Individual Therapy

Our Approach

Our professional therapists offer a variety of evidence-based treatments in keeping with the highest standards of practice. Depending on treatment needs, we select and apply various psychotherapies that have strong scientific evidence supporting their effectiveness. For individual clients, our treatments commonly incorporate Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), attachment-based therapies, Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and psychodynamic psychotherapy.

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Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive-behavioral therapy examines how patterns of thinking affect a person’s emotions and behaviors. This approach emphasizes exploring the relationship between thoughts, feelings and behaviors, and recognizes that people’s interpretations of events, rather than the events themselves, tend to drive their emotional responses and lead to distress. When applying CBT, our therapists will help clients identify, test the validity of, and correct dysfunctional beliefs. This allows our clients to modify their thoughts, alleviate emotional distress, and change unwanted behaviors that result from the problematic beliefs. CBT is a structured collaboration between therapist and client and often calls for homework assignments. CBT has strong scientific support for its clinical effectiveness in helping reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and various other disorders in a relatively short amount of time.

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Attachment-Based Therapy

This approach explores the client’s relationship patterns, and emphasizes the role of close relationships in helping a person effectively cope with difficult emotions, difficult life experiences, trauma, and loss. Attachment-based therapy leverages the vast scientific literature on attachment theory, which has revolutionized our understanding of how early relationships affect a person’s neurological functioning, emotional responses, and ability to relate to others throughout life. When using this approach, our therapists will journey with clients through their past and present significant emotional and relationship experiences in order to recognize patterns, understand emotional responses, and ultimately create new and healthier ways of coping with difficult emotions and relating to others.

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Psychodynamic Therapy

The essence of this form of therapy is to discover previously unknown aspects of oneself by identifying the roots of unhealthy thoughts, emotions and behaviors. This discovery process allows an individual to take ownership of their entire being, and creates space for deep and lasting change to occur. While this therapy is based on psychoanalytic concepts and methods that began with Freud, it has continuously evolved over the past 120 years, and a great deal of scientific evidence now supports the effectiveness of contemporary psychodynamic psychotherapy for treating a wide range of problems including depression, anxiety, trauma, anger, relational patterns, and identity issues.* When employing this method, our therapists will help clients gain awareness of their emotions and their attempts to avoid distressing feelings. We will also focus on identifying recurring patterns in relationships, and recognize moments when the past “comes alive” in the present, in order to free the client to make new and healthier choices in life.

 

*For a review of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapy see Shedler (2010)