Psychological Therapies

Schema Therapy is an integrative model, developed by Dr Jeffrey Young, drawing on cognitive, behavioural, psychodynamic, attachment and gestalt models. Schema Therapy helps clients to meet their core emotional needs. These include secure attachment with others, safety and predictability, autonomy and a sense of identity, acceptance and empathy, freedom of expression, fun and play, self-control/limit setting) often not met during childhood. Schemas (or patterns of behaviour) often develop because of these unmet needs. As a way of coping, people often repeatedly use unhelpful behaviours.  Schema Therapy helps clients to develop better ways of coping while reducing overwhelming negative feelings.

Recent research has found that Schema Therapy is often very effective in treating eating disorders, anxiety, chronic depression, complex post-traumatic stress, relationship issues, emotional dysregulation, grief and substance abuse, among others. It’s also been found to be effective in treating couple issues. 

I am certified as an ISST Advanced Schema Therapist.

Though CBT forms part of Schema Therapy, it can be offered as a stand-alone therapy especially for anxiety and depression but also bulimia nervosa.  CBT is designed as a short-term therapy and can assist with helping an individual change their unhelpful or unhealthy ways of thinking, feeling and behaving to assist in breaking the habit of negative thinking.

We achieve this through strategies such as psychoeducation, cognitive challenging, behavioural techniques as well as practical, self-help strategies, eg. de-arousal activities, mindfulness, meditation and progressive muscle relaxation.

CBT-E is a “transdiagnostic” and personalised psychological treatment for eating disorders, mainly for adults but can be adapted to treat younger people.  Generally, CBT-E involves 40 sessions over 40 weeks.  It consists of four stages:

• Stage 1–Starting Well;
• Stage 2–Taking Stock;
• Stage 3–Processes maintaining the person’s eating problem, e.g. body image, dietary restraint, events, moods and eating, and setbacks and mindsets;
• Stage 4-Ending Well.

 

ACT teaches skills to better deal with painful thoughts and feelings. We use mindfulness, we recognise which values are important to the individual and help with emotional regulation.

FBT is based on the Maudsley approach (an intensive outpatient treatment originating in the UK) and modified by Daniel Le Grange and James Lock.  With FBT, parents play an active and positive role in helping to restore their child’s weight to what is considered to be the normal level for the adolescent’s age and height.

Three phases are pivotal to the treatment:

• Phase 1:  Weight restoration which is conducted over 8-10 sessions. Parents take an active role in refeeding their child, while the sibling becomes an active support to the patient within the family dynamic.
• Phase 2:  Helping the adolescent eat independently which is conducted over 4-6 sessions. The parents are encouraged to help their child take more control over eating once again.
• Phase 3:  Establishing healthy adolescent identity which is usually conducted over 3-4 sessions. Once 95% of ideal weight is restored, treatment focuses on establishing a healthy adolescent identity, eg. autonomy, developing age-appropriate parental boundaries and for parents to re-organise their life.

Family Therapy (known as systemic family therapy) helps members of a family understand each other better, change negative behaviours and resolve conflicts. It gives families the space to express and explore their feelings in a safe, non-judgmental environment and discuss the difficulties and differences experienced by each family member. In this way, communication can improve in order to understand each other more effectively.

As a registered Parent Facilitator for ‘Circle of Security’ and as an accredited ‘Tuning into Kids’ facilitator, I can offer courses to parents together, or individuals and/or couples in a group context.

‘Circle of Security’ is a relationship-based early intervention program designed to improve attachment security between parents and children.  The ‘Tuning into Kids’ parenting program focuses on the emotional connection between parents and children.  A feature of the program is teaching parents the skills in emotion coaching and how to recognise, understand and respond to their child’s emotions in an accepting, supportive way.

ST for couples integrates the individual challenges people face in their own life with managing a relationship with someone else who also faces their own individual difficulties.  Many of the principles used in individual ST are also applied to the couple dynamic. We look at identifying the conflicts couples experience and explore how these conflicts are linked to each couple’s schemas. We then examine how the couple can better express to each other what they need in the relationship.