Parenting Styles

Each year, millions of people seek therapy and receive real help for just as vast a number of problems and issues! Therapy can address a wide range of concerns such as depression, relationship crises, parenting problems, emotional distress, career issues, substance abuse, significant loss, and clinical disorders or conditions. You can also look to therapy for life-enhancing help in fulfilling aspirations for personal growth or self-improvement.

Through the course of their training and practice, mental health professionals often develop expertise in specific areas and establish preferred modes of therapy. It may be that the nature of your particular problem will clearly define the type of therapy that would be the best for you and can then help you determine which therapist(s) to consider. For example, if you are experiencing difficulties in your relationships with family members, a therapist who specializes in Family/Marital Therapy would be a good choice.

Most therapists work with their clients to determine the most effective treatment plan even when it does not include their preferred orientation or just one specific technique. This can sometimes involve elements of several different types of therapy, for example, a combination of behavioral therapeutic techniques and psychodynamic therapeutic techniques, becoming what is referred to as an "eclectic approach" to therapy.

Art Therapy

In art therapy, the client uses clay, paint, and other art medium to create images that explore their feelings, dreams, memories or ideas. People come to art therapy for a variety of reasons. For example, individuals suffering with depression, facing loss, coping with trauma, dealing with addiction, recovering from sexual abuse, or seeking means to overcome anxiety have often found relief, courage, and strengthening insight through art therapy. Creativity can provide a means of expression for that which has no words, or is not yet fully understood. Using the client's art as an interpretive reference point, the art therapist helps the client further explore their feelings, experiences, and perceptions and claim renewed clarity and meaning in their life

Behavioral Therapy

Behavioral therapies use learning principles to eliminate or reduce unwanted reactions to external situations, one's one thoughts and feelings, and bodily sensations or functions. Rather than dealing with unconscious conflicts, this therapeutic approach deals with events of which people are aware or can readily become aware. The therapist teaches the client to replace undesirable responses (groundless fears, for example) in their day-to-day living. Learning-based techniques include the following:

Exposure Therapy

Instead of trying to avoid or escape upsetting experiences -- which can bring short-term relief, but in the longer run usually prolong or worsen one's vulnerability -- clients voluntarily expose themselves to the experiences while in a relaxed state. Exposures may be to the actual situation (in vivo exposure) or to an imagined version of it (in vitro exposure). As a result they form associations between the formerly upsetting experiences and feeling relatively untroubled, which leads to clearer thinking and better decisions. With practice, the new associations progressively take over from the old ones that were causing difficulty.

Contingency Management

Here, desirable actions are selectively reinforced (rewarded), and undesirable actions are ignored whenever possible. At times, undesirable actions may be penalized instead of ignored, but this tactic is regarded as a last resort, since it produces distress and tends to yield unpredictable results.

Behavioral activation

This is a method commonly used in treating depression. It involves developing a list of activities the client is likely to enjoy, or needs to engage in as part of a normal and satisfying life. Then, beginning with the easiest (or sometimes, the most indispensable) activities on the list, the client agrees to carry them out in an organized manner. This reinstates contact with the naturally-occurring rewards of the chosen activities, which in turn helps overcome the depressed mood.

Modeling

The client observes another person perform a desired behavior (for instance, doing something he has been afraid to do). Then, having seen how someone else's performance did not meet with negative repercussions, with the therapist's encouragement and guidance the client learns to successfully copy the performance.

Biofeedback

A bodily function (such as heart rate or muscle tension) is monitored and the amplified information is fed back to the client. Through this process the client becomes better able to control the function. For example, they learn to relax to slow their heart rate or decrease muscle tension more effectively than they could relying on normal, un-amplified feedback about these functions.

Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive therapies rely on other, largely verbal, learning principles --namely, those that involve cognition (perception, thinking, reasoning, attention and judgment). The basic strategy is to change the thoughts, beliefs, assumptions and attitudes that are contributing to the client's emotional or behavioral problems. Two of the best known cognitive therapies are:

Rational-emotive therapy (RET)

RET is based on the premise that many problems are the result of irrational thinking. For example, an individual can become unhappy and develop self-defeating habits because of faulty beliefs. Another example would be a person who has developed the need to be perfect in all their actions and feels devastated after even the smallest failure. RET (recently renamed REBT, for rational-emotive behavior therapy) helps the client understand the irrationality and the consequences of such a way of thinking, to then reduce their feelings of anxiety in stressful situations, and finally to learn how to substitute more effective problem-solving methods.

Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT)

This is what most behavior therapists and cognitive therapists today actually do in practice. It combines the methods and underlying theories of BT with those of CT. For most clients and conditions, it is generally believed that the combination is more effective than either BT or CT alone.

Family/Marital Therapy

Family can influence our perceptions, our modes of interacting, and our styles