ONLINE THERAPY

Do you sometimes find yourself immersed in a cycle of emotions such as sadness, frustration or anguish, do you feel that these emotions hijack you, that they take control of your way of thinking and that it is difficult to take the positive side of life? Psychotherapy believes in these cycles and seeks to identify how they arise and function in each of us and then develop alternative ways of seeing the world. By having more options and believing in them, life becomes easier.

Psychotherapy with me works by combining conversation with practical exercises.

The conversation serves to explore and discover those conceptions that are limiting you to live life in an easier way. It’s as if you and I had to unravel a ball of yarn. Once we understand what is going on in a deep way, between the two of us, we explore tools and exercises so that you can decide which ones best suit your needs.

For cognitive-behavioral therapy, emotions, thoughts, behaviors and physical sensations are interrelated in the form of vicious circles that generate emotional discomfort. These circles condition our way of seeing ourselves, the world and the future, they trap us and seem to us to be normality. Therapy tries to find a way to break these cycles. In addition, cognitive behavioral therapy is dynamic. It uses practical exercises and encourages active participation in the therapeutic process. It identifies objectives that the person wants to reach and they define the direction of the therapy.

I was the first to ask myself this question and, I confess, I was even reluctant when COVID-19 forced us to move to the online therapy format. I finally discovered that many limits are based more on our fears than on reality. And some of my clients have agreed with me in this assessment.

There are, obviously, some limitations to online therapy but it gives you much more flexibility in time and space, allows you to share more materials and adapt the session more spontaneously. No doubt about it, empathy and understanding can be conveyed with the same intensity in the online format. In any case, before starting the therapy, I will send you some basic recommendations to make sure you get the most out of this format.

I work with cognitive behavioral therapy for depression and anxiety problems. Anxiety includes social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic attacks, generalized anxiety, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder. It is important to clarify that if the trauma is of great intensity, I recommend using specialized in-person services.

I mainly use protocols and methodologies of online cognitive behavioral therapies.

To work on problems related to depression, priority is given to the progressive return to daily activity and the breaking of these cycles of thought through cognitive and experiential exercises. With self-esteem problems the process is similar and includes assertiveness exercises and schema theories.

To work on anxiety problems, the protocol is adapted to the type of anxiety; but, fundamentally, we identify those situations that trigger anxiety and we elaborate different experiential activities to face them with a different perspective. We introduce, if necessary, relaxation techniques.

At all times, we explore the source of the problem. When necessary, we “travel back in time” to reformulate some of those current ways of seeing the world that are preventing us from living life with more flexibility. To do so, I use imagery rescripting techniques.

My personal background and my professional training allow me to face your suffering with empathy and objectivity. This helps to “support” the person in the process of change. If you are a migrant/expatriate or humanitarian personnel, you have more details in the following dropdowns.

Therapy ends when you feel capable of self-management. How long is that time? It varies depending on the person, what he/she sets as goals and how actively he/she participates in the therapy. The first two or three sessions can give us an idea of the duration of the therapy. In any case, it is rare for anyone to exceed 24 sessions.