Like love, time is difficult to describe. We all use it, navigate through it, and manage it, but pinning it down feels close to impossible. Most contemporary psychotherapy sessions are about 50-minutes long. The reasons for this have been covered in plenty of therapy-related blog posts and articles, but I’m particularly interested in how having a time limit influences the therapeutic experience.
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Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is a therapeutic approach designed to assist individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other trauma-related symptoms. The core principle of CPT revolves around identifying and challenging unhelpful thoughts and beliefs that have developed due to experiencing a traumatic event.
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Mindfulness is a form of meditation that brings your attention to the present moment without judgment or analysis, heightening awareness of your sensations and emotions. When your mind is consumed with stress, anxiety, depression and more, mindfulness can redirect your focus and encourage you to actively engage with your surroundings and experiences.
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Trauma-informed care is a philosophy of providing care. Whether individual or collective, trauma overwhelms the brain and can lead to heightened stress and anxiety. Adopting a trauma-informed model of care prioritizes clients' and providers' emotional and physical safety, emphasizing the recognition of trauma's prevalence and impact and the development of trauma-sensitive services.
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Psychodynamic therapy is a form of insight-oriented talk therapy that takes a comprehensive approach by delving into the underlying reasons and mechanisms behind an individual's unconscious beliefs, thoughts, and emotions, which ultimately shape their conscious behaviors. Placing great emphasis on non-conscious functioning, psychodynamic therapy encourages patients to explore their unconscious mind as an integral part of their current experiences.
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Relational therapy centers around the significance of relationships in our lives. While people often associate relationships solely with family and romantic partnerships, they extend beyond that scope to include connections with colleagues, neighbors, and community members. Developing the skills to navigate these relationships and establish new ones is a fundamental human need.
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Existential therapy centers around the inherent anxieties and uncertainties that accompany life and existence, including death, the fear of the unknown, and the quest for meaning. It asserts that each individual possesses the capacity and personal responsibility to make decisions and shape their path to success.
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In the early 1940s, Carl Rogers introduced person-centered therapy. Instead of focusing on interpreting behaviors or unconscious drives, Rogers's method prioritizes reflective listening, empathy, and acceptance within therapy sessions. This approach challenged the prevailing behavioral and psychoanalytic theories of the time.
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As a respectful, collaborative, and non-blaming approach, narrative therapy aims to empower individuals, recognizing them as the experts in their lives. It distinguishes problems from people and acknowledges the abundance of skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments, and abilities individuals possess to mitigate the influence of problems.
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EFT is a humanistic approach to individual and couples therapy. This approach is closely tied to attachment theory, a developmental theory of personality and relationships, and views humans as innately relational, social, and wired to bond with others. EFT prioritizes emotions and emotional regulation as fundamental factors in our experiences and interactions.
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Internal Family Systems is a therapeutic approach that views each individual as a system composed of protective and wounded inner parts, all guided by a core Self. It recognizes the natural multiplicity of the mind and values this diversity. Similar to members of a family, inner parts often become entrenched in extreme roles within us, losing access to their valuable qualities. On the other hand, the Self is present in every individual, undamaged and possessing the inherent ability to promote healing.
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Solution Focused Therapy is an evidence-based therapeutic approach that emphasizes short-term interventions with clear objectives. It integrates principles and practices from positive psychology, guiding clients to generate solutions rather than fixating on their issues. Essentially, this therapy fosters hope, elicits positive emotions, and directs attention toward future possibilities.
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HAES is a public health approach that aims to de-emphasize weight loss as a primary health objective and promote a reduction in the discrimination faced by individuals who are overweight or obese. HAES-informed therapy focuses on the individual’s life experience, context (including size discrimination and fatphobia where applicable), and unique skills and abilities.
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Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a type of psychotherapy that helps people to regulate their emotions, improve their relationships, and cope with difficult situations. Through a combination of 1-on-1 and group therapy, DBT teaches people skills to help then learn and practice mindfulness, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and emotion regulation.
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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is based on the idea that our thoughts and feelings are not always accurate or helpful and that trying to control them can make them worse. Instead, ACT teaches people to observe their thoughts and feelings without judgment and focus on taking actions consistent with their values.
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Psychotherapy is difficult to describe. There is an ever-growing body of psychotherapeutic literature and theory, with each modality (type of therapy) describing its particular version of what therapy is and how it works. These modalities are rich and varied and, for most clients, somewhat devoid of tangible meaning.
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Family systems therapy recognizes that families are emotional units, interconnected systems of interdependent individuals. It emphasizes that family members influence one another, and their psychological well-being cannot be fully understood in isolation from the entire family system. Family members respond to each other in predictable ways based on their roles and unspoken relationship agreements.
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As a supervisor of mental health interns, I have the unique privilege of guiding and nurturing the growth of young professionals in the field. This experience is one of great fulfillment, as I am able to witness the unfolding of their potential as mental health practitioners. In the spirit of Carl Jung, I see the supervision of interns as a process of individuation…
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Meaning is not an object like a pair of shoes. You can’t point to it and say, there it is, that is meaning. But, like a pair of shoes, each person puts on and takes off the meanings that fit them best. Meaning, quite naturally, intersects with values, with purpose, with orientation in the world. If a thing isn’t meaningful to me, then I don’t see much value in it, I don’t find any purpose in engaging with it, and it doesn’t contribute to my orientation. It blends in with so many other things, and I find myself indifferent.
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