Thoughts from a Therapist

Helpful tips on How to Expand your Personal and Relational Wellness

Category: Therapy Explained, Simplified, and Un-Jargoned

  • Interventions in Relational Counseling

    Interventions in Relational Counseling

    Relational therapy utilizes various acronym-based models to guide therapists. It emphasizes the importance of integrating different theoretical approaches for effective interventions, highlighting key intervention styles, including behavioral, pragmatic, structural, and more. These styles collectively support system needs and adaptability, allowing therapists to fluidly adapt techniques based on clients’ evolving dynamics.

  • Bottom Up and Top Down interventions to support regulation

    In this post we will be exploring what people mean by ‘bottom up” and “top down” interventions and how you can use this information is relevant to regulation when we are emotionally overwhelmed. In the field of psychotherapy/psychology there is a strange debate right now about whether bottom up models or top down models are…

  • The thoughts, emotions, and behaviors triangle

    The Diagram below can be used to understand the interconnectedness of thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Additionally the diagram gives an easy to understand explanation of the many different means of offering a psychotherapy intervention. I use this Diagram to offer a visual depiction of all the different options which are available to help the client…

  • Adlerian psychotherapy – an overview

    In this post I will be giving an overview of Adlerian psychotherapy, which was one of the first theories in the field.

  • What is a systemic approach in psychotherapy? Family systems theory intervention

    The major difference between Family therapy and individual therapy is something called systems theory… therapist using such an approach are said to look at problems and solution systemically. In viewing a problem systemically a therapist will look at all the factors which bear some relation to the reported symptoms… ‘Factors’ could be family members, friends,…

  • What is the Difference between a Psychologist, a Psychotherapist, a Psychiatrist, a Social Worker, a LPC, a LMFT, a LSCW, a PsyD, a PHD………

    Quick summary: My intention is to give you a horribly over-simplified definition of all those terms that you may find when you are looking for a mental health worker. I will give you an easy to understand definition of what the difference is between a Psychologist, Psychotherapist, Psychiatrist, Social Worker etc… I must add this…

  • Dialectics – open your mind and balance will occur naturally

    Quick summary: There are many different definitions of what “dialectic” means and most are relatively related while others are a bit different (the Hindu and the Buddhist dialectics are more similar than the Socratic dialectic). I intend to talk about Dialects as a subject which helps us to experience the idea that all things are…

  • What are 'triggers' – automatic responces

    Quick answer – a trigger is anything in the environment (person, place, thing, thought etc) that causes a predictable reaction in a person. Very often people are unaware of their triggers… they might be fully aware of the reaction… but they are not always aware of why they seemingly reacted automatically and without intention. Triggers…

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy simplified

    Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is based on the idea that emotions affect behaviors and thoughts, thoughts affect emotions and behaviors, and behaviors affect emotions and thoughts. To resolve a problem, CBT therapists generally try and promote a change in behavior and thinking patterns with the goals of increasing positive emotions.

  • Immediacy | tips for therapists | How to use immediacy | experiential techniques

    Immediacy | tips for therapists | How to use immediacy | experiential techniques

    Quick summary: a quick set of tips for therapists on using immediacy in therapy.

  • Why should I focus on my Breathing? – Worry reduction.

    Quick summary –Normally breathing is something which is done automatically – you don’t think about breathing it just happens. When you intentionally focus on your breathing you give your mind something to do and this limits your minds ability to worry, which is often the source of your distress. Breathing is happening in the present…

  • Forming Secure Attachments – Handout for parents and caregivers

    Handout concerning helping a child to form a secure attachment – an alternative to behavioral intervention and other parenting strategies that might not have worked for your child

  • Why some fail to lose Weight – Restraint theory

    Quick Summary: Restraint theory suggests that restrictive diets lead to failure and in some cases actually increase weight gain. The theory was developed after research was showing that people on restrictive (don’t eat any of these ‘bad’ foods diets) had almost an 80% rate of failure and people were often gaining back more weight than…

  • Support group for teens with type 1 diabetes

    Quick summary: Research has shown that support groups for teens with type one diabetes are extremely beneficial to the participants overall well-being. In fact, people who have diabetes tend to have lower incidences of mental health concerns as compared to the general population – this is thought to be because of the amount of familial,…

  • Play therapy explained | How to use play therapy | Attuning to your child | how and why it works

    Quick Summary: Play therapy is an effective and developmentally accommodating way for a child to communicate emotional or otherwise ‘complex’ information to an adult. A child will often tell you about what they are currently feeling or thinking about with their toys or drawing etc… If an adult can pay attention to the story line…

  • Existentialism in Psychotherapy

    Existentialism is used in Psychotherapy to allow clients to explore their freedom in creating their own meaning. When a client finds his/her freedom to create meaning they greatly reduce their anxiety. The new meaning that a client creates can greatly reduce their suffering and can aid in a person’s recovery from a difficult lived experience.

  • The Evolution of CBT = Mindfulness – moving from changing projections to eliminating projections

    I am suggesting that CBT will evolve into mindfulness as mindfulness reduces the unwanted affects of both positive and negative projections where as CBT is designed to reduce the unwanted affects of negative projections alone.

  • Strength Based Therapy – what it means

    “most people are very good at articulating their problems and their faults… they are seeking my help to acknowledge and to understand their strengths and potential solutions… it is my job to ensure that the therapy session balances problems with solutions and perceived faults with perceived strengths.”

  • Narrative therapy summary

    Narrative therapy summary

    Quick summary: My intention is to tell you what techniques can be used in narrative therapy, and why you would use them.