Therapy modalities

Relational-cultural therapy is based on the premise that, throughout the lifespan, human beings grow through and towards connection, and that we need connections to flourish, and to stay alive. This theory views isolation as a major source of suffering for people, at both a personal and cultural level.

The goal of therapy is to deepen the therapeutic relationship and, ultimately, the client’s relationship outside of therapy. Therapy focused on a client’s relational images — positive or negative expectations created by past relationships that in turn influence present and future relationships. Negative relational images often cause disconnection between people, so the relational-cultural therapist seeks to decrease the effect of these negative images and help the client to become more connected with others.

The theory behind this approach centres around positive interpersonal factors such as growth-fostering relationships and mutual empathy, as well as cultural factors that facilitate validation and empowerment for marginalized populations. The approach seeks to reduce sources of individual isolation and social injustice, such as, racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia, which contribute to chronic disconnection.

Psychodynamic therapy aims to address the foundation and formation of psychological processes from the past that are currently affecting a person’s quality of life in the present. The psychodynamic therapist is interested in exploring and uncovering a client’s repressed experiences and emotions, and early life experiences.

Through this exploration, and assessing emotions, thoughts, and beliefs a client hold’s, client’s develop insight into their lives and present-day challenges, and become aware of their patterns over time. With this awareness, clients are then better able to make changes to patterns and beliefs that are not serving them.

Benefits of psychodynamic therapy: enhanced self-awareness allowing clients to make decisions that are in alignment with their success and wellbeing, and an understanding of how past events impact the present.

Early attachment experiences with our primary caregivers shape the adults that we become. The goals of attachment-based psychotherapy are to address the limiting effects of negative early attachment experiences and to strengthen the capacity for secure relationships.

Attachment-based therapy is an approach to therapy that specifically targets those thoughts, feelings, communications, behaviours, and interpersonal exchanges that a person has learned either to suppress of avoid or to amplify and overemphasize as a result of early attachment experiences.

As a result of attachment-based psychotherapy, the client finds new ways of behaving in relationships and new ways of approaching the world of work and exploration. Their internal working model becomes more open and adaptive, supporting better intimate relationship and more engagement and action in the world.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) is a method that draws upon the natural wisdom of the body (posture, movement, and the nervous system) to tap into the innate drive in all of us to heal, adapt, and develop new capacities.

The effects of trauma, neglect, and abusive or emotionally painful relationships with childhood caregivers are held in our nervous systems, posture, and movement habits, as well as in unresolved painful emotions and limiting beliefs. To change these patterns, clients learn to mindfully follow the natural intelligent processes of body and mind. New information that often remains unnoticed in conventional therapies is revealed by paying attention to both aspects - body and mind.

The SP therapist will help you become aware of the way your body holds the problems you have come to therapy to resolve. As the client, you are in control of what you explore. SP is for anyone that wants to reduce stress and improve their quality of life. It can be used in individual, group, couple and family psychotherapy, and in combination with other modalities.

Item descrEmotion-focused therapy (EFT) focuses on building awareness of one’s emotions, reducing harm that is caused from lacking emotional awareness or avoiding unpleasant emotions. In this approach, both therapist and person in therapy (client) are viewed as equal contributors, and that the client is seen as the person most capable of interpreting their emotional experience.

EFT is founded on the idea that emotions should be used to guide healthy, meaningful lives, and that emotions influence human functioning, and are related and influence thoughts and behaviour. ‘Emotion schemes’ are the core concept of EFT, and are felt physically, cause physiological changes, influence thinking and guide future action. EFT helps people both accept and change their personal emotion schemes.

Goals of EFT therapy are to help people arrive at their emotions and gain better understanding and awareness of them; learn to welcome, allow and regulate emotions; learn to describe emotions clearly and in detail; increase awareness of the multiple layers of emotional experiences; evaluate whether emotions are helpful or unhelpful in various situations; learn to use helpful emotions to guide action; identify the source of unhelpful emotions; learn to change unhelpful emotions; develop alternative, healthy ways of coping with situations that often elicit maladaptive emotions; and form personal scripts that help change the destructive thoughts that may be associated with unhelpful or maladaptive emotions.

EMDR is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from emotional distress that are a result of disturbing life experiences by helping clients activate their natural healing processes and removing “blocks” that have prevented healing. This is done through the use of detailed protocols and procedures that the clinician has learned through training. EMDR is an 8-phase treatment.

Eye movements (or other bilateral stimulation) are used during one part of the session after the clinician and client have determined which memory, the client holds different aspects of that event or thought in mind and uses their eyes to track the therapist’s hand as it moves back and forth across the client’s field of vision. As this happens, internal associations arise and the clients begin to process the memory and disturbing feelings. In successful EMDR therapy, the meaning of painful events is transformed on an emotional level. Unlike talk therapy, the insights clients gain in EMDR therapy result not so much from clinical interpretation, but from the clients down accelerated intellectual and emotional processes.

EMDR is widely recognized by organizations such as, the American Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organization, and the Department for Defence, as an effective form of treatment for trauma and other disturbing experiences. It has been extensively researched and have resulted in more than 30 positive controlled outcome studies proving the efficacy of EMDR for the treatment of PTSD.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a non-pathologizing approach to psychotherapy that emphasizes the natural multiplicity of the mind. That our internal world is made up of the “Self” and various “Parts”. IFS aims to help clients bolster the “Self”, which is the innate presence within each person that is the pure essence of who they are. It is inherently good and whole, and cannot be broken or corrupted. When a person is Self-led, their system is balanced and all parts are acting in harmony with one another. Being in Self is characterized by the 8 C’s of self-energy: Curiosity, Calm, Clarity, Connectedness, Confidence, Courage, Creativity, and Compassion.

We are born with multiplicity, meaning there are various aspects or parts of us. By living in the world, experiencing relationships with different people, and by experiencing scary, harmful, or overwhelming events, parts develop their own beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about those experiences. All parts act from a place of positive intention. When a part feels threatened and doesn’t trust the Self, they act out to try and protect the system. Because Parts are often stuck in time or polarized with one another, they behaviours they elicit are extreme or out of sync with reality. There are three broad categories of Parts: Exiles (parts that carry the most extreme memories and feelings, and often the youngest parts in the system), Managers (proactive protectors of the system; goals include keeping the system stable and being prepared), and Firefights (reactive protectors of the system).

The goal of IFS therapy is to help the client access their Self and befriend their managers and firefights. Then, in Self, the goal is for the client to access exiled parts and heal them through the unburdening process. The ultimate goal of IFS is to increase the client’s access to Self so that they can be more Self-led.

Narrative therapy model suggests that our experiences are mapped into stories that constitute our reality, and that these stories are constructed through language and are influences by unique life situations such as culture, upbringing, religion, and gender. The presenting problem a person presents is seen as their dominant “story”. These dominant stories are challenged in therapy by examining alternate stories.

Narrative therapy views people as separate from their problems. This allows clients to get some distance from the issue they are experiencing, shifting their perspective of the issue as a personal flaw or quality of theirs to understanding how “the issue” is informed by external factors and systems that are separate from who they are.

The method uses a non expert-based therapeutic stance and focuses on a collaborative re-storying of the client’s life. This collaboration enables the therapist to listen for alternate stories and unique outcomes as the client tells their ‘problem-saturated dominant story’. The overall goal of therapy is to aid the client in constructing new, strength-based stories and to facilitate personal agency.