Narrative Therapy helps to separate the problem from your person. "You are not your problem", even if it has had a huge impact on your thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Narrative therapy is interested in understanding how you see yourself and your identity, but even more interested in exceptions to the problems you are so familiar with. It includes noting times when the problem wasn’t overwhelming, uncovering your competencies, values and abilities, envisioning future possibilities. The aim is for you to know yourself through your preferred identity. A way of viewing yourself that is authentic and often more kind to yourself. Through stories that may have been overlooked or forgotten about. Read up for more information on narrative therapy.

Solution Focused Brief Therapy helps to increase hopefulness and facilitate change by engaging in solution focused talk. Conversations are future-oriented, goal-directed, and focuses on solutions, rather than on the problems that brought clients to seek therapy in the first place. There is a basic belief that problems are best solved by focusing on what is already working, and how a client would like their life to be, rather than focusing on the past and the origin of problems. While this may sound like a ‘sticking-plaster’ approach, SFBT holds merit and aspects of it are used in most sessions. For more on solution focused brief therapy, read this.

CBT is based on the concept that your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and actions are interconnected, and that thoughts, assumptions and beliefs can trap you in a predictable unhelpful cycle. For example, if you interpret a situation negatively, you might experience negative emotions as a result. And those bad feelings might lead you to act in certain ways. CBT is problem-oriented. It focuses on working through specific current problems and finding solutions for them. CBT doesn’t necessarily uncover earlier experiences at depth, but is much more concerned with dealing with problems in the here-and-now. A big part of CBT is identifying and changing current distressing thoughts and behavioral patterns. Much has been written about CBT, but a helpful summary can be found here.

DBT grew out of CBT in the 1980’s to treat people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Today it is used for many additional mental health conditions including anxiety, eating disorders, self-harming behaviours, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and more. DBT is a skills-based therapy and includes mindfulness mastery, developing effective distress tolerance skills, understanding how to regulate emotions and managing interpersonal relationships in a way that doesn’t further isolate the person. If you are curious about understanding DBT better, Very Well Mind summarizes it nicely.

Many of us will experience traumatic events at some point in our lives. Some go on to develop PTSD, others may experience some symptoms that reduces over time, others are barely affected. TF-CBT is a talking therapy for those who have experienced trauma and who are suffering from PTSD, but aspects of this modality can be used for many other problems including for anxiety, obsessive behaviours and depression. Components of therapy often include stabilisation (relaxation, grounding, mindfulness), revisiting memories, addressing avoidance behaviours, changing beliefs you may have about yourself and the world, and reclaiming your life from the impact of the trauma – or building a new life that you can find meaningful. Here is some additional information.

Developed as a therapeutic model for people who didn’t experience progress after engaging in other therapies and is often used to treat Borderline Personality Disorder, chronic depression and anxiety. In essence, schema therapy focuses on thinking patterns (maladaptive) that formed during childhood, unmet needs and coping styles. Schema therapy is often used in longer term therapy, but not exclusively so. Schemas are the basic structures we use to make sense of our experiences – our internal model of what to expect in the outside world, the 'lens' throuh which we understand the world around us. Schemas guide our understanding of ourselves and the situation we are in, helping us to work out how to respond. Negative schemas formed during childhood or adolescence can lead to repetitive negative life patterns in the adults. These negative expectations can become self-fulfilling. This article is succinct but explains more.