Therapists use various methods to help their patients heal and grow. These approaches include existential counseling, which promotes freedom, responsibility, and a search for meaning. Three types of humanistic therapy are especially significant: client-centered therapy, gestalt therapy, and rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT).
Family Therapy
Family therapy, or family counseling, is group psychotherapy that focuses on improving familial relationships and interactions. A family can include parents and their children, partners, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends, and kinship caregivers.
Family therapists may use different methods, such as cognitive-behavioral techniques that aim to change how family members think and behave to reduce problems or psychodynamic ideas that look into the impulses of the unconscious minds of individual family members to understand their root causes. Some therapists combine both.
A study by mental health services professionals found that using an integrated family approach, which incorporates treatments by adult and child mental health services, improves outcomes. This is because it allows family members to understand their role in treating a parent’s mental disorder and helps them resolve conflicts within their family.
Group Therapy
Group therapy involves a group of people, often those struggling with the same issue, meeting together regularly under the guidance of a trained therapist. Group counselling therapy can treat various issues, such as addiction recovery, anger management, family problems, etc. Participants in the group can share their experiences and learn new coping skills by hearing how others manage similar situations. They can also gain hope by seeing other members making progress. Groups can be open or closed and range in size from six to twelve participants. Psychoeducational groups focus on educating members on a specific topic, such as overcoming an addiction or coping with anxiety. Process groups are more focused on experience and sharing, and psychodrama is based on acting out significant parts of a member’s life in front of the group. Involvement in a group therapy session may require more trust than a typical appointment. However, a therapist must break confidentiality agreements if a participant threatens themselves or others and report any behavior that violates the law.
Phototherapy
A photo is a powerful tool to communicate and explore feelings, emotions, and thoughts that may be difficult or impossible to describe with words. This is especially true in therapy sessions, where photographs can help enhance communication and provide insight into what may be hard to discuss. Light therapy combines bright light exposure with various treatments to treat seasonal affective disorder (SAD). It’s recommended by physicians, nurse practitioners, and mental health counselors for patients suffering from depression that occurs in the wintertime due to decreased sunlight. For more information on how light therapy can help you, visit the American Psychiatric Association’s website.
Addiction Therapy
Addiction therapy often involves family counseling to help people learn about the underlying causes of addiction and how to support their loved ones in recovery. Therapists also work with patients to identify risks for relapse and develop strategies for maintaining abstinence.
Psychotherapy, or talk therapy, is a common component of treatment for addiction and other mental health conditions. It can include a range of techniques to help individuals modify their thoughts or behaviors, such as cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy. These therapies can address the underlying causes of addiction, including genetics, past experiences, and environmental factors. Behavioral therapies aim to change harmful behaviors, while cognitive and experiential approaches help people understand their emotions. EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) is a type of psychotherapy that uses lateral eye movements, hand tapping, or audio stimulus to help individuals recall traumatic memories. This allows them to build new associations and reduces the intensity of negative emotional responses.
