Therapy Glossary

ACT

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Dealing with inner emotions can be tough, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps to navigate one’s avoided emotions. This therapy helps the patient acknowledge and accept how they feel and commit to change in their behavior response.

CBT

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) identifies negative thoughts to improve difficult feelings or uncomfortable situations. These negative thoughts are replaced by learning how to change thinking patterns into more realistic thoughts and behaviors.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) helps with managing upsetting thought patterns and behaviors. It incorporates practices such as mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness techniques.

Differentiation Therapy

Differentiation Therapy helps define how one relates to themselves and/or to others. It provides clarity to establish boundaries and awareness in feeling and thinking while remaining truthful to one’s values.

Emotionally Focused Therapy

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) emphasizes the importance of tuning into emotions, especially in a relationship. It focuses on creating a healthier bond and provides emotional awareness with oneself and others.

Exposure and Response Prevention

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) supports a patient to identify their obsessive thoughts and fears. This therapy exposes the patient to their unpleasant stimuli, little by little. The goal of this therapy is to prevent compulsive responses and/or obsessions so that the patient can feel less distressed.

Group Therapy

Group Therapy consist of meeting with a group of people. The group dynamic offers a person to receive support and encouragement from others and promotes feeling connected with similar experiences.

Interpersonal Psychotherapy

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) focuses on one’s perception of themselves and their relationship with others. The goal is to identify issues that they have with other people and help them recognize and manage relationship problems.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) builds upon cognitive therapy by incorporating mindfulness techniques. This practice calls for observing one’s experience in the present moment, learning breathing exercises and meditation.

Motivational Interviewing

Motivational Interviewing is used in counseling to help a patient gain motivation for change in their life. With sincere empathy, this technique provides a patient help to become empowered and establish personal goals.

Psychoanalytic Therapy

Psychoanalytic Therapy aims to reach a deeper level of repressed unconscious thoughts and emotions from experiences. These experiences are examined with a therapist to help understand how previous memories may be affecting the present.

Psychodynamic Therapy

Psychodynamic Therapy is similar to psychoanalytic therapy because it does utilize talk therapy to express current and past emotions/experiences. However, this therapy focuses on one’s perspective with the external world, outside of therapy, versus just the patient-therapist relationship.

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) provides a quicker way to finding a solution for one’s difficulty. The approach is to find tangible goals in the present time to achieve small milestones in feeling better.