TYPES OF THERAPY
ART THERAPY
What is Art Therapy? How does it help me? How does it work?
In Art therapy, creative techniques like painting, drawing, coloring, sculpting, or collage are employed to assist people and self-expression and to determine the underlying psychological features in their art. An art therapist guides the clients to unravel nonverbal messages, metaphors, and symbols hidden in art forms, and this leads to a clearer comprehension of what they feel so it can be used to fix bigger problems.
How Does It Work?
Art therapy was started because of the belief that using art to express self is therapeutic for people who want to heal or search for a deep knowledge of their personalities and selves. The American Art Therapy Association train therapists to notice how color, various art media, and texture, affect the therapeutic process and how a person’s thoughts can be made open with these tools. Psychotherapy is also included in the art therapy together with a kind of visual arts for specific treatment.
How does it help?
Everyone can benefit from art therapy because it helps to explore one’s emotions. It also relieves stress, curb addictions, better anxiety and depression symptoms, manage a disability or physical illness, and improves self-esteem.
BEHAVIORAL ACTIVATION THERAPY
What is Behavioral Activation? How does it work? How can it help me?
Behavioral activation helps in depression and mood disorders and works with the theory that when individuals become depressed, they isolate themselves, and this worsens their issues.
The treatment aims to work with these individuals to reduce their isolation and avoidance and help them engage in activities that can improve their mood. Some of these activities may include the ones they enjoyed before they became depressed and activities linked to their values or everyday routine that they ignore like:
Going out to dinner
Relating Well With Their Family Members
Being Productive in Their Work
Exercising
Regular Showers
Doing House Chores
To help them, their eating habits and sleep routines should be evaluated and normalized because depressed people have a change in sleep and diet pattern.
Individuals are told to complete activity monitoring just so that they can understand how their activities affect their mood. This may mean writing down the activities and mood ratings for each day. The treatment provider also uses it to notice behavioral patterns and increase behaviors that improve the mood. While the treatment goes on, the individual is being assigned challenging activities which are increased as improvements in mood begin to show.
EYE MOVEMENT THERAPY
What is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)? How does it work? How does it help me?
EMDR is a special form of psychotherapy that is meant to extinguish negative feelings linked with the memory of trauma. EMDR doesn’t really bother much with the traumatic event but is concerned with the emotions and symptoms the event has caused. Treatment may be by a hand motion technique. The client’s eye movement is guided from side to side by the therapist, almost like he’s watching a pendulum swing.
EMDR was initially created to alleviate the symptoms of anxiety, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder. It is also used for eating disorders, chronic disease-related stress, depression, sexual dysfunction, and schizophrenia.
How It Works
EMDR aims to analyze the past encounter and find the emotions attached to them. Positive thoughts replace the negative thoughts that are not needed again to inspire healthy attitude and social interactions. The clients are then equipped to face their stressful times themselves. There are eight phases of this therapy:
1) History and treatment structuring.
2) Conditioning, to create trust and give a deep explanation of treatment.
3) Assessment, to find negative feelings and positive substitute
4) Desensitization, i.e. eye movement, and other techniques
5) Installation, to fortify positive substitutes.
6) Body scan, to check if the client can recall memories of trauma minus irrelevant negative thoughts or if reprocessing should be done.
7) Closure happens when a session ends.
8) Re-evaluation happens before a session starts.
GENERATIVE CHANGE PRACTITIONER
What is Generative Change Practitioner?
Generative change is about creating something in the individual that has never been there before. it allows you to access dissociated relevant skills where the problem is welcomed as part of the system trying to alert the person to a need or desire.
MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING THERAPY
What is Motivational Interviewing? How does it work? How can it help me?
Motivational Interviewing is a kind of counseling that makes individuals settle conflicted feelings and stop being insecure so they can change their behavior with internal motivation. It is a short term, useful and humane process that works with the reminder that making life changes is difficult.
How Motivational Interviewing works
It sprang up from Carl Roger’s Rogerian therapy and is a method that supports people in sticking to the difficult change process. There are two aims, first, to make the person’s motivation increase and second, to enable the person to commit to the changes.
Studies have shown that when a client hears themselves openly expressing a commitment, the ability to affect those changes is improved. The therapist does more listening than intervention. Motivational interviewing is usually done together with other interventions like support groups and cognitive therapy. The groups can be stress management training and Alcoholics Anonymous.
Motivational interviewing is carried out to fix addiction issues. People use it to manage physical health issues like asthma, heart disease, and asthma. It fuels individuals with motivation, and they are able to stop doing the behaviors that prevent them from choosing healthy living. It can also be used in individuals who want to start off other particular therapies. According to research, this intervention works better with people who appear unmotivated and not ready to change.
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY THERAPY
What is positive psychology? How does it work? How does it help me?
Positive psychology dwells on the positive impact in a person’s life. Things like constructive institutions, hopeful emotions, and character strengths. The theory stems from a connection that mental and emotional factors affect happiness. It seeks to let people find happiness every time rather than appreciating happy times only when it is recalled.
Positive psychology techniques
When positive psychology principles are applied during professional therapy, it is called positive psychotherapy. It is done on the notion that happiness has three simpler constituents:
Positive Emotion
Meaning
Engagement
This approach can help people who want to experience joy in the fullness without the hooks of their current situation. Many are able to focus on the positive emotions they get beginning from when the treatment ends.
It deals with pulling a person’s full attention away from the negative things while balancing it by focusing on the positive.
This therapy can work with people who are depressed and anxious. This therapy also improves positive emotions and character strengths; therefore people who want to strengthen those areas can use it. Studies have shown that it is effective in boosting happiness in depressed people.
Positive psychology methods all work for people with other kinds of mental health issues apart from depression.
POSITIVE PSYCHODYNAMIC THERAPY
What is Psychodynamic Therapy? How does it work? How can it help me?
Psychodynamic therapy shares similarity with psychoanalytic therapy because it is a deep form of talk therapy that functions on psychoanalysis principle and theory. Psychodynamic therapy, however, does not dwell on patient-therapist relationship because it is concerned with the patient’s relationship with the outside world. The frequency and number of sessions for psychodynamic therapy are fewer than that of psychoanalytic therapy.
Why it is used
Psychodynamic therapy is mostly used for the treatment of serious psychological disorders and depression, particularly those who no longer see meaning in their lives and can’t easily form or maintain a relationship. Studies show that it can also be applied in helping people with eating disorders, social anxiety disorder, and addiction.
How does it work?
Psychodynamic therapy is different from other types of therapy because it is concerned with recognition, acknowledgment, expression, understanding, and getting over negative and adverse feelings and bottled up emotions.
This is done to help the patient improve relationships and interpersonal experience. The patient is shown that subdued emotions can affect the decisions taken in the present, relationships, and behavior.
Psychodynamic therapy also assists people who know and understand how their social difficulties came about but cannot fix the problem by themselves.
The patients are taught to scrutinize and solve their current issues and redefine the way they behave in current relationships with deep fact-finding and a breakdown of experiences and emotions earlier felt.
FAMILY THERAPY
What is Family Therapy? How does it work? How does it help me?
Family therapy helps to better the relationships and roles of family members. The family unit is made up of people identified as a family and/or those who are concerned in the issues being resolved. People who may be part of this can be grandparents, uncles, aunts, boyfriends or girlfriends, babysitters, nannies, foster children, and others. The family unit is seen as one in family therapy.
It works by comparing the family unit to a machine that is stable when every single part is functioning fine. If one single piece of a machine is removed or damaged, the whole unit begins to malfunction. This happens in families when one person is ill or has an issue with alcohol and drugs or other issues that stops him/her from doing his/her duty and role in the family.
A family can decide to do therapy if there is a quarrel between family members or if one member’s problem affects the rest of the family.
Individuals that have mental health troubles, drug or drinking problems usually seek family therapy together with the individual treatment they are doing.
This therapy aims at helping family members find out how certain behaviors impact others, resolve quarrels, understand new ways of relating to one another, and create a smoth communication line between every member of the family.
GUIDED SELF HELP THERAPY
What is Guided Self Help? How Does it Work? How Can it Help me?
Guides self-help is a therapy that works with the principles of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). It is used to help people who have mild to medium common mental health problems like stress, anxiety, and mood.
You may have your sessions either weekly or every two weeks, and you get to choose the number of sessions that your treatment plan will comprise of.
Your Psychological Well-being Practitioner can deliver Guided Self Help over the phone or physically at your GP surgery or any close venue to you. The sessions can last for up to 30 minutes.
How do you benefit?
- You will find support to grasp the difficulties you face and the impact they have on you.
- You will be opportune to learn techniques that will stop unfavorable thinking and unfavorable behaviors which preserve your current problems.
- You will learn to make positive and real changes in your life, and this will help you to manage your issues both now and later on.
- You will be introduced to a lot of self-help materials, and your Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner will show you how to use them.
- With Guided Self Help, your mental health problems will be reduced. They include anxiety, stress, and low mood.
- Guided Self Help has evidence of its effects, and the NICE Guidelines (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) recommends it.
ROGERIAN THERAPY
What is Rogerian Counselling? How does it work? How can it help me? Rogerian therapy is a form of counseling whereby the therapist is supportive instead of being directive, and the client charts the course of the therapy. The Counselor interacts with the client just to understand them completely while letting then say their issues and find their own conclusions.
How It Works
This therapy is based on Carl Rogers’ belief that people are different and so whatever view they have about their own world and effort to handle it should be accepted. Rogers thought that we all have the power to find whatever solutions will fit our lives. The process lets the clients understand their experience and convert it into a healing platform.
There are three factors that help this Rogerian therapy to succeed:
- Unconditional Positive Regard – this means that the therapists have to show empathy and be non-judgemental for the clients to trust them and feel encouraged to make their decisions.
- Empathetic Understanding – this means that the therapists totally get and trust the thought and feelings of their clients.
- Congruence – this means the therapist does not show superiority or authority but is accessible enough for the client to see their transparency.
The Rogerian therapy will benefit those who want more self-confidence, a better identity, and need the courage to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships. This approach helps those who are in grief, anxiety, abuse, depression, and some other mental health issues. The client has to do most of the work, so those who are motivated succeed more.
TRANSPERSONAL THERAPY
What is Transpersonal Therapy? How does it work? How does it help me?
Transpersonal therapy is a complete approach that contends with the physical, mental, intellectual, creative, and social needs with the aim of healing the spirit. Transpersonal therapy emphasizes more on the therapist being honest, self-aware, and open-minded as a way of enhancing growth and healing.
Uses of Transpersonal therapy
This therapy helps to relieve depression, phobias, addictions, anxiety, and many moods and behavioral issues.
This therapy suits people who want to explore their spiritual side or create a spiritual awareness, or do not know how to find meaning in their lives.
How does it work?
Transpersonal therapy is a complete healing intervention started by a psychologist Abraham Maslow. It connects both spiritual rituals and modern-day psychology together while focusing on positive aspects instead of experiences that caused negative reactions.
This kind of therapy started from the notion that humans have more mind than body and that a whole individual is made up of intangible factors.
The mind and body usually need treatment when ill, so also does the spiritual and immaterial part of yourself need some kind of healing.
The therapist may use different religious practices to help the individual find out several levels of consciousness in order to lead them when they are troubled.
ERICKSONIAN HYPNOSIS
This simply refers to the use of hypnosis to communicate with clients in order to improve certain habits and attitudes which are predominant in us. Hypnosis has been proven to be one of the best ways to overcome certain bad habits and put yourself in the right track to achieving so much more.
How does the Ericksonian Hypnosis work?
The Ericksonian Hypnosis is all about communication while in a relaxed or trance-like condition. It is usually taken with your therapist and is divided into various sessions. At the end of the sessions, you should see considerable improvements in certain areas of your life. It is important that it is done with a therapist.
How does it help me?
The Ericksonian Hypnosis, just like all other types of hypnotherapy, can be used to treat a variety of related mental conditions. Some of these conditions would very well include issues resulting from anxiety, severe depression, and even some form of abuse or trauma.
It can also be used to change certain routine behaviors which are done sub-consciousness and is habitual in nature. The Ericksonian hypnosis is one of the most preferred types of hypnosis, and you can be assured that its success rate is very high.
ACT THERAPY
What is ACT?
ACT, which is known as the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, is a therapy which helps people to embrace their inner struggles and emotions instead of being in a state of constant denial. It teaches them how to accept that those feelings would come in certain situations and are only a reaction to how they truly feel.
How does it work?
ACT helps you to understand that controlling certain emotions through denial would prove to be unproductive in the long run and would even leave you so much more worried that you already are. Through certain tasks and alternatives, it helps you to accept certain experiences psychologically and eventually have a relaxed attitude and state of mind towards painful or emotionally charged events.
How does it help me?
If you are someone who has found it hard to deal with certain events in your life which can be termed traumatic, then this might be the therapy which you need. It can also help you if you have a history of relationships that have proved to be problematic in the past and other issues such as physical limits on what you might be able to achieve. You would find ACT really useful.
CBT THERAPY
What is CBT?
CBT simply refers to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It is a way to help you with patterns of behavior in your life, which has simply been far from fruitful for you.
How does CBT work?
Normally, CBT takes place with your therapist. It may require that some tasks are carried out by you during this period. These tasks may be carried out between 12 to 20 different sessions on different days. All the tasks which you would be asked to perform are usually collectively referred to as a course.
However, some people have also been able to use the guided self-help option when working with CBT. This simply refers to using a course automated by a computer or a workbook which is based on CBT to perform the tasks which you are required to follow.
How does it help me?
Like earlier stated, CBT helps eliminate several behavioral patterns which may be unhealthy. It will also help if you are facing several mental issues such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and even some specific form of phobias. It also has a fantastic record when dealing with an eating disorder. A great example of this would be Bulimia.
EFT THERAPY
What is EFT?
The EFT, which is also known as the Emotionally-Focused Therapy, is a therapy which seeks to improve relationships between two or more adults and their levels of attachment or bonding. The aim of this therapy is to ensure that the relationship which you have with your partner, friend, or family member is back to normal or at least in so much more healthier.
How does EFT work?
EFT is basically divided into three broad stages. The first stage would aim to reduce the negativity that is around the interactions between two adults with the view of helping them see what is missing in the relationship. The next step in the therapy would be to rejuvenate the relationship while the last step would be the consolidation stage, which would help both parties to have a better relationship in the future.
How can it help me?
If you are someone who is currently dealing with a truckload of emotionally charged situation, this could even prove beneficial to you. EFT helps clients who are struggling with the feeling of fear, anger, and trust to help them have a deeper and meaningful relationship with their friends and partners. It also helps with depression and traumatic experiences.
GESTALT THERAPY
What is Gestalt Therapy?
The Gestalt Therapy has the aim of ensuring that the person undergoing the therapy understands that the current events which are playing out in their lives have nothing to do with their past experiences nor is influenced by it in any way. Rather, it is as a result of current situations which has led to these situations.
How does it Work?
The Gestalt therapy allows the person to understand the various thought patterns which could be breeding negativity and how to effectively deal with them in their lives. Gestalt therapy insists that any emotions which you are currently going through have to be expressed in order for you to grasp the full meaning of that emotion or experience. This is the only way through which you can eliminate other things such as fear and painful emotions.
How can it help me?
If you are someone who has a history of experiencing anxiety or severe depression, then you should really test out the gestalt therapy. It can also help you to deal with other physical issues which you might be having. This could include migraines and even spasms that affect the back. With the gestalt therapy, your problems would be significantly reduced.
INTERPERSONAL THERAPY
What is Interpersonal Therapy?
Interpersonal Therapy, which is also known as IPT when abbreviated simply refers to a treatment which involves talking. This therapy is directed towards persons who are depressed and need some form of direction in life. It is not a secret that depression is one of the leading causes of spoilt relationships in the world today, and IPT aims to take that away.
How does IPT work?
IPT is a therapy as the name suggests and therefore would be available and recommended that you take these sessions with your therapists. During most of the time with your therapists, you would have to undertake certain tasks which would be divided into the various sessions which you take with your therapists. The sessions are collectively called a course and could last from 16-20 sessions depending on how fast you are.
How does it help me?
If you are someone who is suffering from depression and the consequences which it brings, then this talking treatment would be excellent for you. It also does the trick when another treatment, such as the CBT has not helped you when it comes to the depression that you have. You would find IPT very helpful.
MINDFULNESS-BASED COGNITIVE THERAPY
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness which is also known as the Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy and is abbreviated to MBCT are various or collective therapies which would help you to guide the processes and the thoughts which you have every day as they come. So how does it all come together and work for people who engage in this therapy?
How does Mindfulness work?
The MBCT is usually taken with your therapist and is taken between a certain duration and group of sessions. It uses mindfulness methods to achieve its goals. This would include exercises that focus on meditation and even breathing. This would most likely be used in conjunction with cognitive therapies.
How can it help me?
If you are going through depression and other mental related problems, then you are sure to enjoy using the MBCT. It is usually recommended if you have earlier treated your depression, and it is showing signs that it might be on its way back. It is also used to treat certain levels of addiction that you might be going through.
If you want to find out much more about mindfulness, there are a lot of apps which would help you find the important things about this therapy.
NLP PSYCHOTHERAPY
What Is NLP?
The NLP therapy, which is also known as the Neuro-Linguistic Programming Therapy are interventions which are based on sensory, language, and even behavioral habits. The aim is to modify these things in order to increase the level of confidence and communication skills, which is shown by the person.
How does NLP work?
The ultimate aim of NLP is to ensure that the person undergoing the therapy is able to understand his viewpoints about the world and how it operates affects his understanding and the way he behaves in that world. It helps them to see the need to make certain fundamental changes in order to improve their thought process and other patterns in their behaviors to get the best out of this world. So how can it help you?
How does NLP help me?
NLP is a therapy which has a proven track record when it comes to dealing with issues such as stress disorder coming from traumatic events, issues relating to self-esteem issues and even certain levels of stress and phobias. With the NLP, you would be able to have an improved quality of life due to the absence of such mentally related conditions in you.
STRATEGIC PSYCHOTHERAPY
What is Strategic Psychotherapy?
Strategic psychotherapy aims at unlocking emotions and experiences which has been shut out by our heads. In other words, it helps us to perceive the right sense of reality and not the things which have been cooked up by our heads and minds regarding our reality. It also helps to deal with the feeling of negativity over a prolonged period of time.
How does it work?
One of the methods which the strategic psychotherapy uses is speech or modes of communication which are suggestive in a sense. The use of these modes of communication is to allow the person to reach the emotions which have been blocked out all too often. With this therapy, the reality of things would be perceived differently, which would lead to change over time.
How does it help me?
If you are someone who is looking through prolonged bouts of depression or negativity, then this therapy would surely be for you. It can also help you if you have gone through a lot of traumatic experiences in the past, and you feel like you cannot express your emotions.
The strategic psychotherapy has one of the highest rates of success among the other therapies.
TRADITIONAL AUTHORITARIAN HYPNOSIS
What is Traditional Authoritarian Hypnosis?
The Authoritarian type of hypnosis refers to the one that has to do with more directness. It is often referred to as the more traditional type of hypnosis today. Most of the traditional authoritarian hypnosis is usually conducted with the help of a deep sleep, which seem to be perfect for persons who are used to receiving orders or giving them too.
How does it work?
Most traditional authoritarian hypnosis works best when they are done with a therapist. Most of the instructions or advice which you would get during the hypnosis period would be considered to be short and quite straightforward, to say the least. Long pauses in between command is a familiar sight. The techniques which are used during this kind of hypnosis are considered to be most effective when they are used on people who are analytic in nature.
How does it help me?
Naturally, hypnosis techniques are used to help a person lose habitual behavior, which is unhealthy and yet done subconsciousness. It will also help if you are going through depression, trauma, and other forms of stress disorder.
It is largely considered to be one of the effective hypnosis methods around.