other form of
emotional stress.
In short, we need to become friends with
our inner suffering. This quality of inner friendliness is cultivated when we
establish the mindfulness-based relationship with our emotions – and this
catalyzes change and healing better than anything else.
I provide online psychotherapy via Skype for help with anxiety, depression, PTSD and addictions using Mindfulness Therapy.
Go to https://pdmstrong.wordpress.com to learn more and feel free to contact me if you are looking for an online therapist who specializes in Mindfulness Therapy.
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