Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT):
CBT identifies how your thoughts, feelings and behaviours interact, and employs a wide variety of techniques to alter one or more of these elements to assist in creating a healthy life balance. CBT has the widest studied evidence base of any therapy and can be applied to assist most challenges in living.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT):
A core therapy used by myself. DBT is skills based and can assist with being more mindful, tolerating periods of distress, regulating one’s emotions and becoming more interpersonally effective. This is a therapy that I believe has practical applications with most individuals, however can also be particularly useful for individuals experiencing frequent negative emotions and other conditions where significant mood lability may be present (e.g., Bipolar and Borderline personality).
Internal Family Systems (IFS):
IFS, commonly known as “parts work” provides a non-pathologizing view of human behaviour, allowing us to see how our different thoughts, feelings and behaviours are in their own ways adaptive. This view is neat because it helps with understanding that all behaviour serves some function. Through understanding the function of those parts of ourselves, rather than responding to them with guilt, anger, shame, annoyance or other difficult emotions, we can meet them with understanding and often compassion for the important role they have played in our lives. As the great psychotherapist Carl Rogers once said “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Parts work can be an affirming way to manage a variety of difficulties from trauma, to mood challenges, addiction and more.
Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS):
Many challenges in living are often related to the way others make space for us through the presence and often absence of collaboration and support. This approach is one that affirms that “people do well if they can” and that we are not all running the same race. When we are curious about why there may be a difficulty with implementing skills, we can drop our expectation that an individual “should” be a certain way, and we can create space for collaboration and shifting perspective. I commonly use CPS when assisting families with challenging behaviours. I also have a background in positive behaviour support, assisting with understanding and managing challenging behaviour.
