Specialties & Treatment
Treatment
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT - Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an evidenced-based therapy grounded in the idea that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are all influenced by each other. Using CBT, clients will learn to identify negative thoughts and how to challenge them, set goals and learn strategies to help achieve them, and learn how to engage in behaviors that can help improve one’s mood. CBT is shown to be an effective treatment for depression, anxiety (i.e. social anxiety, generalized anxiety), panic disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.​
You can read more about CBT on the American Psychological Association website here: What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
DBT - Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) focuses on teaching clients skills to handle overwhelming emotions and strengthen their ability to manage distressing situations without losing control or acting destructively. DBT is primarily used to treat clients with borderline personality disorder, but is also effective in treating depression, PTSD, and other mental disorders. With DBT clients will learn four (4) types of skills, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, mindfulness, and interpersonal effectiveness.
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Emotion regulation - clients will learn strategies to help them identify, understand, and accept emotions, as well as techniques for coping with emotional distress.
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Distress tolerance - these skills will help clients better tolerate difficult situations and avoid self-harm, self-destructive, or other impulsive behaviors.
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Mindfulness - this skill set emphasizes the importance of being in the present moment and can help clients learn to accept thoughts and feelings without judgement.
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Interpersonal effectiveness - clients will learn techniques for building healthy relationships, resolving conflict, and asserting themselves effectively.
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You can learn more about DBT on the Psychology Today website here: Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR - Eye movement desensitization reprocessing (EMDR) is a technique used to help reduce the impact of emotional memories of traumatic events using alternating stimulation of the left and right sides of the body (aka bilateral stimulation or BLS). EMDR can help reduce anxiety, depression, and avoidance, improve coping skills and emotional regulation, and promotes self-empowerment and healing. This is all done in eight phases:
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Phase 1: Client history and treatment planning - The therapist explores the clients life history and they create a treatment plan together.
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Phase 2: Preparation - The therapist will spend time building rapport and trust with the client, learning and practicing self-soothing, emotion regulation, and mindfulness skills (called resourcing).
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Phase 3: Assessment - The client selects a traumatic experience (called the target) to work on, evokes an image that represents the worst part of it, describes emotions and body sensations, and identifies a negative cognition (a negative belief about the self or the world. i.e. I don’t deserve to be loved). Then the client rates all of this using a Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS).
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Phase 4: Desensitization - While the client holds the image of the traumatic event in their mind the therapist uses alternating bilateral stimulation (BLS). The alternating BLS can last from 30 seconds to several minutes, depending on what the client needs. At the end of each BLS set the therapist might ask if anything new comes up and/or do another SUDS. The steps in this phase are repeated until the SUDS is down to 0 or 1.
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Phase 5: Installation of Positive Cognition - The client comes up with a new positive belief, it can be unrelated to the original negative one. This is then installed with short sets of BLS (usually less than 30 seconds).
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Phase 6: Body scan - the client is asked to hold the original image (from phase 3) in mind and scan their body from head to toe. They then identify any discomfort or sensations. Short sets of alternating BLS are applied until the discomfort/sensations subside.
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Phase 7: Closure - Clients may continue processing the traumatic material for days or even weeks after the session. Clients may experience some insights, vivid dreams, strong feelings, intrusive thoughts, or recollections of past experiences. Clients should write these down and bring them to session. If the client becomes overwhelmed they should contact their therapist immediately.
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Phase 8: Re-evaluation - At the beginning of the next session, the client assesses and reviews the week, talking about any new sensations or experiences. The disturbance of the previous session’s target experience is assessed to help decide on the course of action.
You can read about the eight phases on the American Psychological Association’s website here: Exploring the 8 Phases of EMDR