Life coaching is an increasingly popular profession that has no specific licensing or academic requirements. Though psychologists also often consider themselves life coaches, these therapists don't focus on treating mental illness. Instead, they help individuals realize their goals in work and in life. An executive coach, for example, may be enlisted to help a chief executive become a better manager, while a "love" coach may map out a plan to help a client find romantic fulfillment.
Culturally sensitive therapists provide therapy that is culturally sensitive. They understand that people from different backgrounds have different values, practices, and beliefs, and are sensitive to those differences when working with individuals and families in therapy.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is an approach to therapy that helps clients identify their emotions, learn to explore and experience them, to understand them and then to manage them. Emotionally Focused Therapy embraces the idea that emotions can be changed, first by arriving at or 'living' the maladaptive emotion (e.g. loss, fear or shame) in session, and then learning to transform it. Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples seeks to break the negative emotion cycles within relationships, emphasizing the importance of the attachment bond between couples, and how nurturing of the attachment bonds and an empathetic understanding of each others emotions can break the cycles.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an information processing therapy that helps clients cope with trauma, addictions, and phobias. During this treatment, the patient focuses on a specific thought, image, emotion, or sensation while simultaneously watching the therapist's finger or baton move in front of his or her eyes. The client is told to recognize what comes up for him/her when thinking of an image; then the client is told to let it go while doing bilateral stimulation. It's like being on a train; an emotion or a thought may come up and the client lets it pass as though they were looking out the window of the moving train.
The humanistic method takes a positive view of human nature and emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual. Therapists in this tradition, who are interested in exploring the nature of creativity, love, and self-actualization, help clients realize their potential through change and self-directed growth. Humanistic therapy is also an umbrella term for gestalt, client-centered therapy, and existential therapy.
The term "Energy Psychology" is a catch-all name for a number of psychological approaches that all support the idea that the human body has an energy field that may be changed, charged, or adjusted to aid in healing. This particular branch of psychology incorporates ideas from various other schools of thinking, fusing more conventional and traditional ideas of health and wellbeing, such as those found in Chinese medicine and some religious traditions.
Gestalt therapy seeks to integrate the client's behaviors, feelings, and thinking, so that their intentions and actions may be aligned for optimal mental health. The therapist will help the client become more self aware, to live more in the present, and to assume more responsibility for taking care of themself. Techniques of gestalt therapy include confrontation, dream analysis, and role playing.
Hypnotherapy focuses on hypnosis, the Greek term for sleep. The practice uses exercises that relax people, bringing them to an altered state of consciousness. This process focuses on mastering self-awareness. Through trance-like analysis, hypnosis decreases blood pressure and heart rate, putting one's physical body at ease. Working with memories, hypnotherapy helps a person to reframe, relax, absorb, dissociate, respond, and reflect. The process reconstructs healthier associations with a person's past events. Dealing with a wide range of conditions, such as anxiety and depression, people become responsive to new solutions that can lead to personal development through hypnotherapy.
Any form of breathing exercise or method is referred to as breathwork. They are often practiced by people to enhance their mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. You purposefully alter your breathing rhythm when practicing breathwork. Breathwork treatment comes in a variety of forms, but they all require intentional organized breathing.
Using guided imagery can help you reduce your stress. It's a method of relaxation when you picture pleasant places like a lovely beach or a tranquil meadow. This method is sometimes referred to as guided meditation or visualization. I'm an expert with over 18 years of practice and can provide you with the proper tools to engage in guided imagery therapy, so don't hesitate to call me today and schedule a consultation.
For clients with chronic pain, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, and other health issues such as anxiety and depression, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, or MBCT, is a two-part therapy that aims to reduce stress, manage pain, and embrace the freedom to respond to situations by choice. MCBT blends two disciplines--cognitive therapy and mindfulness. Mindfulness helps by reflecting on moments and thoughts without passing judgment. MBCT clients pay close attention to their feelings to reach an objective mindset, thus viewing and combating life's unpleasant occurrences.
Neuro-Linguistic therapy assumes there is a connection between the mind's processes ("neuro"), language ("linguistic") and behavioral patterns learned through experience ("programming") and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals. A neuro linguistic therapist analyzes the detail of the client's words and phrases used to describe their presenting issues in order to understand the underlying cause. Therapists will then help remodel the client's thoughts and associations in order to reframe or re-progam their preconceptions for better outcomes.
Multicultural awareness is an understanding and sensitivity of the values, experiences, and lifestyles of minority groups. Differences in race, culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, are all tackled by Multicultural counseling. In the counseling setting, the counselor recognizes that the client is different from the counselor and treats the client without forcing the client to be like him or her.
Person-centered therapy uses a non-authoritative approach that allows clients to take more of a lead in discussions so that, in the process, they will discover their own solutions. The therapist acts as a compassionate facilitator, listening without judgment and acknowledging the client's experience without moving the conversation in another direction. The therapist is there to encourage and support the client and to guide the therapeutic process without interrupting or interfering with the client's process of self-discovery.
Unlike traditional psychology that focuses more on the causes and symptoms of mental illnesses and emotional disturbances, positive psychology emphasizes traits, thinking patterns, behaviors, and experiences that are forward-thinking and can help improve the quality of a person's day-to-day life. These may include optimism, spirituality, hopefulness, happiness, creativity, perseverance, justice, and the practice of free will. It is an exploration of one's strengths, rather than one's weaknesses. The goal of positive psychology is not to replace those traditional forms of therapy that center on negative experiences, but instead to expand and give more balance to the therapeutic process.
Solution-focused therapy, sometimes called "brief therapy," focuses on what clients would like to achieve through therapy rather than on their troubles or mental health issues. The therapist will help the client envision a desirable future, and then map out the small and large changes necessary for the client to undergo to realize their vision. The therapist will seize on any successes the client experiences, to encourage them to build on their strengths rather than dwell on their problems or limitations.
Somatic (from the Greek word 'somat', meaning body) psychotherapy bridges the mind-body dichotomy recognizing that emotion, behavior, sensation, impulse, energy, action, gesture, meaning and language all originate in physical experiences. Thinking is not an abstract function but motivates, or is motivated by, physical expression and action. A somatic approach to trauma treatment can be effective by examining how past traumatic experiences cause physical symptoms (e.g. bodily anesthesia or motor inhibitions) which in turn affect emotion regulation, cognition and daily functioning.
Contact me with any questions about my licensed counseling services.