Types of psychotherapy

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a here-and-now, solution-focused approach. It’s a form of therapy suggesting that our ways of thinking influence the way we feel and act. CBT will mainly help you learn to identify, question, and change thought patterns that contribute to your difficulties. CBT also includes various behavioural interventions, like exposing oneself to fears and role-playing uncomfortable situations with your therapist. Many therapies derive from the CBT concepts.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) derives from CBT and is a mindful-based therapy helping us accept our inner experiences without needing to fight, change or avoid them. It encourages a compassionate relationship with our difficult life experiences. ACT also encourages the commitment of actions that bring value to our lives. 
 

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) focuses on the importance of the dialectical (i.e., existence of opposites). It helps us embrace acceptance and change. DBT is a type of CBT that mainly targets behaviours that impact your functioning and wellbeing and teaches various skills related to mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.

Mindfulness is the ability to be present, moment to moment. It is our capacity to be aware of what is happening around us and inside us while approaching it with curiosity. It helps us become more aware of our mental and emotional processes without getting lost in a sense of overwhelm. Mindfulness can be practiced formally, for example practicing medication, or informally, in our day-to-day activities. In varying degrees, it is a component of multiple types of psychotherapies.

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) suggests that emotions are a large part of our identity as they guide our choices and actions. EFT also suggests that avoided emotions lead to negative impacts on functioning of daily life, and even on physical health. EFT focuses on increasing our awareness related to our emotional needs. It helps us explore, identify, understand, and make sense of our emotions to deal with them in a flexible and healthy way.

Emotion-Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) suggest that each family members have needs, and when needs are left unmet, it can present in ways that is disrupting for the family. For example, when a child experiences a need as unmet, it can manifest in a temper tantrum, anger, anxiety, extreme shyness and more. EFFT aims to restore the connection between children and parents as well as improve family interaction patterns. More importantly, it recognizes that a child's caregiver is usually the best positioned to provide the essential care and emotional guidance their child's needs.

Schema therapy is a type of therapy that targets core beliefs that guide how we experience and relate to the world. The aim of schema therapy is to help the individual recognize their behavior and understand their underlying causes, as well as change their thoughts and behaviors so they’re able to cope with relationship challenges or emotions in healthy, productive ways. Schema therapy is an integrative approach that combines elements of different theories, including cognitive and attachment theories.

Trauma-Informed Care is an approach that considers the trauma history of an individual and the ways in which trauma impacts the nervous system, the body, the brain, the personality, the sense of self and the sense of safety. This approach can be viewed as a way of being with clients who have experienced traumatic events in order to promote collaboration, resilience and autonomy. Trauma-Informed Care also helps decrease the likelihood of re-traumatization. It focuses on the internal experience of the individual given that trauma is not what happens to a person, but rather what happens inside of a person. Trauma-Informed Care encompasses various evidence-based trauma therapies, for example Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and EMDR.

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is a type of CBT that can be effective in reducing PTSD related symptoms, including anxiety, nightmares, flashbacks and avoidance of reminders of the traumatic event. CPT helps an individual learn about the link between their thoughts and emotions that keep them stuck. It also helps to shed light and work on beliefs about oneself, others, and the world, that underlie the PTSD symptoms.

Eye Movement Desensitization Processing (EMDR) is a treatment mainly used for emotional distress due to traumatic events or disturbing life experiences. EMDR uses dual attention stimulation, such as bilateral eye movements (or other external focus) to help clients attend to and process painful material with the goal of decreasing emotional distress, reformulating negative beliefs about oneself, accessing more adaptative memories and information, and decreasing physiological arousal (e.g., increased heart rate, trembling, muscle tension, cold sweats).

Psychodynamic therapy helps us become aware of and explore the root of our issues to maintain changes long-term by using self exploration and self examination. It focuses on ways in which past experiences contribute to the development of coping mechanisms and personality styles that keep us stuck, whether we are struggling with emotional distress, unhelpful behaviours, negative thought patterns or interpersonal issues.

Imago Relationship Therapy is a couples therapy that promotes connection and growth. It suggests that emotional wounds can happen in early relationships with attachement figures, and thus are healed in relationships later on in life. This therapy helps couples improve their conflict resolution by helping them develop self-awareness and empathy.  Imago Relationship Therapy has an integrative and developmental lens. It encompasses interventions from various therapies, including experiential, humanistic, cognitive and psychodynamic therapies.