Dr Robin Aston
Dr. Robin Aston is a psychologist from Bangor, Maine, USA.
How long have you been practicing?
35 years.
What sort of practitioner are you?
While my doctorate is in Counseling Psychology, I’ve received advanced training, am a certified mediator and live coach, trained in EMDR, and almost exclusively do hypnotherapy now.
Do you see clients from home or in a clinic?
In the parlor of my home.
What problems/issues do you treat most frequently?
I am a nationally recognized expert in eating disorders and compulsive behaviors, so I see many clients for that. It’s hard to say what I treat most beyond that because with hypnosis you cover such a broad range of problems… OCD, phobias, anxiety, depression, insomnia, etc.
What are your biggest frustrations running your practice?
That hypnosis is still a new concept in this rural area. Educating people of it’s effectiveness.
What do you find hardest about your daily work?
I see all my clients in two and a half days so I’m tired when I get done.
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I am extremely isolated here. Have been in a peer supervision/support group where everyone else was from the UK. (We seem to think alike). Uncommon Knowledge is my biggest support now.
What training have you done that has really helped you in your therapy work?
Beyond university, life coach training, mediation, EMDR, hypnotherapy. I believe my new training in the Rewind Technique pulls together much of what I know and use.
How do you balance work and life?
I only see clients two and a half days per week. Beyond that I do a form of Russian martial arts and a lot of yoga. Enjoy my own company and spend much needed time alone.
What frustrates you most about the way mental health is dealt with in your country?
Oh, the readiness to label with a diagnosis! Also, practitioners tend to isolate instead of interacting with each other. There are many involved in “New Age” treatments (tarot cards, crystal readings, energy therapy) who consider outsiders to just not understand the “real” world.
Can you tell us about your most uplifting experience treating a recent client? (anonymously of course!)
I have a 23-year-old client with OCD. We work exclusively by telephone and her compulsions and obsessions are “disappearing” (according to her) simply by use of understanding and hypnosis. She’s been treated and medicated almost all her life. Now as she improves it is without any medication. I also recently did the Rewind Technique with a client and defused her traumatic association with writing in public in one session!
Pictured above: Robin Aston’s lovely therapy parlor.
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About Mark Tyrrell
Psychology is my passion. I've been a psychotherapist trainer since 1998, specializing in brief, solution focused approaches. I now teach practitioners all over the world via our online courses.
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