Therapeutic Modalities

Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy is a gentle, yet powerful therapeutic technique that uses guided relaxation and focused attention to achieve a heightened state of awareness.This state allows individuals to explore their inner thoughts, feelings, and memories in a safe and controlled environment.

Benefits of Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy has been shown to be effective in addressing a variety of mental health concerns, including:

  • Anxiety and Stress Reduction - Hypnotherapy can help you manage and reduce anxiety and stress by promoting relaxation and teaching coping strategies.

  • Depression Management - By addressing underlying issues and promoting positive thinking, hypnotherapy can be a valuable tool in managing depression.

  • Overcoming Phobias and Fears - Hypnotherapy can help you confront and overcome irrational fears and phobias by changing your response to these triggers.

  • Improving Sleep - Hypnotherapy can assist in establishing healthy sleep patterns, helping you achieve restful and restorative sleep.

  • Enhancing Self-Esteem and Confidence -Through positive suggestions and visualization techniques, hypnotherapy can boost your self-esteem and confidence.

How Hypnotherapy Works

During a hypnotherapy session, you will be guided into a deeply relaxed state. In this state, your mind becomes more open to positive new ways of thinking. Our skilled hypnotherapists will work with you to:

  • Identify Goals - We will discuss your specific goals and tailor the session to address your unique needs.

  • Induce Relaxation - Using calming techniques, we will help you enter a state of deep relaxation.

  • Provide Positive Suggestions - While in this relaxed state, we will introduce positive suggestions and visualizations to help you achieve your goals.

  • Teach Coping Strategies - You will learn practical coping strategies that you can use in your daily life to manage stress, anxiety, and other challenges.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)

Dialectical Behavior Therapy - DBT is considered a subtype of CBT and is similar to CBT in helping you to understand your thoughts and how they relate to your feelings, where DBT differs is that the emphasis is on interpersonal relationships and emotions.

DBT focuses on assisting you with gaining skill sets in 4 main areas:

  • Mindfulness

  • Interpersonal effectiveness

  • Distress tolerance

  • Emotion regulation

In DBT you will gain skills that will help you apply these concepts in your everyday life to assist  you in managing your difficult emotions. These skills are developed by you, for you to apply as difficulties happen. With this skillset you can also begin to Identify your pattern of behaviors and what leads up to them, allowing you to create a plan aimed at more positive outcomes.

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy strives to instill and strengthen a person's skills in the following areas: assertiveness, decision making, problem solving and conflict resolution to assist with becoming more rational in your thinking. The premise behind this therapy is that it is not your experiences which cause your problems but it is your thoughts and irrational beliefs about these experiences which cause your cognitive and behavioral difficulties. It is usually explained as the ABC model, which is used in CBT also. 

  • A - Activating event

  • B - Belief about the event

  • C - Consequence

The ABC model focuses on the beliefs or irrational beliefs surrounding the events which gives you more control over the overall feelings that you end up with by examining your perceptions and your beliefs about that perception, when you change your point of view for a more positive and rational view you will end up with a different feeling which produces a more positive  outcome or consequence. Becoming aware of irrational beliefs can help you to see how you are harming yourself and creating barriers within your life.

Person Centered Therapy

Person-Centered Therapy strives to put the person and their needs at the center of the therapy and allow the person to to drive the therapy by the person expressing what they feel is needed for their well being. This approach also strives to maintain respect and dignity by treating people as individuals and supporting independence and personal choices by creating a partnership with them and creating a plan for their care by listening to them and helping to identify your needs and barriers.

Motivation Interviewing

Motivational Interviewing encompassess a mixture of helping you to see the discrepancies between your aspirations and your current choices or actions. Motivational Interviewing has two major components the first is to help you understand what needs to be changed and the second component is to help you find the motivation and commitment within yourself to make the change, by listening empathetically and reflective communication in a non judgemental way to assist you with coming to terms within yourself and bring out the  dissonance that you may be facing within yourself around the changes that need to occur.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - CBT is a solution focused therapy that helps you to understand how your thoughts affect your  feelings and your reactions to those feelings which create behaviors or patterns of behaviors.  CBT Is therapy for current events, situations and patterns of behaviors which may be presenting a problem and basically involves helping you to identify, challenge, and reframe distorted perceptions and thoughts that are creating painful overall feelings that you are reacting to

  • Identify - Identifying these thoughts and perceptions helps you to understand and become aware

  • Challenge - Challenging will help you to find the supporting evidence and the pros and cons

  • Reframe - Reframing allows you to entertain a different point of view

When you put in the work to change your point of view usually a waterfall effect can be evidenced by:

  • New feelings of calm

  • Recognition of and power over what is within your control

  • A different reaction to distress

  • As well as a sense of wellbeing 

The following are all techniques that you can learn and adapt to your situations for use when needed within your everyday life:

  • Identify automatic thoughts and how challenging them can change them

  • Reframing your perception of or outlook on events or situations to create a different reaction 

  • Identifying what calms you

  • Stress management and tolerance 

  • Journaling to identify patterns

Trauma Focused Therapy

Trauma Focused Therapy provides empathy and non-judgemental understanding on how a trauma has impacted a person and attempts to facilitate building skills, exploring readjustments and trauma impact in the following areas;

  • Emotional

  • Biological

  • Cognitive

  • Social

  • Behavioral

Depending upon the level of trauma once a relationship has been developed with your therapist, this therapy can provide a safe place to express yourself, a way for you to explore alternative responses and bring supports in to assist with your recovery goals.

There are usually three phases

  1. Stabilization

  2. Trauma expression and processing and

  3. Integration and consolidation

Attachment Based Therapy

The Attachment-Based Therapy approach has an overall goal of repairing relationships between vulnerable individuals and familial members by strengthening the connections between them and helping an individual to realize their full potential of independence and self-sufficiency in the development of healthy supportive relationships. In this approach you and your care-givers  learn to develop a trustful and secure relationship by exploring how early life experiences, beliefs and values are affecting your current emotional stability,  self confidence, self worth and relationships. Exploring these areas in a safe environment  will help you to begin to repair your outlook on relationships and allow you to build secure, supportive connections and bonds with the people in your life that you care for and assist with future development of healthy relationships.

True Attachment-Based Therapies do not involve negative methods of reducing a person to childhood and applying negative physical control or emotional manipulations, this is an approach labeled as Attachment Therapy (without the word based).

Attachment - Based Therapy is done in a caring, secure and supportive environment where you are able to trust and explore your concerns either with or without current individuals who pose as the subject of attachment  concerns. 

Attachment-Based therapy includes addressing the following attachment styles:

  • Secure

  • Avoidant

  • Ambivalent

  • Disorganized

A feeling that relationships are difficult and uncomfortable to create and maintain for you may indicate at some level  that attachment therapy may be of help to you.

Strength Based Therapy

Strength Based Therapy magnifies a person's potential while also externalizing a person's problems, meaning there may be a problem but you are not the problem, the problem is something that you experience due to the several different factors involved. Strength Based Therapy builds on a person's resiliency in the face of adversity and encourages you to rely upon your inner strengths that you already possess and possibly build on ones that can assist you. This therapy puts you in the lead, you become the expert on what needs to happen for you to persevere.

Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR)

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy technique designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories. Developed by Francine Shapiro in 1987, EMDR has been extensively researched and proven effective for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other trauma-related conditions.

During EMDR therapy, clients focus on traumatic memories while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation, typically through guided eye movements. This process helps reprocess and integrate these memories, reducing their emotional impact and allowing for healthier cognitive and emotional responses.

EMDR therapy follows an eight-phase approach:

  1. History-taking and planning

  2. Client preparation

  3. Assessment

  4. Desensitization and memory processing

  5. Installation

  6. Body scan

  7. Closure

  8. Reevaluation

Unlike traditional talk therapies, EMDR does not require detailed descriptions of the trauma or extensive homework, making it a unique and efficient treatment option. EMDR can help you or your loved ones heal from trauma and regain control over your life.

Solution Focused Brief Therapy

Solutions Focused Brief Therapy is future facing, goal orientated, and focused on finding solutions rather than figuring out how the problems happened. Observing your current automatic solution patterns for effectiveness, keeping the parts that are working for you, and  defining an alternate desired outcome - you can come up with a problem solving structure or plan that will assist you with creating positive solutions for you to use. The concept is that you already have the expertise, strengths and resources that are needed to solve your own issues. The word Brief here signifies that solutions are needed asap thereby reducing time in therapy and time spent struggling with the problem at hand. It is understood that change is inevitable and you are ready to change to employ better solutions for your circumstances that are causing you distress.

Reality Based Therapy

Reality Based Therapy is based in the here and now assisting you with acceptance of and taking responsibility for the choices you make. The view for Reality Therapy is that choice is involved in the need to have our basic needs of belonging, independence, survival, success and recreation met and that irresponsible choices create emotional distress and ineffective behaviors in the quest to get these needs fulfilled. Reality Therapy works to raise your awareness about your ability to control your choices allowing you to choose more effectively and increase your accountability for these choices. Continually using ineffective behaviors and choices to get unmet needs fulfilled over time creates and continues to exacerbate your emotional distress causing a vicious circle of which you may view as overwhelming and end up feeling powerless to change.

Restoring the awareness of the different choices gives back power to control your behaviors resulting in a more positive outcome, therefore raising acceptance and accountability for your actions. 

Psychodynamic Therapy

Psychodynamic Therapy approach seeks to repair and strengthen a person's ego and sense of self by assisting with identifying and raising awareness about the patterns of thoughts, emotions and beliefs within a person's sub-consciousness and how they relate to past experiences.

Negative behaviors and conflicting personality traits are thought to be rooted deep within a person's unconscious self. By becoming aware of these connections between the continued lasting effects of childhood experiences and the patterns within their subconscious, an understanding can be gained that will help them to rearrange the pieces of themselves that make up who they are into a more positive and useful view of self.