Psychotherapy and marriage counselling worldwide online via Skype or Phone

• You can’t find a good psychotherapist or couple therapist in your area?
  
• You live in a remote area without access to marriage counselling or psychotherapy services?
  
• You are traveling a lot and would  like to be able to meet with your psychotherapist or marriage counsellor while you are on the road?
• You are a therapist yourself and have difficulty finding a couple therapist or psychotherapist in your area with whom you don’t already have a collegial relationship
• You have moved to a different country and a language barrier gets in the way of seeking psychotherapy or marriage counselling services in that country?
• In any of these cases distance psychotherapy, marriage counselling or couple therapy online via Skype or telephone might be the best option

About me

My name is Matthias Angelstorf, MS. I am a psychologist, couple therapist and marriage counsellor based in Berlin, Germany. I got into doing Skype counselling by accident. Initially I opposed the idea of online therapy, believing that it cannot work. But then I started seeing more and more international couples who moved around a lot in my practice for marriage counselling and psychotherapy in Berlin. These clients convinced me to give it a try. Ever since I have conducted hundreds of psychotherapy and couple therapy sessions via Skype, phone, or other online modalities, and my experience had been great. In most situations distance psychotherapy or marriage counselling therapy via Skype has proven to be as effective as meeting in the same room. Many clients even reported feeling like we are actually sitting down in the same room as we are conducting a session via Skype. Today we even have some scientific research which affirms that online psychotherapy is just as effective as psychotherapy which is conducted in a face-to-face setting. There are a few situations in which therapy via Skype therapy doesn’t work so well. But usually this becomes already clear in the first session.

How I work

I have wowed to myself to always keep myself up to date and to only work with the latest state-of-the art therapeutic methods. The methods I work with most are called Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy. Let me tell you in a nutshell how these approaches work.

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy is backed-up by a lot of scientific research showing that it is the most successful model of couple therapy available today. It focuses on strengthening a couples emotional connection and helping both partners make each other feel loved. It is based on the observation that the people we love can trigger strong emotional responses. Depending on the nature of these emotions a relationship can either be a source of stress and pain or comfort and joy. Happy couples know how to respond to one another in ways which make each other feel loved and supported. Unhappy couples often get stuck in negative patterns of interaction which lead to ever increasing levels of distance, stress, anger and tension. These Emotionally Focused Couple Therapist guides the couple through a transformative process in which they gain new experiences which each other and learn the learn the skills possessed by happily married couples. In the first stage of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, the therapist helps the couple recognize and slow down their destructive communication patterns. This first stage is called the “de-escalation stage.” In the second stage of therapy, the partners learn how to express and respond to each other’s deepest emotional yearnings. This transforms the relationship and initiates the positive communication patterns characteristic of happy relationships. This second stage is called the bonding stage of therapy. In the third and last stage of therapy – the consolidation stage, the therapist assists the couple in finding new solutions to old problems and resolving previously irresolvable conflict issues. Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy is a short-term model of therapy, with the treatment lengths typically ranging from 5 to 30 sessions, depending on the presenting issues.

Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy

As the name already suggests “Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy” is an integrative psychotherapy model which integrates the best of traditional psychotherapy models with therapeutic principles based on the latest discoveries in neuroscience. Our deepened understanding of how the human brain works has helped us understand why changing unwanted thoughts, feelings and behaviors can be so challenging. Today we know that we have at least two brain systems in our skulls: We have a neocortex which is responsible for rational insight and our limbic system which is responsible for emotional learnings. Unwanted patterns of thought, feeling or behavior are most often rooted in learnings which are stored in our brain’s limbic system – our emotional brain. These emotional learnings cannot be transformed via rational insight or willful behavioral change. In order to transform these thoughts, feelings and behaviors, we need to access and transform the emotional memories and learnings in our emotional brain. Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy is an integrated set of therapeutic methods to facilitate such transformations of emotional learnings. The role of the therapist is that of an warm and empathetic coach that gently guides clients towards healthier ways of experiencing themselves, others and the world around them. As the term accelerated suggests Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy is a short-term therapy model. Important therapeutic shifts can often be accomplished within 20 sessions.

Languages of therapeutic services 

I have lived and worked in Germany, the United States, Canada and the Netherlands and offer psychotherapy and couple therapy in English, German and Dutch.