Following are some of the therapy methods I use and links to additional information about them:
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
CBT looks at how our thoughts, behaviours and feelings all affect each other. These can be helpful or unhelpful. This is part of being human, and these influences often occur beyond our conscious awareness. By identifying the thoughts, behaviours and feelings – and the interactions each has on the other – we have an opportunity to recognize where we can make changes to unhelpful patterns. We can then create more preferred and functional patterns, ultimately improving our lives.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)/Radically Open DBT
DBT is a therapeutic approach operating on the principle that two seemingly opposing things can and do coexist. A primary concept is that we can fully accept ourselves as we are and recognize the need to make changes in order to improve our lives. DBT focuses on identifying problem areas and building skills needed to create a life worth living. These skills are useful for many but particularly for people who experience a lot of intense emotions and who often struggle in interpersonal relationships.
Radically Open DBT (RO DBT) is a similar skill-based therapeutic approach – but while DBT is tailored for people who tend towards under-control of their emotions, RO DBT is tailored to people who tend towards over-control of emotions. In both approaches there is a focus on acceptance and steering away from attributing judgments of good and bad to ways of being. Most, if not all, behaviours have developed out of necessity and have had some form of adaptive function in abnormal circumstances.
Attachment theory
Attachment theory examines how our predominant attachment style (secure or insecure) affects our ability to be in safe and secure relationships and our capacity to feel a sense of internal safety. Through identifying our predominant attachment style, we can look at how it may be negatively affecting our ability to create close, healthy relationships. We may then work on making changes that help us create more closeness with others and security within ourselves. Additionally, we can heal old emotional wounds and traumas when we understand the root and purpose of a particular attachment style.
- How Attachment Styles Affect Adult Relationships
- Attachment Styles Test
- What Is Your Attachment Style
Books
- Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller
- Wired for Love by Stan Tatkin
- The Power of Attachment by Diane Poole Heller
Somatic Relational therapy
Somatic psychotherapy involves focusing on the internal senses of the body (rather than thoughts, as in cognitive therapy). The objective is to regulate physiology and bring a sense of wholeness and health. This is done by slowly and gently observing the internal landscape from a stance of curiosity, suspending judgment of good and bad.
The focus is on creating an inner environment, where strong feelings and sensations are more manageable, and healing can happen. In order to facilitate healing, we need to feel some sense of safe connection to self and others. In the absence of any other safe, secure relationships a strong, safe connection with a counsellor/therapist can provide the base from which healing can happen. Principles of Polyvagal theory are sometimes incorporated. The focus in Polyvagal theory is to work with three different parts of the nervous system, bringing awareness and understanding to their unique responses to stressful situations. Once we see how and why we react, we can then find ways to bring increasing regulation to the nervous system.