Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

The way we think about ourselves, others and the world has everything to do with the way we feel. For example, a person who tends to focus on the negative without regard for the positive is more likely to feel down or irritable. Likewise, a person who worries a lot and makes negative predictions about the future is likely to feel more anxious or tense. These "thinking errors" often create problems and make coping difficult.  CBT therapy directly addresses problematic thinking and helps clients to challenge and replace such thoughts with more balanced logic, which in turn ultimately improves mood and enhances coping. 

Mindfulness Therapy 

We, human beings, spend an inordinate amount of time stuck in our heads. We become attached to remembering what's gone wrong in the past and predicting how it might go wrong in the future. We believe the answer to happiness lies in seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. We tell ourselves stories - "I’ll be happy once I have that job, that relationship, that house..." Yet, as we secure these goals we've already moved on to the next. This pursuit causes us more pain. Mindfulness is a type of therapy which helps clients to re-focus their attention to live in the present moment. By accepting the reality of how things are in "the here and now" we learn to tolerate difficult emotions and thoughts as they arise by letting them come up, addressing them, letting go and moving on.   

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT)  

In life, we tend to take our thoughts and beliefs far too seriously. We assume that if a thought comes to mind it must be fact. "He obviously thinks I don't know what I'm doing," or "I can't trust her, people always let me down." Taking these and similar thoughts too seriously tends to create more problems than it solves because the thinking itself is unhelpful, unproductive and possibly not even true. ACT is a type of therapy that helps clients to understand thoughts for what they really are - not facts but rather our biases, judgements, worries, wishes, wants, fears, needs, regrets, memories... Clients learn how to take unhelpful thoughts less seriously, focusing on or cultivating thinking that actually helps them in life, and enabling them to take decisive action towards their goals.  

Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT)

Many of us believe that we can only make change in our lives through being hard on ourselves about our issues but this is entirely untrue. In reality, being self-critical about our problems only fuels feelings shame, anger, anxiety, depression and low confidence. Self-criticism only worsens our mental pain and anguish because it breaks down our sense of resilience, promotes an abusive relationship with ourselves and prompts us to look to others for approval. CFT helps us to make change in our lives by developing a compassionate mind towards our problems and ourselves. In doing so, we learn to understand where our problems come from, validate our own pain, take responsibility without blame and make change.

Buddhist Psychology / Insight Meditation

Derived from the roots of a 2,500 year old spiritual tradition, Buddhist Psychology focusses on the philosophical teachings of the Buddha with the aim of cultivating inner peace and equanimity. Buddhism teaches that our human existence involves a certain amount of pain which unavoidable but that we create for ourselves insurmountable suffering by forming unhealthy attachments with the world around us. We are attached to feeling good all the time, to making money, to having the perfect relationship and buying the bigger house, to getting approval from others, or being entertained all the time, etc. We are always moving on to the next thing to feel good, all along wondering why we feel so rotten all the time. Buddhist psychology uses concepts of mindfulness, acceptance, compassion and simplicity to helps us break through the illusion that happiness comes from achieving or attaining anything but instead by accepting our lives and ourselves exactly as we are.

Psychological Therapy & Counselling 

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is broad term that's generally used to describe ongoing talk therapy and counselling. This type of therapy aims to help a person explore their past and understand how it is linked to their current struggles. In establishing a solid and trusting relationship, client and therapist work together to explore difficult and potentially painful areas of life and develop insights to work through those issues.  

 

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