Therapies

Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR is a therapy designed to help people heal from emotionally distressing symptoms linked to difficult or traumatic life experiences.
It focuses on addressing emotional wounds and mental blocks that can develop when experiences are overwhelming or remain unprocessed.
EMDR uses a structured set of protocols to support the brain’s natural capacity to heal, helping the information-processing system move toward resolution.
The therapy follows an eight-phase approach and uses eye movements or other forms of bilateral stimulation to help painful memories become less emotionally charged.
Through this process, distressing experiences can be reprocessed so they are remembered without the same intensity or impact.
EMDR differs from CBT in that change comes primarily from the client’s own emotional processing, rather than from interpretation or cognitive restructuring led by the therapist.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

CBT focuses on the connection between our thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and behaviours.
These elements influence one another, meaning that changing one can help shift the others and improve how we feel or think overall.
When we’re anxious or distressed, it’s easy to fall into patterns of thinking and reacting that unintentionally make things worse.
CBT helps bring these unhelpful thought patterns and behaviours into awareness, rather than leaving them as automatic responses.
Therapy then involves trying out practical strategies and small experiments to develop more helpful ways of responding.
CBT usually includes work between sessions (often called homework) to practise these strategies in everyday life.
CBT is a well-researched approach and has been shown to be effective for a wide range of difficulties.

Compassion focussed therapy (CFT)

CFT can be particularly helpful for people who struggle with shame and self-criticism, often linked to early experiences such as abuse or neglect.
The therapy focuses on developing self-compassion skills to help regulate mood and foster feelings of safety, acceptance, and comfort.
CFT works with three emotional regulation systems: the threat and self-protection system, the drive and achievement system, and the soothing and safety system.
It normalises the idea that our brains can be challenging to manage, often referred to in CFT as the “tricky brain.”
CFT helps clients understand how older survival responses (such as fight or flight) interact with newer emotional processes like shame and self-criticism.
When these systems become unbalanced, emotional distress can arise. The aim of CFT is to help restore balance between them.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)

ACT is a therapeutic approach that helps clients to stop avoiding, denying and struggling with their deeper emotions which can sometimes cause unhelpful patterns in life.

An ACT approach helps people to learn to accept their deeper feelings as appropriate responses to some of the situations they have found themselves in.
Using this approach, people can learn to understand and accept their situation, as well as the limits they haveimposed in moving forward in a meaningful way. They can then learn to move forward in their lives despite their hardships and commit to making necessary changes.

An ACT approach encourages people to listen to their own self talk and decide if an action is required or whether acceptance is required for what the situation is. Commitment is made to stop using the old patterns to face difficulties and instead chose to practise behaviour that is more in line with personal values and goals.

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

IFS therapy is a model of psychotherapy that views the mind as comprised of multiple sub-personalities, or “parts,” rather than a unified whole.

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