Treatment Approach

Types of Therapy

Attachment-based – Attachment-based therapy is form of therapy that applies to interventions or approaches based on attachment theory, which explains how the relationship a parent has with its child influences development.

Cognitive Behavioural (CBT) – Cognitive-behavioural therapy stresses the role of thinking in how we feel and what we do. It is based on the belief that thoughts, rather than people or events, cause our negative feelings. The therapist assists the client in identifying, testing the beliefs, and correcting thought distortions underlying his or her thinking. The therapist then helps the client modify those thoughts and the behaviours that flow from them. CBT is a structured collaboration between therapist and client and often calls for homework assignments. CBT has been clinically proven to help clients in a relatively short amount of time with a wide range of disorders, including depression and anxiety.

Compassion Focused / Positive Therapies – Psychotherapy focusing on improving wellbeing and functioning by building on positive emotions, relationships, and strengths.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) – type of cognitive behavioral therapy that helps people manage emotions and relationships. DBT combines elements from learning theories, mindfulness, and dialectical philosophy.

EMDR – Attachment-focused (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) – EMDR is a vastly researched and evidence-based therapy that incorporates resource tapping to strengthen and repair developmental deficits, bilateral stimulation to rapidly process traumas, and talk therapy to facilitate integration of new awareness and understanding. Attachment-focused EMDR moves away from the traditional 8-step technique developed over 30 years ago, towards a client-centred and relationship focused healing. Unprocessed traumas, both single incident as well as chronic relational and developmental deficits, are trapped in both our minds and bodies. AF-EMDR is a technique that allows rapid processing of images, body sensations, emotions, and negative self-beliefs through bilateral stimulation and therapist attunement.

Emotionally Focused – Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is an approach to therapy that helps clients identify their emotions, learn to explore and experience them, to understand them and then to manage them. Emotionally Focused Therapy embraces the idea that emotions can be changed, first by arriving at or 'living' the maladaptive emotion (e.g. loss, fear or shame) in session, and then learning to transform it. Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples seeks to break the negative emotion cycles within relationships, emphasising the importance of the attachment bond between couples, and how nurturing of the attachment bonds and an empathetic understanding of each others emotions can break the cycles.

Existential/Spiritual – Existential psychotherapy is based on the philosophical belief that human beings are alone in the world, and that this aloneness can only be overcome by creating one's own meaning, and exercising one's freedom to choose. The existential therapist encourages clients to face life's anxieties head on and to start making their own decisions. The therapist will emphasize that, along with having the freedom to carve out meaning, comes the need to take full responsibility for the consequences of one's decisions. Therapy sessions focus on the client's present and future rather than their past.

Family / Marital Family – Marital therapists work with families or couples both together and individually to help them improve their communication skills, build on the positive aspects of their relationships, and repair the harmful or negative aspects of their relationship. This done by looking at patterns in the relationships.

Family Systems – Family Systems therapists view problems within the family as the result not of particular members' behaviors, but of the family's group dynamic. The family is seen as a complex system having its own language, roles, rules, beliefs, needs and patterns. The therapist helps each individual member understand how their childhood family operated, their role in that system, and how that experience has shaped their role in the current family. Therapists with the MFT credential are usually trained in Family Systems therapy.

Interpersonal – IPT is a short-term psychotherapy in which therapist and client identify the issues and problems of interpersonal relationships. They also explore the client's life history to help recognize problem areas and then work toward ways to rectify them. There are specific Interpersonal therapies, such as Imago therapy, which focus on intimate relationships.

Interpersonal Therapy – Not to be confused with transpersonal psychology, which is the study of states in which people experience a deeper sense of who they are, or a sense of greater connectedness with others, nature or spirituality.

Mindfulness – Mindfulness is a practice of noticing our thoughts and gently bringing our mind back into the moment, without judgement, or interpretation. Through teaching mindfulness, we are exercising our minds, creating new neural pathways, and fostering increased capacity for calmness and contentment.

Motivational Interviewing Motivational Interviewing (MI) – A method of therapy that works to engage the motivation of clients to change their behavior. Clients are encouraged to explore and confront their ambivalence. Therapists attempt to influence their clients to consider making changes, rather than non-directively explore themselves. Motivational Interviewing is frequently used in cases of problem drinking or mild addictions.

Narrative – Narrative Therapy uses the client's storytelling to indicate the way they construct meaning in their lives, rather than focusing on how they communicate their problem behaviors. Narrative Therapy embraces the idea that stories actually shape our behaviors and our lives and that we become the stories we tell about ourselves. There are helpful narratives we can choose to embrace as well as unhelpful ones. Although it may sound obvious, the power of storytelling is to elevate the client--who is the authority of their narrative--rather than the therapist, as expert.

Play Therapy – Play therapy is a form of therapy used primarily for children. That's because children may not be able to process their own emotions or articulate problems to parents or other adults. While it may look like an ordinary playtime, play therapy can be much more than that. A trained therapist can use playtime to observe and gain insights into a child's problems. The therapist can then help the child explore emotions and deal with unresolved trauma. Through play, children can learn new coping mechanisms and how to redirect inappropriate behaviors.

Relational – Relational life therapy offers strategies to combat marital dysfunction and restore harmony in relationships. Couples--those recovering from affairs, traumatic events, or a lull in passion--can find RLT helpful. To repair discord, the therapist identifies the main conflict upsetting the couples' emotional intimacy. Once the partners see how they both contribute to the problem, the therapist teaches them skills to improve the ways they relate to each other. Couples may see a change in their relationship within three to six months.

Sandplay – Sandplay therapy establishes a safe and protected space, where the complexities of the client's inner world can be explored. Often young children, clients place miniature figurines in a small sandbox to express confusing feelings and inner experiences. This creates a visual representation of the client's thoughts and feelings and can reveal unconscious concerns that are inaccessible. The therapist does not interpret, interfere with, or direct the client's sand play but maintains an attitude of receptivity and acceptance, so the client can bring unconscious material into consciousness without censure.

Sensorimotor Psychology – Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) is a holistic therapeutic modality for treating trauma and attachment wounds. In SP, the sensations, patterns, and movements of the body are all an integral source of information that, once accessed, can invite processing and integration on a somatic, emotional, and cognitive level.

Somatic – Somatic (from the Greek word 'soma', meaning body) psychotherapy bridges the mind-body dichotomy recognizing that emotion, behaviour, sensation, impulse, energy, action, gesture, meaning and language all originate in physical experiences. Thinking is not an abstract function but motivates, or is motivated by, physical expression and action. A somatic approach to trauma treatment can be effective by examining how past traumatic experiences cause physical symptoms (e.g. bodily anesthesia or motor inhibitions) which in turn affect emotion regulation, cognition and daily functioning.

Trauma Work – We practice several trauma informed practices and other specialized approaches such as TRE, EMDR -attachment, ART, somatic work and CBT Trauma lens.

Modality