Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, pronounced as the word ‘act’, teaches skills to help individuals live and behave in ways consistent with personal values while developing psychological flexibility. This approach helps individuals recognise ways in which their attempts to suppress, manage, and control emotional experiences create additional problems. By recognising and addressing these challenges, individuals can become better at acting in line with their values that support well-being.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT as it is often called, is the most well researched counselling approach and has been found to be highly effective for many people with a range of presentations such as Depression, Anxiety Disorders and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. CBT focuses on the link between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, and notes how changes in any one area can improve functioning in the other areas. For example, altering a person’s unhelpful thinking can lead to healthier behaviours and improved emotion regulation. CBT targets current problems and symptoms and is typically delivered over 12-16 sessions. 

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) was originally designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories.

During EMDR therapy, the client attends to the emotions, thoughts and images of traumatic memories in brief sections while following with their eyes the therapist moving their hands from side to side. The creator of EMDR, Shapiro, hypothesized that EMDR therapy facilitates the accessing of the traumatic memory network, so that information processing is enhanced, with new associations forged between the traumatic memory and more adaptive memories or information. These new associations are thought to result in complete information processing, new learning, elimination of emotional distress, and development of cognitive insights.

Schema Therapy identifies schemas or ‘negative beliefs’ that are thought to develop during childhood, particularly when emotional or physical needs weren’t met; they may also develop in children who were overindulged or whose parents did not maintain proper boundaries. In adulthood, schemas can lead to low self-esteem, lack of connection to others, problems expressing feelings and emotions and excessive worry. These beliefs can also create strong attraction to inappropriate partners, substances and lead to dissatisfying careers. The aim of Schema Therapy is to reduce the unhealthy urges that these schemas create so that people can lead more satisfying and fulfilling lives.

Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT) is a short-term goal-focused evidence-based therapeutic approach, which incorporates positive psychology principles. As the name suggests the focus is on creating solutions rather than focusing on problems. It is a future-oriented approach to achieving, and sustaining desired behavioural change