Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a collaborative process that gives you the tools to control how you interpret and deal with challenging thoughts and situations. It is one of the most popular forms of therapy worldwide and has been demonstrated to promote genuine long-lasting change for individuals with complex mental health issues. The goal of CBT is to make you more aware of the internal cognitive processes that lead to issues like anxiety and/or depression ahead of challenging these automatically negative interpretations and replacing them with more objective, realistic thoughts, thereby leading to an improved worldview and better mental health.
People with anxiety or depression are often self-critical, telling themselves things like “I’m not good enough” and so on. Compassionate Focused Therapy (CFT) works towards helping you consciously develop your ability to be more compassionate towards yourself. This approach revolves around becoming aware of our three systems of emotion regulation – threat protection system, resource seeking system, and the soothing system – and how these systems can become confused, leading to defensive states such as anxiety. Our work together will involve bringing these affect systems back into harmony.
Psychodynamic therapy is frequently used to treat depression and anxiety, especially for those who have lost a sense of meaning and/or ability to maintain personal relationships. The approach focuses on recognizing, acknowledging, understanding, expressing, and overcoming the negative feelings that govern your life in a compassionate, open therapeutic space where you are invited to speak freely. By recognizing the way early-life experiences, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs inform your present-day mental health, we will actively work to understand the impact they have on your daily life and help you move to a better place.
Schema Focused Therapy
Schema Focused Therapy is an integrative therapy that combines elements of CBT, psychoanalysis, attachment theory, and emotion-focused therapy. If your mental health issues are deeply entrenched or chronic, it is likely that conventional therapeutic approaches have been ineffective. This is when the schema approach can be helpful, as it goes deeper. Together we will work to understand destructive thought patterns developed in childhood, help you become more aware of them, and eventually become consciously involved in improving these patterns on a daily basis.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
Although initially created to help people with suicidal thoughts who also lived with BPD, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy is an effective therapy for adults with a range of mental health issues, The therapy is an enhanced form of CBT, combining behavioural change strategies with accepting that your actions are understandable when viewed in the context of your personal experiences. We will work towards developing a closer understanding and better control over your daily thought patterns. As always, this is a personalized process – one that increases your awareness of painful feelings and helps you accept certain events that are beyond your control.
EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EDMR) is a gradual and effective way of treating the trauma that lies behind many mental health issues. The process of EDMR involves reconnecting you with the images, thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations associated with your trauma in a safe, gentle way. Over time, I will guide you to replace this negative memory and its associated emotions with a positive belief, thereby weakening the trauma’s impact on your daily mental health. The session lasts between one hour and 90 minutes.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a powerful way of helping adults experiencing depression and anxiety due to its emphasis on living fully in the present moment. The practice plays an important role in other modalities, such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and EDMR, as it focuses on your ability to detach from one mode and move between other modes. Many people struggle to remove themselves from destructive, fear-based modes of thinking; the mindfulness therapy we do together will be all about entering the ‘being’ mode, as this promotes lasting emotional change – particularly for people experiencing recurring depressive and/or anxious episodes.
ACT
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is about identifying the subtle, meaningful and satisfying actions that could be taken that would enhance your quality of life. ACT is a third wave cognitive behavioural therapy that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies along with commitment and behavioural strategies. ACT is particularly beneficial in supporting individuals to stay in the present moment thus providing spaces for choices and decisions making based on the situations, changing or persisting in behaviours in the service of their values.
The core message of ACT is to accept what is out of your personal control while committing to action that will improve the quality of your life. The aim of ACT is to help people live a meaningful life while handling the pain and stress that is an inevitable part of life. ACT teaches you psychological skills to deal with painful thoughts and feelings effectively and helps you understand what is truly important and meaningful to you. Mindfulness skills are central to ACT and are taught in order to facilitate the development of an ‘observing self’ that can help you notice both your physical experiences and your thinking processes.