Psychotherapy seeks to support you in improving your mental health. Different psychotherapy approaches focus on healing from trauma, recovering confidence, developing resilience, and improving relationships with others.
What psychotherapy approach is right for you? At Greater Lowell Psychiatric Associates of North Chelmsford, Massachusetts, Dr. Ronald P. Winfield and his team offer several types of psychotherapy that could relieve your symptoms and improve your quality of life. In this blog, we go in-depth on five different kinds of psychotherapy treatment and how each approach works.
Psychodynamic therapy, also known as talk therapy, rests in the ongoing relationship between patient and provider. This type of open-ended therapy treatment allows you to work out issues that are on your mind.
Your provider at Greater Lowell Psychiatric Associates listens to your experiences, concerns, and frustrations, and guides your attention to patterns or origin points related to both poor and improved mental health. Psychodynamic therapy works well for individuals dealing with challenging life events, depression, and anxiety.
In CBT treatment, your provider works with you to take a closer look at the ways that your thoughts impact your actions, and vice versa. In the course of your CBT treatment, you identify patterns in your thinking, emotions, and reactions.
Once you see these patterns clearly, it’s easier to find places for positive change. For example, you may decide to work on steering away from negative thoughts about yourself, or break your habit of reacting to uncomfortable feelings with problematic or detrimental behaviors.
You may benefit from CBT if you suffer from depression, anxiety, phobias, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). CBT worksheets create a framework you can use to make incremental but transformative changes in your life.
Similar to CBT, DBT focuses on the link between your internal experience and your externalized actions. DBT allows you to both acknowledge your current circumstances and habits with acceptance and to consider pathways to change. DBT often works well for patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) or self-harming symptoms. You may benefit from this type of treatment if you have PTSD or a substance abuse issue that you want to address.
Conditions like phobias, anxiety disorder, PTSD, and OCD can involve triggers. You may struggle to lead a full life if you need to avoid your triggers for your mental health. Therapist-supervised exposure therapy, related to CBT, identifies your triggers and provides you with effective strategies to manage your response.
Past traumatic events can continue to harm your mental health long after physical threats have ceased to be a material problem. PTSD arises when past trauma or traumas negatively impact your current mental health. EMDR treatment was developed to treat the harmful ongoing impacts of past trauma.
In this type of therapist-supported treatment, you move your eyes in precise patterns while recalling past traumatic events. The eye movements trigger reprocessing in your brain, reducing the emotional pain associated with your traumatic memories.
With the right psychotherapy treatment, your mental health can be strong and stable. Find the right therapy or combination or therapies to give you relief and lasting peace of mind. Reach out to the team at Greater Lowell Psychiatric Associates online or over the phone now and schedule your first appointment.
