Like any good therapy, art therapy begins with a session where the therapist focuses on learning about their client, the reasons for seeking therapy, and the goals the client wants to achieve through therapy. Once this is done, what then? Do you spend time doodling or finger painting? You might. You might also work with… Read More Therapy Tuesday: Art Therapy – pt 2
Through this series we’ve touched on the basics of how CBT works and what to expect if you seek help from a therapist who uses it. The question I always ask when I start working with a therapist is, “How will I know when it’s helping?” With CBT the answer is pretty obvious. You’ll know… Read More Therapy Tuesday: CBT – Seeing Improvements
You’ve worked with your therapist to isolate the thoughts and emotions that are kicking you around in your life. You’ve probably spent a few sessions discussing how you feel, what brings on certain thoughts, and beginning to understand how those drive your actions. Stress about paying bills? Let’s just stack those bills off to the… Read More Therapy Tuesday: CBT – Choosing an action
Now that you’ve worked with your therapist to identify the thoughts you find yourself struggling with, you’ll move forward to identifying the emotions you feel with those thoughts. Using the example I started last week, a fear of public speaking, we’ll look at how this step works.
In a CBT session the focus is on a target area. How a patient thinks, feels, and reacts to a situation or thought is causing problems in their life. There may be multiple target areas, but usually only one is addressed in each session. The first step in CBT is to address core beliefs about… Read More Therapy Tuesday: CBT – Core Beliefs
It’s such an obvious thing, isn’t it? If you’re having trouble with anxiety or depression, find a therapist. Don’t ask me why, even for those of us who have successfully used therapists in the past, it’s not the first thing we think of. What I’ve learned is that it’s sometimes quite a bit harder than… Read More Top Skills Thursday: Find a therapist
Over on Twitter I ran into Kasey, who is training to become an EMDR therapist. I thought it’d be a great wrap-up to hear from someone on the other side of the therapy session. (Even in training, there’s a ton of insight and such). She was nice enough to agree, so please, do give her… Read More Therapy Tuesday: EMDR Guest Blog: Kasey Klein
I’ll be sharing a guest post about EMDR next week. I don’t want to move on to the next topic until this one is wrapped up, though. The next topic will be behavioral therapy, followed by CBT, and then a loop back to DBT based on my own insights and experiences. Do something nice for… Read More Therapy Tuesday: EMDR pause
Kambry Ellis 