Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - ACT
ACT moves away from focusing too closely on ‘symptom reduction’ towards teaching our client how to live in a stable and rewarding way. This therapy teaches how to get in touch with your values, how to act in accordance with them, how to be aware of the “you” that is always there, how to see your passing thoughts and feelings for just that, how to accept thoughts and feelings you don’t like without over-struggling with them, and so how to live mainly in the present.
The main outcome of ACT as a therapy is to foster 'psychological flexibility' in recognition that life will have its problems, ups and downs, and being flexible enables us to cope and live in a stable and rewarding way that keeps you in touch with your values.
Compassion Focused Therapy - CFT
CFT provides an important new perspective on the therapeutic process. Of course, all therapists endeavour to be compassionate towards their patients, but compassion focused therapy is more about teaching patients to be compassionate towards themselves. This involves you and your therapist understanding the tug of war that takes place between the different systems and sections of the brain; understanding that everybody has competing fears, fantasies, ambitions, rules for how they should be, and so on. Such an understanding of what takes place in the brain enables our clients to take a more compassionate view of how they think, feel and behave at different times, and to move forward to overcome specific problems, whether these problems are of depression, anxiety, irritability, impulsiveness, or any other.
Solution Focused Therapy - SFT
The principles of SFT/SFBT in a way that gives you a firm grasp of them and enables you to use them in a safe and helpful way. You should become at home with the approach which is often seen as a 'breath of fresh air' both to our client and your therapist, our therapist aims to empower our clients and help the find effective solutions for problems, rather than being sucked further and further into analysing and discussing the problem itself.
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy - DBT
DBT is a powerful therapeutic approach originally developed by Marsha Linehan for the treatment of borderline personality disorder and now applied across a range of challenging conditions. It relies on teaching core life skills such as mindfulness, how to regulate your emotions, how to tolerate distress, and how to be effective interpersonally, and then helping patients maintain their motivation and resolve ongoing problems as they apply these skills in a planned way.
Reinforce Appropriate, Implode Disruptive - RAID
RAID® is a relentlessly positive approach for tackling disturbed and challenging behaviour at source: it is a leading approach, it is a comprehensive therapeutic system which teaches our clients a philosophy and practice not only to deal with their disturbed and challenging behaviour when it occurs, but also to prevent it by nurturing positive behaviour targeted to displace the disturbed and challenging behaviour.
Prep
It is an essential part of most therapies and therapy providers to use ‘Homework’
We like to use the word “Prep” instead, by rehearsing or recalling information repeatedly, your neural networks (in the brain) strengthen.
Why we give you Prep throughout your therapy, to release thoughts and emotions into your Prep between therapy sessions to bring to the next session.
When you study what you have learned regularly over a long period, the pathways in your brain that are involved in remembering that information become stronger.
This will help you to make the most out of your goals of therapy and putting you back in control of your life.
The sense of empowerment you can gain from practicing your new coping skills, setting appropriate boundaries, that you have set and redirecting your own cognitive distortions is something a therapist can’t give you in the therapy session.
This is something you give yourself. Therapy Prep is how you come to the realisation that you have “got” this, and that you can do it which will boost your confidence.
Regardless the type of therapy, the most effective kind of ‘Prep’ is when you don’t even realise you were assigned it.
Formulation NOT Diagnosis
Why is formulation better than diagnosis?
For instance, if you feel labelled or stigmatised by a previous diagnosis (or aren't even sure if that diagnosis is accurate), then a formulation of what's feeling difficult can be a more holistic, less medicalised way of understanding any issues.
The Perspectives approach to the understanding and treatment of patients with psychiatric conditions offers an alternative to the DSM. The Perspectives approach requires a systematic consideration of the patient's psychiatric condition from 4 perspectives: disease, dimensional, behaviour, and life story.
Why won't my therapist diagnose me?
In some situations, therapists won't provide a diagnosis because they don't think it's essential to the recovery process. Many professionals believe that labels can cause clients to concentrate on the wrong aspects of their mental health condition.
Do therapists diagnose you?
Yes, just like psychiatrists, therapists are trained to diagnose mental health disorders. A therapist will use talk therapy to determine a mental health problem and conduct psychological tests to make a diagnosis. A therapist can also develop a treatment plan for you based on your diagnosis. This treatment plan will usually include a form of therapy such as CBT but may also include medication for which you'll be referred to a medical doctor or psychiatrist.
