Online Counseling Therapy for the Treatment of Depression
The key to the successful treatment for non-clinical depression, which affects most of us to some degree, is to learn how to "sit" with your depression without becoming overwhelmed or reactive. This is one of the core teachings of Mindfulness Therapy, which is now available online via individual Skype sessions with online therapist, teacher and author, Dr. Peter Strong.
"Depression is a condition in which the mind contracts and becomes unable to process unresolved emotions. Mindfulness opens the mind up and allows anxiety and depression to transform and heal."
- The Path of Mindfulness Meditation, by Dr Peter Strong.
Read more about Online Therapist Dr. Peter Strong.
Learn How to Control Depression
The best way to treat depression (after ruling out any medical causes) is to work on changing the underlying negative thoughts, beliefs and emotional reactions that together create the emotional state of depression. This is exactly what we work on during sessions of Mindfulness Therapy for Depression as offered online via Skype.
Counseling Online for Depression
Now it is possible to get very effective counseling for depresion online via live Skype Sessions with a professional online therapist. Many people prefer this approach because it feels more empowering. It feels like we are taking charge of our own healing process, and the importance of this cannot be over-emphasized. Good quality online therapy can be extraordinarily effective if you can fine a therapist who really understands how to support you in your process of healing and self-growth.
It is also very much more convenient for many people to be able to work with a therapist online rather than take the time to drive to a therapist's office.
Online Treatment Therapy for Depression
When you really look closely at anxiety,
depression, fear, anger or stress, you will almost always find recurring
patterns of negative thoughts, traumatic memories and habitual emotional reactions.
They are our tormentors, the pesky biting insects that annoy us throughout the
day. They ambush our consciousness, pull us down and cause stress and emotional
suffering. They come uninvited, cause havoc, and we wish that they would go
away. If only we could control them, we would certainly have a better chance of
controlling our mental state. So how do we do this? The process of mindfulness therapy online can provide a very positive path forward. The key is to change your relationship to habitual negative thinking - to stop becoming a victim of your negative thoughts. Surprisingly, this is not achieved by suppressing the negative thoughts or by trying to replace them with positive thoughts, but by becoming independent of them so that we do not feel compelled to react further.
A good website where you can learn more about the symptoms, causes and treatment of depression is provided by the National Institute of Mental Health.
Depression Therapy - Overcoming Reactive Thinking
The
first step of mindfulness practice, and one that can make all the difference,
is to fully and completely understand that YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS. Thoughts,
emotions, in fact any mental content that arises are simply products of
conditioning; YOU are much more than this. It is like the ocean and the fish
that swim in the ocean. The ocean is not the same as the fish that live in it,
and cannot be equated with the contents. The essence of the ocean is as the
space that contains these things, not its contents. The same applies to the
mind. The essence of the mind is as a container of experience, the ground in
which mental objects, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, perceptions and memories can
exist. When you realize this, that you are so much more than your thoughts and
emotions, then you are well on the way to gaining your freedom and independence
from the pesky flies that cause so much stress and suffering. At the end of the
day you have a simple choice to make: Do you want to be the ocean in all its
vastness and glory, or do you want to be a fish, flapping around in a state of
agitation and fear? Learning to be the ocean is a wise choice, and this is
something that can be achieved through the practice of mindfulness.
The
trick is to learn to see mental objects as just that, objects, not you, that
arise, do their dance and then pass away. Anxiety arises, and what is our usual
response? We are ambushed by the emotion and we become the emotion. We become
an anxiety-fish! Fear arises and we are seduced into becoming afraid, a
fear-fish. Anger arises and we become angry-fish. No choice, no freedom, lots
of suffering.
With
the practice of mindfulness, we begin to get wise, and become more engaged with
what is going on in our minds. Mindfulness helps us tune in to this cycle of
habitual emotional reactivity. Instead of blindly accepting our impulses to
become anxious, to become afraid, to become fish, we learn to actively engage
with these reactions. When anxiety thoughts arise, we respond with, “I see you,
anxious thought. I welcome you, I will make a space for you to do your dance, I
will listen to you with care and attention…but I will NOT become you.” You can
learn to mindfully greet each emotion, each negative thought, as a visitor who
has come to stay for a while, just like visitors in your home. Invite them in,
offer them tea and sit with them for a while. You may not like your visitors,
but you know the importance of being kind, courteous and hospitable.
You
cannot get rid of your negative emotions, your depression and fear by force,
which is our usual reaction. We don’t want to feel our anger or fear; we want
to fix them so they won't bother us. But, here’s the thing. You can't. Why not?
Because you created them. Its like asking a wolf
to guard the farmer’s chickens. A system that is broken cannot fix itself.
What
is needed is something altogether more creative, and this is the second step of
the practice of mindfulness: Actively turn towards your suffering and work on
creating a safe relationship with your fish. When you are mindful, you are by
definition not being reactive. The effect of this is to create a space around
the emotion. The more mindful you are, the greater the space. The more space
there is, the more freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom from the grip of the
negative emotion, thought or belief. There is a Zen proverb: What is the best
way to control a mad bull? Answer: Place it in a very large field. If there is
plenty of space, then the mad bull, or your anxiety, hurt, trauma or depression
cannot harm you. Also, what is equally important is that the mad bull can't
hurt itself. This is very important, because both of you need the space in
which to heal.
Healing Depression within - The Heart of Depression Therapy
Mindfulness
creates therapeutic space in which emotional knots can move, unwind, unfold,
soften and become workable. And, what is most remarkable, if you create lots of
space around your suffering, the suffering has a chance to transform and heal
itself. Its not what you do that matters so much as creating this
transformational therapeutic space and allowing emotions to change themselves
from the inside out.
In
my work as an online psychotherapist, I never cease to be amazed at how effective
mindfulness can be when used correctly. The moment when a client stops running
away and turns towards his or her suffering with kindness, full attention and
engaged presence, things start to change in a beneficial direction. The healing
comes from the quality of the relationship that we have with our pain. It’s not
about trying to fix things, trying to replace negative thoughts with positive
thoughts - it’s all about presence. With this quality of listening, based on
genuine openness and gentleness, the relationship of mindfulness, solutions
appear quite naturally.
Mindfulness Therapy - Effective Online Help for Depression
One
woman described how she saw herself as being a victim of incessant worrying anxiety and depression. She had tried several forms of talking therapy, but the depression
persisted. When I asked her what color the depression was, she seemed
puzzled. Apparently, in all her previous therapy sessions no one had asked her
to look inside to look at the emotion itself and see what was actually there. Talking about emotions can be useful, but it is never
as effective as actually looking at them directly to look into their structure. You can talk forever about why your car doesn't start - or you can lift up the hood and take a look! The latter is much more likely to produce results, and the same principle applies for healing our depression - you MUST look into it and see what is actually there. That is essential for transforming and healing depression or anxiety or trauma.
After a couple of sessions
of Mindfulness Therapy Online, she established an inner mindfulness-based relationship with the depression-emotion and immediately noticed that it had a black color and had a
hard, tight form. Now, for the first time, she had something tangible to work
with, and after several more sessions of simply creating a therapeutic
mindfulness space around the black object, it spontaneously began to soften and
loosen up, eventually taking on a new color and changing in many other ways.
The constricted emotional energy of her depression was being released during this process of
direct inner experiencing and this led to profound transformation at the core.
Out of this change at the core feeling level, her beliefs and thinking also
changed and she no longer felt a victim of compulsive worrying. She readily
found new solutions and more positive perspectives on things, and all this
arose as a consequence of first learning to be present with her depression through Mindfulness Therapy.
How Online Mindfulness Therapy Helps Heal Depression
Mindfulness practice teaches us how to be more Responsive and less Reactive. Depression depends on reactivity; as we stop our mental reactivity we become less depressed.
Mindfulness Therapy is like a “mental massage” in which we bring warmth and healing energy
to those hard, reactive places within the mind, and with each gentle touch, suffering
begins to respond by healing itself from within. During Online Mindfulness
Therapy, I teach clients how to do this “mindfulness massage” so that
they can practice the art of inner healing at the core level and learn a
totally different way of being with the many challenges of their lives.
The problem
is seldom in the challenges, disappointments and external issues themselves, but almost always in
the way that we react to these events. The problem is in our RELATIONSHIP to pain and stress, rather than in the pain and stress itself. Mindfulness teaches us how to maintain
balance and to avoid becoming reactive. We learn to replace reactivity with
responsiveness, based on mindfulness rather than blind compulsion. That is the
path that heals suffering in our heart and in our relationships. In fact, many
of my clients use the mindfulness skills that they learn to heal the compulsive
patterns of reactivity and arguing that destroys personal relationships. It all
begins by learning the art of true listening based on mindfulness and
engaged-presence - an essential skill for successful depression therapy.
Online Treatment Therapy for Depression
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CONTACT FORM
Peter
Strong, PhD is a Professional Psychotherapist, Online Therapist, Spiritual Teacher and Author,
based in Boulder, Colorado. Peter developed a system of psychotherapy called Mindfulness Therapy for healing the root cause of Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Depression, Traumatic Stress and Emotional Suffering.
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Get Help from a Professional Online Therapist via Skype for Effective Online Counseling Therapy for Healing Your Depression
