Approach

Although my therapeutic approach is geared towards the direction of Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, I would define my general approach as eclectic. I take all the different approaches into consideration and use the particular approach that the client is responding to most effectively. This way, I am with the client as opposed to having my own personal agenda. Therefore, my approach is tailored to each individual client. Briefly, Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT) combines two very effective kinds of psychotherapy – Cognitive Therapy and Behavior Therapy. In a nutshell, Behavior Therapy helps one weaken the connections between troublesome situations and one’s habitual reactions to them (ex: fear, depression, rage, self defeating behaviors). Cognitive therapy teaches an individual how certain thinking patterns are causing one’s symptoms by giving a person a distorted picture of what’s going on in his/her life, thus, making one feel anxious, depressed, angry or provoking one into self defeating behaviors.

CBT advocates the two most powerful levers of constructive change:

• Altering ways of thinking – a person’s thoughts, beliefs, ideas, attitudes, assumptions, mental imagery, and ways of directing his/her attention – for the better. This is the cognitive aspect of CBT.
• Helping a person greet the challenges and opportunities in his/her life with a clear and calm mind – and then taking actions that are likely to have desirable results. This is the behavioral aspect of CBT. So in other words, CBT focuses on exactly what traditional therapies tend to leave out – how to achieve beneficial change, as opposed to mere explanation or insight.

Moreover, I am now more open in adapting an integrated short-term therapy, on a case by case basis, for the reasons below:

• More and more therapists have become interested in the practice of brief treatment, recognizing that for many individuals it can and does accomplish as much as long-term treatment.
• There have always been clients whose aim is symptom relief, help with one specific area in their lives or personality functioning, or improvement in their relationship with a child or significant other. For this population, brief treatment is a natural choice.
• A number of individuals who enter therapy already have an understanding of their problems, which are often circumscribed. In addition, their motivation to work hard in treatment makes them good candidates for brief psychotherapy.
• Many individuals have financial constraints, limited time, and little interest in sustaining a long-term treatment. They think about and use therapy sessions in much the same way as they think about and use primary care medicine. Their desire is to be treated in a timely fashion with rapid resolution of their problems.
• Approaches such as crisis intervention and cognitive-behavioral therapy have always been effective methods for delivering services to many people in a time-limited fashion. The crisis intervention approach has influenced the field in the direction of briefer treatments for people who have been through disasters or severe trauma.
• Managed care and insurance pressures have exerted an influence on health care in general and on mental health care in particular, resulting in briefer treatments.

Please note that in my adapting an integrated short-term therapy, I must meet special requirements. An essential element of brief treatment is my stance as a counsellor, which must be active. The pressure of time requires me to intervene rapidly to promote an unfolding of the client’s problems and history in order to develop a clear case formulation. Goals need to be clearly specified and may be more circumscribed. The therapeutic alliance is critical. If the therapeutic alliance becomes problematic, it must be addressed and repaired relatively quickly. Although motivating the client’s interest in and commitment to therapy is vital in all treatments, it is especially crucial to the rapid-resolution in brief therapy.

Having said all what I have said about integrated short-term therapy, I respect the fact that some life issues do need time to resolve. And this is where my being eclectic comes in because I will, then, go by the client’s pace of healing and resolution.