Psychotherapy is an approach for treating mental health issues with talk therapy. It is also known as talk therapy, counseling, psychosocial therapy or, simply, therapy. A psychotherapist uses talk therapy to treat people for cognitive and emotional problems challenges. Psychologists, psychotherapists, counselors and social workers can work with individuals, couples, families or groups. Psychotherapy and counseling are often used interchangeably are nuances. Psychotherapy, often a longer-term process, explores deeper issues and past experiences, while counseling is generally shorter and focuses on addressing specific current life challenges and problems. Both utilize talk therapy to address mental and emotional well-being. The main goal of psychotherapy is to help individuals improve their mental health and overall psychological well-being, with a view to achieving better overall function in their daily lives. Psychotherapy involves assisting clients in understanding and resolving their mental health challenges through guided conversation and diverse therapeutic techniques. By clients intentionally working collaboratively with their therapist in psychotherapy, positive changes, enhanced self-awareness, holistic healing, personal and professional development, growth andtransformation may be achieved.
Therapeutic Approaches Offered at L.E.A.P.S. Inc.
Acceptance and Commitment (ACT)
is a therapeutic style that helps individuals live more fulfilling lives by embracing their thoughts and feelings rather than trying to control them. It emphasizes acceptance, mindfulness, commitment and engenders self and values discovery.
Adlerian Therapy
focuses on discovering the client’s unique way of approaching life, their sense of belonging, while striving for purpose-driven success and meaning by emphasizing interpersonal skill development, elevating personal self-concept and creating a deeper sense of community.
Attachment-based Therapy
is a form of therapy rooted in attachment theory, which explores how early childhood lived experiences with caregivers. Primary goals are to help individuals discover, understand and navigate attachment wounds, remove childhood insecurities and build healthy relationships that incorporate greater self-awareness.
Christian Counseling
is a type of therapeutic approach that integrates traditional talk therapy methodologies with Christian belief practices by incorporating biblical and theological concepts. It focuses on teaching clients how best to navigate life daily challenges using biblical tenets, principles and values.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
is a type of psychotherapy that helps individuals manage their emotions and behaviors by identifying and changing negative or irrational thought patterns. It is based on the principle that human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are interconnected, and by changing how we think will also change how we feel and act.
Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT)
is an approach that focuses on helping individuals manage self-criticism and shame by cultivating a greater sense of self- compassion and kindness towards themselves and others. The development and discovery of innate compassion is the focal point for creating and promoting improved emotional well-being.
Culturally Sensitive Therapy
focuses on the incorporation of cultural competency through the development of heightened cultural competency and awareness. It involves tailoring therapy to individual cultural contexts including race, ethnicity, sexual and religious orientation, familial considerations and other cultural idiosyncrasies.
Dialectical (DBT)
is a type of therapy that helps people manage intense emotions, improve relationships, and reduce harmful and destructive behaviors. It emphasizes self- acceptance, self-awareness and transformation. Using psychoeducation and new skills development to better manage diverse mental health challenges and disorders.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
is a psychotherapy technique used to treat trauma and related conditions like PTSD, anxiety, and depression. It involves recalling disturbing/traumatic memories while engaging in bilateral stimulation, typically side-to-side eye movements, to process and reduce past traumatic experiences.
Eclectic Therapy
is a flexible approach that combines different therapeutic techniques and modalities to create a personalized treatment plan for each individual. It is highly flexible, often integrated and strategic and blends various methods deemed most effective for the client's specific needs and circumstances.
Emotionally Focused Therapy
is a short-term, evidence-based approach to psychotherapy that helps individuals and couples understand and improve their emotional connections and engagements with themselves and their families. It is grounded in attachment theory and emphasizes the importance of secure emotional bonds for psychological well-being.
Existential therapy
is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on the individual's experience of life's fundamental questions, such as freedom, meaning, and mortality. It helps individuals grapple with existential anxieties and challenges to create a more authentic and meaningful life.
Marital and family therapy (MFT)
is a therapeutic approach that focuses on improving marital and familial relationships by addressing mental, emotional, and relational issues. MFT embraces the Family Systems Therapy which views interfamilial relationships systematically and aims to understand how these systems impact individual well-being.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
views the human mind as a composition of multiple parts, each with its own roles and experiences. The primary goal of IFS is to help individuals understand and integrate the parts by fostering healing and internal harmony through the cultivation of self-compassion and internal leadership.
Gestalt Therapy
is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on the individuals’ experiences in the present moment by promoting a greater sense of self-awareness and integration of thoughts, feelings, and actions into a coherent whole. It emphasizes personal responsibility by clinically through heightened awareness of suppressed thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
Humanistic Therapy
is an approach to therapy that encapsulates and emphasizes the client’s inherent worth and potential for personal and professional growth. It focuses on the whole person, rather than just symptoms, and aims to help individuals to fulfill their full potential by becoming more self-aware, self-accepting, and self-actualized.
Integrative Therapy
is a flexible approach to mental health treatment that combines techniques and theories from different therapeutic modalities. It focuses on understanding the individual's holistic mental, physical, and emotional health, rather than just one aspect and allows therapists to tailor interventions to the specific needs and goals of each client.
Interpersonal Therapy (IPT)
is a short-term therapeutic approach that focuses on addressing interpersonal relationship problems, specifically in terms of how they impact mood including depression. It is based on the conceptual view that mental health conditions like depression can be influenced and maintained by relationship difficulties.
Intervention Therapy
is a therapeutic modality that prioritizes actions, strategies and/or techniques geared to help unique client needs by addressing psychological, emotional, behavioral, or relational issues. This approach is designed to promote positive change, enhance psychological well-being and improve overall mental health.
Mindfulness-Based (MBCT)
is an approach that combines (CBT) with mindfulness meditation practices. It is effective in helping individuals who have experienced complex trauma and/or depressive symptoms in preventing re-traumatization. MBCT aims to cultivate safe and secure environments conducive to trauma-informed recovery.
Motivational Interviewing
is a counseling approach that helps individuals find the motivation to make positive behavioral changes through internal motivation and resolving ambivalence. It embraces client-centered, empathetic and practical methodologies geared to acknowledge life challenges, while focusing clients’ strengths to achieve transformation.
Multicultural Therapy
is an approach that incorporates cultural competency through multicultural training and awareness. It requires a deep understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity including race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and how cultural factors inform psychological well-being.
Narrative Therapy
is a therapeutic approach that focuses on helping individuals understand and re-write their life stories. It encourages clients to view themselves as distinct from their life challenges by reframing their negative life narratives with positive narratives, thereby empowering them to conceptualize positive meaning to their lives.
Person-Centered Therapy (Rogerian Therapy)
is a humanistic approach that focuses on the clients lived experiences. Focus is placed on growth potential, rather than therapeutic solutions. Supportive and empathetic environments are created to facilitate the exploration of clients’ thoughts and feelings to heighten self-awareness, responsibility and growth.
Positive Psychology
is a fortified-styled approach that focuses on building well-being and flourishing rather than solely addressing mental illness. It emphasizes identifying and cultivating personal strengths, positive emotions, and meaningful experiences to enhance overall quality of life.
Psychoanalytic Therapy
is also known as psychodynamic therapy and is a form of in- depth talk therapy that explores the unconscious mind and its influence on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It aims to uncover repressed lived experiences and emotions that often stem from childhood to bring them to conscious awareness for examination and resolution.
Rational Emotive Behavior (REBT)
is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that focuses on helping individuals identify and challenge irrational beliefs that lead to negative emotions and behaviors. REBT aims to help people replace irrational beliefs with more rational and realistic ones, ultimately leading to psychological well-being.
Reality Therapy
is a counseling approach developed by William Glasser that focuses on helping individuals take responsibility for their behaviors and learn more effective ways to meet their basic needs. It emphasizes presenting a consequential philosophy that engenders choices and responsibility for actions, rather than diagnoses of past experiences.
Relational Therapy
is a type of psychotherapy that focuses on the importance of relationships in shaping emotional well-being. It emphasizes that mutually satisfying relationships are crucial for mental health and that social and familial factors significantly impact relationship development. It posits that relationships leverage transformation.
Solution Focused Brief (SFBT)
is a therapeutic approach that focuses on finding solutions to problems in the present and future, rather than focusing on past issues or the problem itself. It is a goal-driven and solutioned-oriented approach that emphasizes identifying strengths and resources to help individuals achieve positive and sustained transformation.
Structural Family Therapy (SFT)
is a therapeutic approach that focuses on the interactions and relationships between family members, viewing the family as a system. It aims to improve communication, clarify boundaries, and modify unhealthy familial behavioral patterns to promote overall psychological well-being and healthier relationships.
Trauma Focused Therapy
is a type of therapy that specifically addresses the psychological impact of traumatic events. It aims to help individuals process trauma, reduce related symptoms, and improve their overall well-being. Diverse trauma-focused treatments may be used to address the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects of trauma.
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