You snooze you lose?
Cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) lasts around 16 weeks and involves a therapist and patient sitting down to make sense of the patient’s life, past experiences, and relationships.
One of the most popular forms of therapy is CBT. It aims to change how you think and behave. It helps by equipping people with the skills to identify, challenge, and deal with their adverse behavior. It’s often used to treat depression, anxiety, stress, phobias, obsessions, eating disorders, and managing long-term conditions.
This form of therapy helps develop new and less harmful behaviors without over-analyzing the past. It works well for compulsive and obsessive behaviors, fears, phobias, and addictions.
Creative therapy is very similar to art therapy in that it helps people express themselves in ways that they cannot with words, but it incorporates other forms of expression like dancing, singing, and drama.
Emotionally focused therapy works with families, individuals, or couples, working to reinforce secure and healthy relationships. It helps by addressing emotions, insecurities, and conflicts.
Existential psychotherapy explores the inner conflict and anxiety people may experience when confronted with life's ultimate concerns, such as the inevitability of death, freedom and its responsibilities, isolation, and meaninglessness.
Art therapy helps people communicate what they can’t in words through art, which aids in relieving stress, improving their mental well-being, and increasing self-awareness.
Another very common and well-known form of therapy is family therapy. It looks at the family unit, at the individuals in it, and their relationships with each other.
This is a time-limited approach that is focused on relationships. An interpersonal therapist can help with bereavement and conflict by looking at problems in your relationships.
Also called analytical therapy, this is a psychoanalytical approach that has its roots in the teachings of Carl Jung. It looks at the unconscious, trying to bring it into harmony. It benefits a range of issues.
NLP combines cognitive behavioral and humanistic therapies with hypnotherapy. It works on the theory that life experiences, from birth onwards, program the way you see the world. Practitioners help you discover how you have learned to think or feel so that you can take control of your actions.
Person-centered therapy is based on the view that everyone has the desire and capacity for personal growth if they’re given the right conditions. The counselor offers unconditional positive regard and empathy.
This is primarily used for children. It helps them communicate how they’re feeling, and to deal with difficult issues.
Primal therapy is based on the theory that distress that occurs during our birth or infancy can resurface as a phobia, obsession, or another issue. Therapists take us back to the 'primal scene,' where the trauma can be reexperienced as an emotional cleansing.
This is the one that is often unwelcome outside of a professional setting. It’s based on the teachings of Sigmund Freud, and how your past experiences impact your thoughts, emotions, and behavior in the present and future. It helps deal with high levels of distress, but is a long process.
This is derived from psychoanalysis but focuses on problems in the present to come up with solutions. The therapist will initiate a close relationship. Usually association, interpretation, and transference take place, and feelings you experienced in previous significant relationships are projected onto the therapist.
This form of therapy was developed by Alfred Adler, attributing a lot to early childhood experiences with family. It’s a positive and encouraging approach that can help with anxiety and antisocial behavior.
Often referred to as "psychology of the soul," this approach seeks to bring together all areas of a human, including their spirituality, so that they can personally develop.
This is a comprehensive approach that categorizes the human personality into three states: parent, adult, and child. These states are all meant to help us understand how we interact with others (we are always behaving like one).
Transpersonal therapy refers to any form of counseling or therapy that focuses on spirituality, human potential, or heightened consciousness.
Sources: (Psychology Today)
This form of counseling isn’t only focused on the psyche, but also physical need, for one example. It’s more of a tailored approach to therapy.
This form of therapy is based on the idea that your past experiences can damage your perception of yourself, which then affects your behavior moving into the future. For example, it may help by getting a patient to question their negative perception of themself.
This form of therapy is straightforward in its definition and is commonly known. It helps to manage relationships at all levels.
This form of therapy also looks at a person as a whole. It encourages them to reflect on their feelings, behavior, thoughts, and actions. The emphasis is on personal development and overcoming challenges.
Eclectic counseling refers to therapy where the counselor will work with a range of different theories and a range of different practices to help with a specific problem.
This is similar to brief therapy but can work on group and team levels to achieve greater self-awareness, improved self-management skills, and increased self-efficacy. It normally works in three to four hour sessions and with elements of therapeutic approaches such as person-centered, solution-focused, or CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy).
This approach focuses on a person’s perception of an experience and reality rather than the reality itself. The therapist then helps you discover better and more helpful ways of thinking and behaving.
In this day and age, in most Western cultures, it’s completely normal to see a counselor or therapist. In some cultures, it’s encouraged whether you are having problems in your life or not. Nobody is perfect, and we all inevitably face challenges we could use some help with.
The benefits of certain types of therapy are colossal, impacting every area of our lives. However, it may not be as simple as just "seeing a therapist.” It can be helpful to understand the different forms of therapy and how they work. To do so, click through this gallery.
Which type of therapy is right for you?
Some therapeutic methods can make a substantial difference
HEALTH Mental health
In this day and age, in most Western cultures, it’s completely normal to see a counselor or therapist. In some cultures, it’s encouraged whether you are having problems in your life or not. Nobody is perfect, and we all inevitably face challenges we could use some help with.
The benefits of certain types of therapy are colossal, impacting every area of our lives. However, it may not be as simple as just "seeing a therapist.” It can be helpful to understand the different forms of therapy and how they work. To do so, click through this gallery.