Therapy Styles

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Basic Therapy Types

Crisis counseling is short term support and planning to help you manage a specific problem. It focuses on damage control.

Behavioral Therapy is an approach that focuses on the behavior itself. Your therapist and you choose the desired behaviors that you want to have. Then you identify the steps necessary for you to change to those behaviors. You may also examine the unwanted behaviors and determine ways to eliminate those behaviors and replace them with the new, desired behaviors. Behavioral therapy focuses on eliminating symptoms and solving uncomplicated problems.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is an approach that helps you look squarely at the thoughts which cause your feelings and/or the feelings which cause your thoughts. Once you know these, changing your thoughts may then help you change your feelings. If you are a person who looks makes decisions based on logic, cognitive behavioral therapy can be very helpful to you. Cognitive behavioral therapy seeks to reduce negative feelings and help restructure the way you think. It is very useful for phobias, anxiety problems and depression.

Analytic Therapy focuses on feelings. In talking to your therapist about your feelings, you'll begin to recognize patterns and themes in what you say. Your therapist will support your ideas and validate your feelings while you look further at how having these feelings impacts your life or have caused you to handle problems in unsuccessful ways. Then you can plan new ways to handle things.

Over the long run, you'll develop new and permanent skills to prevent bad things from continuing to happen to you. You'll gain control of your feelings so they don't overwhelm you. During the process though, you may think that nothing is happening. This is not like chatting with a friend. You won't be given advice but you will be given the freedom to come to new conclusions of your own.

Analytic therapy provides long term, permanent change to reduce symptoms, diminish painful moods, and help you develop whole new ways of looking at life and the people in it. Analytic therapy seeks to help you build a strong inner self with the ability to solve your own problems .

Conjoint therapy (both premarital and after marriage) provides both you and your partner with objective information about the similarities and differences that you have which either contribute or detract from the relationship. With this information in hand, most couples can use it as a non-emotional framework for understanding each other. This understanding forms the foundation for the relationship to stabilize and grow as you learn ways to mediate your differences and negotiate your needs. In addition, the customs or behaviors of your parents are looked at objectively to assist in helping you to form your own unique marriage free of unproductive influences. Basic rules for relationships are also explained.

Family therapy brings all of your family together to identify the strengths of the family and helps structure the communication so that it keeps the family functioning well. Family therapy is useful, for example, when children reach adolescence and hormonal changes in both the parents and teens causes tempers to flare and communication to break down.

Group therapy is helpful if you have a specific problem that you may share with a number of similar peole or need social support or need to work on your interpersonal skills. For example, there are parenting groups, cancer support groups and abused spouse groups. Group members will listen to your opinions or concerns, offer support and insight.

Some groups have structured activities and discussion topics. In others, members talk about whatever concerns them. Maybe they have an incident they want feedback on. As with any therapy, whatever is said in a session is to be kept confidential. Sometimes group therapy is less expensive than individual therapy.