How does online therapy for health recovery work?

When we’re sick, it’s not easy to see physical symptoms as a positive. Why would we?

We simply want to stop the symptoms by taking medication, pacing ourselves, changing our diet etc.

We often don't realise why the symptoms are there.

That's where online therapy for health recovery can help.

“The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.”

- Dr Gabor Maté

Think about it like this...

We have two main intelligences:

ih-icon-Thinking

The thinking brain

ih-icon-Emotions

The emotional brain

While the thinking brain is hugely important, from an early age society places too much importance on it and we lose our ability to connect with the emotional part of our brain.

The emotional brain is made up of two key things:

Our gut (Johns Hopkins) and

Our heart (Heart Math Institute).

Both are incredibly powerful resources and there to keep us safe but we're not making full use of them.

In online Health Recovery Therapy we help you to harness the power of your brain.

We do this by learning how to tune in to stress (big or small) and then change our actions, stopping stress and in turn our symptoms.

Trying to think away our emotions or ignore them doesn’t work and creates the symptoms we experience. It’s only when we change our behaviour that the body gets the message and no longer needs to keep sending us a message through our symptoms.

 

Think of it like this, our emotional brain is always trying to get our attention. If we don't listen and act on the messages it sends, it shouts to us and then uses a megaphone (symptoms) to try to get our attention until we act on the emotion it sent in the first place.

If we notice we're stuck in our heads, overthinking or analysing, this is also usually a sign that we missed a simple emotion or still need to respond to it.

We help you to notice the emotions being sent when you have symptoms and guide you on how changing your response can mean your symptoms stop.

Is online Health Recovery Therapy a form of Psychotherapy?

No. Health Recovery Therapy is a talking therapy but it's not about trying change our thinking. We work with your genuine physical symptoms to understand and respond to the unconscious messages that are behind them.

Unlike psychotherapy, we do not investigate thoughts in order to treat the symptoms. In contrast to most forms of physical therapy we do not try to remove symptoms through massage, diet change or medication that don't deal with the root cause.

Three people supporting one another with their health
Woman walking up stairs after online therapy

What can I expect sessions?

The first step is to talk you through how symptoms are created.

We then help you to find out why your symptoms are coming up at the times they do and what you can do to stop this.

The more you try our the practical tools we give you outside of sessions, the greater your chances of success.

In follow up sessions, we review notes you've kept and other tools you've been working on which could include working with any stressful things, big or small and how to tackle them and also making sure every day has variety in it.

Sessions consist of one-to-one consultations which last for 1 hour, though the first session may be longer.

We recommend doing these weekly for 3 weeks, and then usually every 2 weeks.

Treatment length varies but most clients complete treatment after 8 – 15 sessions.

Saul Levitt, Health Recovery Therapy

Book a Free Consultation

Schedule your free half hour phone or Zoom consultation with Saul.