Modalities

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a structured, goal-oriented form of talk therapy that focuses heavily on the cognitive (thought) processes that contribute to negative views about oneself, others, and their larger world. CBT purports that there is an interactive dynamic between our thoughts, emotions, and behaviour, and that by identifying, challenging, and reframing the ways that we think, we are better able to regulate our emotions and behave in a manner that empowers us to face our fears, achieve our goals, and reduce the degree to which we suffer. 

CBT is used to treat a wide range of disorders, including depression, anxiety, OCD, trauma and PTSD, eating disorders, as well as issues related to many situational and life struggles. 

Designed to address trauma and treat PTSD, Cognitive Processing Theory (CPT) is used to help us understand the ways in which experiences of trauma effect us. CPT involves examining how trauma shapes the ways that we think about ourselves and our world, and in doing so, understand the broader implications that these thoughts have on our overall functioning. The goal of CPT is to understand and adjust the way that we think about traumatic experiences and their impact, and reduce behaviors associated with PTSD, such as avoidance, numbing, shame, and guilt. 

Adapted from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, DBT emphasizes the use of skills to improve our ability to tolerate stress, better regulate our emotions, and improve functioning in relationships. A core strategy of DBT is the use of mindfulness to reduce suffering and self-triggering/destructive behaviors and build a life that is worth living, with the goal of striking a balance between acceptance and change. DBT uses the biopsychosocial model to help us understand how behavioural patterns develop over time, and provides practical strategies used to navigate social dynamics, tolerate negative emotions, and cope with life stressors. 

DBT was initially developed as a highly intensive, structured inpatient treatment program for people diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Now, DBT is used to treat a variety of emotional and behavioural complaints in outpatient and individual therapy settings. DBT-informed therapy may involve structured skills training and the use of materials such as handouts, worksheets, and diary cards, or skills may be used to supplement other therapeutic approaches.

Emotion-Focused Therapy, or EFT, is a humanistic approach to therapy that is rooted in attachment theory and our experience of emotions. EFT explores our individual relationships with emotions, including how we identify, understand, process, and express our emotional experience. The EFT process includes corrective emotional experiences within the therapeutic setting, as well as strategies to help increase awareness, tolerance, regulation, and acceptance of all our emotions. 

Emotion-Focused Therapy is frequently used in parent coaching, emphasizing the importance of the impact that our emotional experience has on neurodevelopment and attachment.

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy is an in-depth form of talk therapy that seeks to uncover and process the root causes of our current psychological distress and dysfunction. This therapy assumes that unconscious thoughts, desires, and memories significantly impact psychological functioning, and give rise to patterns that contribute to emotional suffering and interpersonal dysfunction. Psychodynamic Psychotherapy involves self-reflection and self-examination to help us better understand the connection between past experiences and current functioning, with the goal of resolving past conflicts believed to maintain problematic patterns. 

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a therapeutic intervention used to treat trauma by making distressing memories more tolerable and mitigating the impact that they have on our current functioning. Using guided eye movements and/or other forms of bilateral stimulation (taps, sounds), traumatic memories are revisited in a highly structured and supportive manner, using the therapeutic environment as a safe place to practice exposure to, and reframing of, events from the past that are believed to be causing struggles in the present.

Designed originally to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the application of EMDR is currently used to address a range of mental health struggles, and treats issues related to such trauma as abuse, assault, traumatic loss, and life-threatening events, and also cases of emotional and developmental trauma, including attachment injuries, betrayal, bullying, and grief. 

Mindfulness is both a practice, and a way of being, with the goal of being fully present in the current moment. It is intended to help increase awareness of both our internal and external experiences and understand the importance of what it means to participate purposefully and effectively in our own lives. With increased awareness we are better able to identify unhelpful and harmful patterns, and develop new, more adaptive ways of coping.

Mindfulness is a core component of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and is also incorporated across a range of other therapeutic modalities. A primary goal of Mindfulness practice is to develop increased tolerance for distressing thoughts and emotions, so that their impact is less likely to disrupt areas of interpersonal, cognitive, and emotional functioning.