What is Talking Therapy or Psychotherapy?
Talking therapy refers to various therapeutic techniques that involves talking, communication, and neuro-linguistic processes.
Most people only fully understand and make sense of what talking therapy is when they go through the process themselves.
As a therapist, I tend to approach clients without any preconceived notions of their diagnosis and fixed sets of treatment methods. Instead, I approach the client as an individual and take an investigative-consultative approach. I explore what works best for a client and I draw from my toolbox of therapeutic techniques.
Clients may be sceptical about CBT and other therapies, so I ask them what are their concerns and where their doubts are. Why are they sceptical? They usually feel better after that.
For non-clinical patients, clients find that therapists help them to make sense of their own thoughts, and explain it back to them in ways that they can understand. Clients on their own may find their feelings and thoughts a mishmash..they can be lost for words to make sense of and understand their own thoughts and feelings.
The relationship between the client and the therapist is important, and there must be rapport. There is a certain personality and power dynamics at play in the relationship between therapist and client. To be truly effective, the therapist must exercise awareness of his own personality, biases, and feelings, and then to balance that with his client's. As an enneagram personality profiling trained therapist, I am able to have insight into the personality dynamics at play between client and therapist, and also the biases, and blind spots, as well as resistances.
The efficacy of therapy is increased when there is a keen awareness of personality dynamics in the relationship; reference: Enneatypes in Psychotherapy, Symposium with Psychotherapists, 1993, Spain, with Claudio Naranjo (MD) and fellow psychotherapists.
Therapy Methods
Cognitive analytic therapy (CAT)
Cognitive analytic therapy is particularly designed to deal with damage if you have had long-term experiences of trauma and deprivation. It is also recommended for treatment of eating disorders. It can help with other issues too.
Cognitive analytic therapy combines the practical methods of cognitive behaviour therapy (see below) with more attention to the relationship between you and your therapist – the relationship you have with your therapist is likely to reflect how you relate to people generally. You will explore how your relationship patterns might have developed in unhelpful ways, including how you relate to yourself.
Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT)
CBT is recommended for a variety of disorders, including depression, anxiety, phobias and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
CBT combines cognitive therapy and behaviour therapy. It focuses on how you think about the things going on in your life – your thoughts, images, beliefs and attitudes (your cognitive processes) – and how this impacts on the way you behave and deal with emotional problems. It then looks at how you can change any negative patterns of thinking or behaviour that may be causing you difficulties. In turn, this can change the way you feel.
Together with the therapist, you will explore what your problems are and develop a plan for tackling them. You will learn a set of principles that you can apply whenever you need to. You may find them useful long after you have left therapy.
CBT may focus on what is going on in the present rather than the past. However, the therapist may also look at how your past experiences impact on how you interpret the world now.
Dynamic interpersonal therapy (DIT)
This is a new form of psychodynamic therapy that has been developed for the treatment of depression. Dynamic Psychotherapy assumes that the current difficulties of patients are often due to unresolved, and usually unconscious conflicts stemming from unhappy childhood experiences.
The therapy aims to help you:
• understand the connection between what is happening in your relationships and the depressive symptoms you are experiencing, by identifying your unconscious and repetitive patterns of relating to others.
• better manage how you relate and get on with others, by encouraging you to reflect on what is going on in your mind.
Therapy, therefore, involves exploring childhood experiences, understanding the impact of these experiences on the current lives of the patients, and helping the patients not only to cope better with these experiences and their accompanying emotions, but also to learn new ways of relating with themselves and other people.
Schema Therapy
Schema therapy is an integrated approach that combines cognitive, behavioural, interpersonal and experiential techniques.
The main goals of Schema Therapy are to help patients identify early unhelpful core beliefs (schemas) and coping styles, change these schemas and life patterns, and learn new skills and experiences so that they can be empowered to live happier and more meaningful lives. Patterns laid down in early childhood can continue to shape adult thoughts, actions, relationships, careers and life choices.
Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR helps patients to process traumatic or distressing memories. EMDR is recommended for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It can help you deal with traumatic experiences; for example, if you have experienced a serious accident or event, such as a car crash or sexual assault, or if you have witnessed a serious incident.
EMDR suggests that if you have experienced a distressing event, you may feel overwhelmed and your brain may not be able to process the event like a normal memory.
The therapist will use alternating left-right stimulation of the brain while you are talking. They will do this by encouraging you to make specific eye movements, or they may use sounds or finger taps.
This seems to help your brain process memories that appear frozen or blocked.
Existential therapy
This helps you to think about and understand life, so that you can live it well. It encourages you to focus on the basic assumptions you make about it, and about yourself, so you can come to terms with life as it is. It allows you to make sense of your existence.
The therapy helps you focus on how much you already take charge of your life, and not on what you are doing wrong. At the same time, it takes note of any real limitations, so that you can make choices based on a true view of the options available.
Gestalt therapy
This therapy focus on ‘gestalten’ – patterns of thought, feeling and activity. It encourages you to have an active awareness of your present situation, and uses communication that goes beyond words.
A key part of gestalt therapy is the dramatisation, or acting out, of important conflicts in your life. This could involve using two or more chairs, for instance, so that you can physically take up different positions to represent different aspects of yourself.
Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT)
This is a new time-limited therapy that is recommended for the treatment of depression.
The therapy has two key aims:
• to reduce symptoms of depression
• to improve how you relate to others and deal with social situations.
The therapy is likely to focus on issues such as:
• conflicts you have with another person
• the impact of major life changes e.g. divorce or redundancy
• how you feel about yourself and others
• grief and loss
• difficulties you may have in starting or keeping a relationship going.
IPT suggests that if the distress you experience is relieved by learning how to resolve a current issue, then you may feel less depressed and more confident that you can resolve other difficult issues in the future.
Personal construct therapy
This therapy suggests that we all construct our own idea of the truth from our own experiences, and this affects the way we see the world.
This means we can get stuck with a view of things that prevents us from living life to the full – with no alternative ways of seeing things. Personal construct therapy helps you to look at different ways of behaving that may be useful in changing the way you see the world.
Psychoanalysis
This therapy is based on the work of Freud. It suggests that because so much of what goes on in your mind is hidden and unconscious, it can be difficult to understand your own reactions and behaviours. It also suggests that early experiences of love, loss, sexuality and death can all contribute to emotional conflicts and determine how you relate to others later in life.
Psychoanalysis aims to help you become more aware of what goes on in your unconscious mind, so that you will be better able to choose how to live your life and feel better about yourself. This form of therapy can be lengthy and many people find it very intense.
Psychodynamic therapy
Short-term psychodynamic therapy is recommended for treatment of depression, but it can also help with other disorders.
This is based on the idea that the past has an impact on your experiences and feelings in the present. This theory also suggests that important relationships, perhaps from your early childhood, set a pattern for how you relate to other people later in life.
The therapist usually aims to be as neutral as possible, giving little information about themselves. This makes it more likely that important relationships (past or present) will be reflected in the relationship between you and the therapist. This gives an important insight for you and the therapist to help you to work through your difficulties.
Developing a trusting and reliable relationship with your therapist is essential for this work, especially as the therapist may offer you long-term therapy.
Rational-emotive behavioural therapy (REBT)
This takes the view that you have two main goals in life: to stay alive and to be happy. It aims to remove the obstacles that you place in your own way, and to achieve a healthy balance between short-term and long-term goals.
Transactional analysis therapy (TA)
Transactional analysis therapy emphasises your personal responsibility for your feelings, thoughts and behaviour. It believes you can change, if you actively decide to replace your usual patterns of behaviour with new ones.
The therapist offers:
• 'permission' (for new messages about yourself and the world)
• 'protection' (when changing behaviour and thoughts feels risky)
• 'potency' (to deliver what he or she promised).
Planning the goals of the therapy is part of the process. The focus is on uncovering the 'life scripts' (life plans) that reflect the messages you were given as a child. The therapy teaches you to identify in which of the following modes you are operating, at any given time:
• the 'child' (replaying your childhood)
• the 'parent' (copied from parents or parent-figures)
• the 'adult' (appropriate to the present situation).
Transpersonal therapy
This therapy assumes that there is a spiritual dimension to life and human nature, and that everyone is connected in some way with a higher spiritual power.
Transpersonal therapy emphasises personal empowerment. It takes account of your past experiences, but also looks to the future and what is likely to unfold for you, the challenges you may face and the qualities that you will need to meet those challenges. Its basic belief is that whatever the hardships of human experience, your core essence, or soul, remains undamaged.
Therapy Fees
$250 for each consultation, which typically takes up a 1-hour session.
Sliding Scale: Yes. If you are from a low income family, please provide the necessary documents as proof of your family income and we will provide you with fee assistance. Means Testing is available. We do this as our way of giving back to society.
The type of therapy provided will depend on the diagnosis after a full assessment. Client consent will be requested before therapy is conducted. A treatment plan will be provided and the client decides to commit to it. We adhere to a strict client confidentiality policy.