Connection
Our relationship is key to the success of therapy. We will initially focus on developing a connection and once you feel safe, heard and understood, we can decide what type of treatment would best fit you. We will decide together what type of therapy modality we use once we weigh-up the following factors:
your strengths and difficulties
your previous experience with other therapists/treatments
our recommendations
Treatment Modalities
There are a number of evidenced-based treatment approaches. At Psych-Service we offer:
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) - focuses on what a person is thinking and doing in a structured, goal-focused way. People often get ‘stuck’ in vicious thinking cycles which has an impact on their feelings. Key strategies within CBT are thought challenging and behavioural experiments.
Meta-Cognitive Therapy (MCT) - moves away from what you are thinking to how you are thinking. This treatment approach is great for people who struggle with over-thinking or rumination. MCT examines how positive beliefs about over-thinking (i.e., worrying helps me stay safe, worry shows I care) contribute to the use of worry as a strategy to deal with problems. The problem continues to remain unresolved, which means people’s anxiety increases as their negative beliefs about worry become triggered (i.e., all this thinking is uncontrollable, crazy and really bad).
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) - promotes psychological flexibility through staying in contact with the present moment, regardless of unpleasant thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations. ACT encourages people to choose behaviours based on the context of the situation and their values.
Eye-Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR) - allows trauma memories to be processed through eye-movements, similar to those during REM sleep, by watching your therapist’s finger or light bars move backwards and forwards across your visual field. With repeated eye-movements, the painful intensity of the memory becomes more neutral and becomes part of the past rather than the present. Other associated memories may also heal at the same time.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) - the exposure component involves confronting feared situations, thoughts or feelings in a graduated way. Response prevention relates to helping a person resist behaviours that help them feel better in the short-term (e.g., rituals, safety behaviours) as these coping strategies often maintain the problem.
Action Plan
Every session, we will come up with tasks for you to focus on throughout the week. These tasks will relate to our sessions and are aimed to help you transfer strategies you have learned to your day-to-day life. Some ideas of home-tasks could be to:
write thoughts and reflections in a journal
engage in a pleasurable activity (e.g., reading, yoga, baking, getting creative)
take part in mindful movement - like yoga, breathing or a walk
explore compassion through meditation, writing or reading
seek support from your friends, family or other people
commit to attending a community event, workshop or activity
read about emotions and their function
“A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying”.
- B.F. Skinner (Behavioural Psychologist)