Hopefully this guide provided you with the basics of therapeutic approaches, and you know enough about the types of therapy and psychotherapy to make informed decisions. Remember, therapy can be work, but it really helps, and therapists want to help you. Doing this research is the first step to a better understanding of yourself and better mental health.
If you or someone you know is seeking mental health care, you can reach out to our Care Coordination team at support twochairs. If you or someone you know is experiencing an emergency or crisis and needs immediate help, call or go to the nearest emergency room.
Additional resources can be found here. Email support twochairs. Additional crisis resources can be found here. Before we begin This is a 45 min, virtual matching appointment for individual therapy. Not ready to sign up? Learn more. For Partners. What Kind of Therapy is Best for Me? What exactly is therapy and why do some people need it? This is patently untrue. Therapy is for anyone looking for outside feedback and support. In this age of tech addiction and growing levels of societal loneliness , therapy will only become a more integral part of our everyday lives.
You need to have a mental health problem to go to therapy. A good therapist can help you navigate life changes like moving, changing jobs, becoming a parent, improving your habits, and more. Therapy is for the weak. Confronting your feelings and working through challenging thoughts is difficult work. Going to therapy takes courage and should be lauded as a sign of personal strength. The right therapist will create a more dynamic relationship with techniques learned through years of schooling and expertise, customizing their approach for each of their clients.
Note that therapists from this tradition are generally highly boundaried, and will not disclose information about themselves to you. Whilst often conflated, the terms psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy are subtly different. Psychoanalysis usually denotes a long-term therapy, often asking for a commitment to three or more sessions per week, over a period of years.
As such it can become very expensive, and is rarely available on the NHS. Psychodynamic therapy uses similar techniques but over a time-limited period, usually asking for a weekly commitment for sessions, though many people do stay in therapy for a year or so. Again, sessions are available one-to-one, for couples, or in groups. Psychoanalysis is not the right choice for everyone and the time commitment — 2 or 3 times a week some people even attend therapy daily can be prohibitive in terms of time and money.
However, this type of therapy can be life transformative — it offers a completely unique way of getting to know yourself and at the right time, can be incredibly healing for those who have experienced early trauma. Psychodynamic therapy is great for people who like to think deeply about their experiences and are happy to remain in therapy for a few months, even a year or so.
It offers a very in depth way of working and can really help those who want to explore their relationship to themselves and others in depth. Today, almost all therapies are person-centered, in the sense that they place the individual accessing therapy at the core of the therapeutic goals and methods. However, person-centered therapy, as conceived by Carl Rogers, goes beyond these general principles, being entirely non-directive.
In the s, this was an entirely new way of working, and remains unusual to this day. According to person-centered therapy, every individual has the solutions to their own problem.
In short, you are the expert of your own life. The role of the therapist, then, is to enable the client to trust their ability to make decisions and reach understandings about difficult situations. Person-centered therapists offer unconditional positive regard as the cornerstone of their approach: they believe that everyone is inherently good, and regardless of what you disclose, they will meet you with acceptance and compassion.
Like psychodynamic psychotherapy, person-centered therapy sessions offer a space to talk about whatever you choose. The difference is that a person-centered therapist will not offer interpretations of your difficulties, and may disclose some of their own experiences if they feel it to be helpful. In its purest form, person-centered therapy is not time-limited: the number of sessions offered will be tailored to the individual need of the client.
In reality, however, there may be time constraints if you are accessing a particularly busy service. To put the client completely at the centre of sessions, they are almost always offered on a one-to-one, face-to-face basis. The pros of this approach is perhaps the quality of the relationship you will have with the therapist or counsellor. However, for some, the lack of direction the therapist offers you and the fact that you are in control of the sessions, can be frustrating.
If you are looking for someone to tell you the answers, this might not be the right type of therapy for you. Mindfulness has risen in popularity over recent years, with advocates such as Ruby Wax and Oprah Winfrey. However, it stems from a very ancient Eastern tradition of meditation. Others, including Gestalt therapy , art therapy , and psychosynthesis , exist as well, and if you're curious about any of them you should do your research thoroughly using trusted resources like The Counseling Directory , Good Therapy , and the American Psychological Association.
To get you started, here's a brief account of six common types of therapy. Any sound like a good idea? Go explore: these are only sketches and don't cover the full process. What It Is: Counseling is sometimes used as an umbrella term for all talking therapies, but it's also a focused approach of its own.
You're usually offered counseling after something bad happens to you or you need assistance coping with the emotional fallout of current circumstances. For instance, counseling is offered to people after major disasters or traumatic events. Counseling in these situations is usually centered around listening without judgement, giving you a space to discuss your emotions, and giving you strategies for coping and adjusting as you move forward. There are specific bereavement counselors, gender dysphoria counselors , and other counseling services focused on one particular kind of issue or occurrence.
Specialization may be a good idea if you're looking for a counselor who can really have an in-depth knowledge of your particular situation. It Might Be Right For You If: You need help coping with a current series of events ; like grief, job loss, serious change, infertility, or other serious problems that are specific and recent.
What It Is: This is actually a combination of different therapies: cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy. Cognitive therapy aims to shift thinking patterns, while behavioral therapy aims to change the way you behave.
Cognitive therapy works on the belief that our thought processes and internal beliefs about ourselves and the world around us influence our mood and behavior, while behavioral therapy aims to shift negative or problematic behaviors in an active sort of way.
Put 'em together and you have the combination often recommended to depressives and people with OCD who get caught in horrible negative thought cycles. Behavioral therapy on its own involves a lot of physical strategies to shift behavior, including things like "flooding" where a person is surrounded by the thing they fear , "modeling" imitating others , and "aversion" where an unwanted behavior becomes associated with a negative stimulus. Behavior-based therapy on its own is often recommended for things like obsessive-compulsive disorder, addiction, and phobias.
What It Is: Psychotherapy is an blanket term for a number of therapeutic approaches, all of which look into the individual's past. This is the typical "talking therapy," the kind you see in cartoons where people lie on couches talking about their mothers.
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