Therapeutic Approaches
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies, together with commitment and behaviour change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility. One definition of psychological flexibility is the capacity for being in contact with the present and acting on long-term goals rather than short-term urges. Being psychologically flexible allows people to adapt to changes in the environment and react in new, creative and healthy ways that align with an individual's goals and values. This ability also plays a vital role in health and well-being. Through the use of metaphors and experiential exercises, patients/clients learn how to make healthy contact with thoughts, feelings, memories, and physical sensations that have been feared and avoided.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
CBT is a practical, structured, and time-limited form of therapy. It focuses on the “here and now” to help patients/clients identify, question, and change their thoughts and beliefs related to the emotional and behavioural reactions that cause them difficulty. CBT is based on a proactive, shared therapeutic relationship between the therapist and client, using a problem solving and goal-oriented approach to treatment.
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
CPT is a specific type of cognitive behavioral therapy (referenced above) that has been effective
in reducing symptoms of PTSD that have developed after experiencing a variety of traumatic events including child abuse, combat, sexual assault and natural disasters. It is a manualized treatment, that is time limited and helps patients/clients learn how to challenge and modify unhelpful beliefs related to the trauma. In so doing, the patient creates a new understanding and conceptualization of the traumatic event so that it reduces its ongoing negative effects on current life.
Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT)
EFT is a collaborative and empathically responsive approach in which you are guided by your therapist in accessing and working with your emotional experience in a new way that ultimately helps you to feel better and more connected to yourself. Emotion focused therapists work directly with emotion to help you make sense of your emotions, to tolerate and manage them, and to use them to meet your needs and goals. You will be helped to actively experience your emotions in the safety of the therapy session so that rather than avoiding or controlling your feelings, you learn to use them as a guide to meet important needs and goals, including connecting with others in a healthy way.
Exposure Therapy (ET)
Exposure therapy is a psychological treatment that was developed to help people confront their fears. When people are fearful of something, they tend to avoid the feared objects, activities or situations. Although this avoidance might help reduce feelings of fear in the short term, over the long term it can make the fear become even worse. In this form of therapy, the therapist creates a safe environment in which to “expose” individuals to the things they fear and avoid. The exposure to the feared objects, activities or situations in a safe environment helps reduce fear and decrease avoidance. This is done through in-vivo exposure (facing the feared object/situation in real life) and imaginal exposure (vividly imagining the feared object/situation is session).
Psychodynamic Therapy
Psychodynamic therapy is a holistic approach that traces back to Sigmund Freud. Unlike cognitive-behavioural therapy, which emphasizes the connections between thoughts and behaviour, psychodynamic therapy encourages clients to more deeply understand how their lived experiences affect their current functioning. Psychodynamic therapy encourages clients to develop awareness of their emotions and process unresolved feelings. Building on Freud’s approach to therapy, psychodynamic therapists investigate the unconscious mind to gain self-awareness and help clients access and interpret their thoughts.
Interpersonal Therapy (IPT)
IPT is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on relieving symptoms by improving interpersonal functioning. It addresses current problems and relationships rather than childhood or developmental issues. Therapists are active, non-neutral, supportive and hopeful, and they offer options for change.
Coming Soon to the Clinic
Brainspotting
Brainspotting is a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of other challenging symptoms. Brainspotting is a simultaneous form of diagnosis and treatment, enhanced with Biolateral sound, which is deep, direct, and powerful yet focused and containing. It works with the deep brain and the body through its direct access to the autonomic and limbic systems within the body’s central nervous system. Brainspotting is accordingly a physiological tool/treatment which has profound psychological, emotional, and physical consequences.
Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR)
EMDR is a structured therapy that encourages the patient/client to briefly focus on the trauma memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements), which is associated with a reduction in the vividness and emotion associated with the trauma memories. Unlike other treatments that focus on directly altering the emotions, thoughts and responses resulting from traumatic experiences, EMDR therapy focuses directly on the memory, and is intended to change the way that the memory is stored in the brain, thus reducing and eliminating the problematic symptoms.