What is Psychology?

Psychology as a therapy is an integration of science, theory and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote well-being and personal development

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive behavioural therapy is based on the theory that how we think (cognition), how we feel (emotion), and how we act (behaviour) are related and interact together in complex ways

In this perspective, certain dysfunctional ways of interpreting and appraising the world can contribute to emotional distress or result in behavioural problems. The object of many cognitive behavioural therapies is to discover and identify the biased, dysfunctional ways of relating or reacting and through different methodologies help clients transcend these in ways that will lead to increased well-being.

There are many techniques used within CBT which has a rich tradition and is well researched and with a strong evidence base.

Humanistic Psychology

The Humanistic approach seeks to get a glimpse of the whole person and not just the fragmented parts of their personality with the aim of their integration as a whole to find fulfillment in life.

According to humanistic thinking, each individual person already has inbuilt potentials and resources that might help them to build a stronger personality and self-concept. The mission of the humanistic psychologist is to help the individual employ these resources via the therapeutic relationship

Positive Psychology

Positive psychology’s main focus is to increase one’s positive experience of life and ability to flourish by promoting such things as optimism about the future, a sense of flow in the present, and personal traits like courage, perseverance, and altruism. 

There is now evidence to show that by promoting positive psychology’s three components of happiness—positive emotion (the pleasant life), engagement (the engaged life), and meaning (the meaningful life)—positive therapy can decrease clinical depression.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness and mindfulness meditation focus on becoming aware of all incoming thoughts and feelings and accepting them, but not attaching or reacting to them. This process is known as “Decentering” and aids in disengaging from self-criticism, rumination, and dysphoric mood that can arise when reacting to negative thinking patterns

Systematic Desensitisation,

Also known as graduated exposure therapy, occurs in three steps:

The first step of systematic desensitization is identify what is making you anxious

The second step is the learning of relaxation or coping techniques.

When the individual has been taught these skills, he or she can use them in the third step to react towards and overcome situations that made them anxious

The goal of this process is for the individual to learn how to cope with, and overcome the fear in each step of the hierarchy

Acceptance and commitment therapy

Acceptance and commitment therapy is a form of counselling and a branch of clinical behavior analysis. It is an empirically-based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies mixed in different ways with commitment and behavior-change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility.

The objective of ACT is not elimination of difficult feelings; rather, it is to be present with what life brings us and to move towards valued behaviours.  Acceptance and commitment therapy invites people to open up to unpleasant feelings, and learn not to overreact to them, and not avoid situations where they are invoked. Its therapeutic effect is a positive spiral where feeling better leads to a better understanding of the truth.