Treatment Approaches
Diverse treatments that better your mental health
You are an individual – just like your needs and experiences. Your treatment should be too.
Our therapists are trained in a wide area of treatments to be able to guide you through your mental health journey.
We offer a uniquely personal service that works to highlight the best way to treat you – whether that’s integrating several different models or focusing on one treatment type.
Please keep reading to learn about our team’s diverse forms of treatment.
CBT-Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) is a treatment that focuses on the present rather than past experiences. Structured treatment that works for those needing to focus on a specific problem, CBT is a short-term-based methodology.
With Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, we break down the more prominent issues piece by piece into easier-to-tackle problems that can be addressed at your pace. This makes your phobia, health issue or other mental health condition much less daunting.
CBT aims to provide coping methods to manage stressful situations or negative triggers. These can be physical or harmful thoughts and feelings. This type of therapy requires client participation to achieve progress.
This treatment type is recommended for those trying to break a negative cycle with thoughts or behaviours that affect your day-to-day.
DBT-Dialectical Behavioural Therapy
DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy) addresses self-esteem alongside negative thoughts and behaviours without focusing on your past.
Dialectical means ‘opposing views, and in terms of therapy, it refers to learning to accept yourself while changing negative thoughts and behaviour.
It was initially developed for those that have BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). However, DBT isn’t just for people that suffer from this disorder – many people can benefit from this type of therapy.
Your practitioner may recommend this type of treatment for those struggling with emotional regulation, feeling overwhelmed in certain situations or maintaining relationships. Your therapist will work to highlight and use anchoring aspects to reinforce that your life is worth living.
Mindfulness-Based Therapy
Mindfulness has become popular as a way to balance yourself through breathing and meditation exercises. Though this type of therapy uses mindfulness techniques, it also goes further to employ elements of cognitive therapy.
Mindfulness-based therapy teaches critical attitudes (such as patience and trust) to create a calmer, stable self.
Learning to be kind to yourself and being content to live in the present is one of the main principles of mindfulness-based therapy. As well as teaching emotional regulation, Mindfulness- based therapy strategies can also provide a way to interrupt triggers for negative, often spiralling thoughts.
If you have physical or mental symptoms that spiral, mindfulness might be the option that works for you.
Internal Family Systems
This model focuses on your ‘self’ as the leading central part of your personality and sub-personalities that exist as part of an internal system within your mental state.
These sub-personalities can either work together to form a healthy mind or influence negative feelings born through an unstable self or trauma. Self-destructive behaviours such as alcohol abuse, sexual binges and self-mutilation can occur when one part of the system overrides the self. These sub-personalities are referred to as:
• Exile: Usually born from trauma in childhood, this can cause extreme feelings of fragility.
• Manager: The part of the system that takes on the day-to-day tasks and attempts to maintain control. If unhealthy, this can manifest into terrorizing and over-controlling behaviours.
• Firefighter: If an exile is triggered, a firefighter can occur to extinguish desperate feelings of worry, fragility and depression along with other behaviours. If not maintained, this can turn into unhealthy coping methods, such as substance abuse, unhealthy relationships or destructive behaviour.
When your ‘self’ controls your internal system, you often feel grounded, confident and in control.
Often, sub-personalities interact in the same way we would with others externally to display our behaviours. Different sub-personalities can be triggered by internal or external factors – healthy or damaging.
EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy
Initially recommended for those struggling with PTSD, EMDR is a mental health treatment focusing on using specific eye movements when working through traumatic memories.
Depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety and many other trauma-related disorders are now treated with this effective model.
EMDR was developed due to research that shows that the brain stores positive and neutral memories differently from traumatic ones. Because they’re not stored in the same way within your brain, trauma can influence your mental and physical health when triggered.
Certain events or senses (sight, sounds, smells, tastes or touches) can cause difficulty processing flashbacks, anxiety, panic attacks and other challenging feelings. With EMDR, the brain learns to utilize the areas of the brain that control behaviour and emotion (the prefrontal cortex) and memories (the hippocampus).
Gestalt Therapy
A form of psychotherapy that focuses on what’s happening in the present rather than working through past experiences, Gestalt Therapy helps you to learn to process your present thoughts.
Instead of traditional talking therapies, Gestalt therapy is all about experimentation. Gestalt means “whole,” and in therapy, it refers to treating your entire self, not breaking down parts of you into your body, mind or thoughts.
Gestalt Therapy involves your practitioner working with you to uncover the ideal avenue to improve your mental health. These can apply creative, intellectual and physical methods such as role-playing, painting, or other, often spontaneous practices. These methods culminate in helping you to be able to relate to others, be more assertive or work on creating awareness of thoughts, feelings and actions – for yourself and others.
Psychoeducation
If you’ve been diagnosed with or wish to learn more about the effect of mental health challenges, psychoeducation seeks to educate you on how they work or why they can cause you to feel or act a certain way.
Too often, individuals are diagnosed with disorders but are left feeling lost with little explanation. Psychoeducation seeks to empower those with knowledge. This can also include family members or care-givers who might not know or understand how best to interact with those with mental illness or trauma.
Want to learn more?
Meet our team here or contact us to start your journey to improving or maintaining your mental health.