Behavioral therapy is a treatment that helps change potentially self-destructing behaviors. Behavior therapy does not involve one specific method but it has a wide range of techniques that can be used to treat a person’s psychological problems. An important feature of behavioral therapy is its focus on current problems and behavior, and on attempts to remove behavior the patient finds troublesome.

When it comes to treating specific behavioral issues, behavioral therapy can often be more effective than other approaches. Phobias, panic disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder are examples of problems that respond well to behavioral treatments.

The two basic principles that contribute to behavioral therapy are:

Classical Conditioning – Classical conditioning happens when a neutral stimulus comes right before another stimulus that triggers a reflexive response. The idea is that if the neutral stimulus and whatever other stimulus that triggers a response is paired together often enough that the neutral stimulus will produce the reflexive response. Examples include:

• Systematic Desensitization
• Aversion Therapy
• Flooding

Operant Conditioning – Operant conditioning has to do with rewards and punishments and how they can either strengthen or weaken certain behaviors. Examples include:

• Token Economies
• Contingency Management
• Modeling

Behavioral therapy is a treatment that helps change potentially self-destructing behaviors.

Psychotherapy refers to a variety of techniques and methods used to help children and adolescents who are experiencing difficulties with their emotions or behavior.

Child psychotherapists treat a variety of normal adjustment issues such as dealing with anxiety of a move, a new sibling, loss of a family member, fears, nightmares, peer difficulties, social skill problems, school avoidance or school performance, sibling rivalry, self-esteem issues or dealing with dating, parent-child issues and adolescent conflict.

Psychotherapy is often used in combination with other treatments (medication, behavior management, or work with the school). The relationship that develops between the therapist and the patient is very important. The child or adolescent must feel comfortable, safe and understood. This type of trusting environment makes it much easier for the child to express his/her thoughts and feelings and to use the therapy in a helpful way.

Goals of child and adolescent psychotherapy often depend on the nature of the presenting problem.  The goal is to carefully evaluate and diagnose children’s psychiatric problems and to develop treatment plans to alleviate the suffering these conditions can inflict on the children and their families.

Psychotherapy can help in many ways. One such therapy is called cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy, also known as CBT, describes the process where you work with a psychotherapist in several sessions with the objective to change your way of thinking, turning negative thoughts into positive thoughts. Cognitive behavioral therapy is common practice for treating adolescents, particularly those having anxiety issues and depression. CBT is a great way to acquiring techniques for dealing with stressful situations that teens may come across.

How CBT works

Cognitive Behavior Therapy works by helping you make sense of overwhelming problems by breaking them down into smaller parts. It helps you stop these negative cycles. It aims to break down factors that are making you feel bad, anxious or scared so that they are more manageable. It can show you how to change these negative patterns to improve the way you feel. The main focus of CBT is that thoughts, feelings and behaviours combine to influence a person’s quality of life. It aims to teach people that it is possible to have control over their thoughts, feelings and behaviours

CBT focuses on changing unhelpful or unhealthy thoughts and behaviours. It is a combination of two therapies:

• Cognitive therapy – The aim of cognitive therapy is to change the way the person thinks about the issue that’s causing concern.
• Behaviour therapy – The aim of behavior therapy is to teach the person techniques or skills to alter their behaviour

The belief of both these techniques is that healthy thoughts lead to healthy feelings and behaviours. They can help you manage your problems them in a more positive way.

The Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, is the psychological acupressure technique.  It is a powerful and rapidly emerging technique for the transformation of your stresses, traumas, blocks and many other emotional challenges, as well as helping with the areas of performance and achieving your goals. It works by releasing blockages within the energy system which are the source of emotional intensity and discomfort.

EFT is a form of psychological acupressure, based on the same energy meridians used in traditional acupuncture to treat physical and emotional ailments. It involves the use of fingertips rather than needles to tap on the end points of energy meridians that are situated just beneath the surface of the skin. The treatment is non-invasive and works on the ethos of making change as simple and as pain free as possible.

Benefits of emotional freedom therapy

• Remove Negative Emotions
• Reduce Food Cravings
• Reduce or Eliminate Pain
• Implement Positive Goals
• No drugs or equipment needed
• Usually rapid, long lasting relief from symptoms

Emotional freedom techniques restores awareness and trust in the natural healing abilities of our mind and body, providing ground-breaking opportunities to achieving physical and emotional well-being in a faster time frame.

Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) is a short-term (8-20 sessions) structured psychotherapy approach to working with individuals, couples and families. EFT is being used with many different kinds of couples in private practice, university training centres and hospital clinics and many different cultural groups throughout the world. EFT therapy is a method of treatment that works uniquely with the operation and function of the emotions within the context of the human experience.

EFT has been proven effective for individuals suffering from moderate depression, the effects of childhood deprivation or abuse, and a variety of general “problems of living”, including interpersonal problems.  also has demonstrated effectiveness for distressed couples..

EFT works on the basic principle that people must first arrive at a place before they can leave it. Therefore, in EFT an important goal is to arrive at the live experience of a maladaptive emotion (e.g., fear and shame) in order to transform it. The transformation comes from the client accessing a new primary adaptive emotional state in the session.

Goals of Emotionally Focused Therapy

• To expand and re-organize key emotional responses – the music of the attachment dance.
• To create a shift in partners’ interactional positions and initiate new cycles of interaction.
• To foster the creation of a secure bond between partners.

Emotionally focused therapy is aimed at providing the correct guidance and perspective thereby showing clients how to properly control, handle and dictate their emotional input.

Existential therapy is not about pathologising and considering people to be sick but struggling with the very problem of living and making sense of their particular circumstances. It does not focus on personality differences and approaches in trying to understand a client’s behavior. In fact, existential psychotherapists are not there to understand their clients – they assist their clients in understanding their own worlds and use themselves as an instrument to reveal that to clients.

Benefits of Existential Therapy

• It encourages the person to evaluate their values, beliefs and situation
• It acknowledge their limitations as well as the possibilities for their lives
• It emphasizes the individual’s inherent worth and dignity.
• It helps to find meaning and purpose in their lives
• It develop more effective ways of communicating
• It empowers the individual to make choices and take responsibility for his actions.

Existential therapy can be highly effective for youth and adults who are struggling to make healthy life choices.

Some common types of expressive therapy include:

• Art therapy
• Dance therapy
• Drama therapy
• Psychodrama
• Music therapy
• Writing therapy
• Therapeutic Recreation
• Horticultural therapy

All these expressive therapists share the belief that through creative expression and the tapping of the imagination, a person can examine the body, feelings, emotions and his or her thought process. They can give you a richer vocabulary to work, play and grow a life you love living.

Expressive Arts specializes in working with people who are afraid of doing art or need to unblock or reconnect to artful expression in their lives. it is the practice of using imagery, storytelling, dance, music, drama, poetry, movement, horticulture, dream work, and visual arts together, in an integrated way, to foster human growth, development, and healing

It is a family-focused and individualized approach that is unique to each client and his or her family’s needs. It deepens and transcends traditional talk therapy by acknowledging that each client’s process is unique. While on one hand a client might like talk therapy, another might prefer to use journaling, movement, art, or a combination of different experiences during therapy.

Family therapy is a type of psychological counseling (psychotherapy) done to help family members improve communication and resolve conflicts. It is designed to address specific issues that affect the psychological health of the family, such as major life transitions or mental health conditions.

Family therapy addresses the problems people present within the context of their relationships with significant persons in their lives and their social networks. It enables family members, couples and others who care about each other to express and explore difficult thoughts and emotions safely, to understand each other’s experiences and views, appreciate each other’s needs, build on strengths and make useful changes in their relationships and their lives.

Family therapy is often used to address

• Step-family issues
• Divorce or separation
• Sibling issues
• Child discipline issues
• Eating disorderof a family member
• Adoption concerns
• Multi-generational family concerns

The Benefits of Family Therapy

• It deepens family connections
• It promotes understanding and collaboration among family members
• Teaches ways to handle conflicts and changes within the family differently
• Assists in identifying conflicts and anxieties and helps the family develop strategies to resolve them.
• It also helps reduce symptoms such aseating disorders or alcohol use problems
• It enables people to talk, together or individually, often about difficult or distressing issues, in ways that respect their experiences, invite engagement and support recovery

Gestalt therapy is an exploration rather than an attempt to control a person’s behavior,
feelings, or thoughts. The only goal is growth and autonomy through an increase in
awareness. It teaches people to become aware of significant sensations within themselves and their environment so that they respond fully and reasonably to situations. The focus is on the “here and now” rather than on past experiences.

One method utilized in Gestalt therapy is the empty-chair technique. The chair serves an important function.   When the client sits opposite an empty chair and then mentally places into that chair someone significant, who has caused them pain or trouble. Thus, the “empty chair technique” stimulates your thinking, highlighting your emotions and attitudes.

During this therapy the client is encouraged to bring out hidden feelings. It can give rise to emotional scenes, and the previously buried emotions which need to be handled carefully.

The objective of Gestalt therapy is to enable the client to become more fully and creatively alive and to become free from the blocks and unfinished business that may diminish satisfaction, fulfillment, and growth, and to experiment with new ways of being.

During your first visit, you will be asked about your medical history and what condition you would like to address. The hypnotherapist may explain to you what hypnotherapy is and how it works. You will then be directed through relaxation techniques, using a series of mental images and suggestions intended to change behaviors and relieve symptoms. For example, people who have panic attacks may be given the suggestion that, in the future, they will be able to relax whenever they want. The hypnotherapist will also teach you the basics of self hypnosis and give you an audiotape to use at home so you can reinforce what you learn during the session.

Benefits of hypnotherapy

• Manage stress
• Quit smoking
• Accelerate healing
• Control pain
• Improve sleep
• Overcome phobias, fear, anxiety
• Develop self- esteem
• Increase motivation
• Enhance memory
• Healing physical, mental or sexual abuse
• Losing weight

During hypnosis, your body relaxes and your thoughts become more focused. Hypnosis can actually teach people how to master their own states of awareness. It can affect their own bodily functions and psychological responses.

Integrative Therapies offers a multidisciplinary approach to patient care in a friendly and comfortable environment. Integrative therapy is not seeking to change the person. It seeks to recall all the wholesome and healthy parts of the self and re-integrate them into the functional self. This is a uniquely individual process and, rather than changing you, it seeks to make you more you.

Benefits of Integrative Therapy

• It helps identify the causes of current concerns
• It helps to identify factors that perpetuate problems, and also help patients become aware of fears or hurts that limit their psychological freedom.

Practitioners in this field embrace an attitude towards the practice of psychotherapy that affirms the inherent value of each individual. It is a unifying psychotherapy that responds appropriately and effectively to the person at the emotional, behavioural, cognitive and physiological levels of functioning. The aim of integrative psychotherapy is to facilitate wholeness so that the quality of the person’s being and functioning in life is maximized with due regard for each individual’s own personal limited and external constraints.

IPT is a type of time-limited psychotherapeutic depression treatment which focuses on recent life stressors of losses, changes or conflicts in current relationships that underlie distress. Examples of the types of interpersonal problems for which this treatment approach can be helpful include disputes with significant others, grief and loss, and social role transitions, such as retirement or divorce.

Techniques of interpersonal therapy include:

• Identification of Emotion— helping the person identifies what their emotion is and where it is coming from.
• Expression of Emotion— this involves helping the person express their emotions in a healthy way.
• Dealing with Emotional Baggage— often, people bring unresolved issues from past relationships to their present relationships. By looking at how these past relationships affect their present mood and behavior, they are in a better position to be objective in their present relationships.

The primary goal of this therapy is to improve communication skills and increase self-esteem during a short period of time. It usually lasts three to four months and works well for depression caused by loss and grief, relationship conflicts, major life events, social isolation, or role transitions.

Mind-body therapies are treatments that are meant to help the mind’s ability to affect the functions and symptoms of the body. They are designed to enhance the mind’s positive impact on the body.

Types of Mind-Body Therapies

Mind-body therapies use various approaches. Some of them are:

• Biofeedback
• Cognitive behavioral therapy
• Creative and expressive arts therapies (art, music, or dance)
• Dialectical behavioral therapy
• Guided imagery and self-hypnosis
• Heart-centered practices
• Massage
• Meditation
• Mindfulness
• Prayer
• Progressive muscle relaxation
• Support groups
• Tai chi
• Yoga

How does mind-body therapy works

When you are physically or emotionally stressed, your body releases stress hormones that can affect all your systems and organs. For example, stress related to hostility and anxiety can result in disruptions in heart and immune function. Similarly, depression and distress may diminish the body’s natural capacity to heal. The goal of mind-body techniques is to get the body and mind to relax and to reduce the levels of stress hormones in the body, so that your immune system is better able to fight off illness. Mind-Body Therapy enables you to cease the stress process, creating an empowered mind and body that become resilient to the effects of daily life. It enable you control of the autonomic nervous system to decrease the stress response. Many mind-body therapies focus on becoming more conscious of mental states.

Narrative therapy seeks to be a respectful, non-blaming approach to counseling and community work, which centers people as the experts in their own lives. It views problems as separate from people and assumes people have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments and abilities that will assist them to reduce the influence of problems in their lives.

The narrative therapist focuses upon narrative in the therapy. The narrative therapist is a collaborator with the client in the process of developing richer (or “thicker”) narratives. In this process, narrative therapists ask questions to generate experientially vivid descriptions of life events that are not currently included in the plot of the problematic story

Narrative therapy works by helping people ‘deconstruct’ unproductive stories in order to ‘reconstruct’ positive ones. In the process of re-storing experiences, especially where unhappy emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety and depression dominate, new and more empowering events can restore lives.

Narrative Therapy can:

Improve Personal and Family Relationships

• Provides an environment for respect and value to flourish.
• Create positive interactions
• Transform negative communication or responses into more accepting, non-judgmental and meaningful exchanges.

In Narrative therapy a person’s beliefs, skills, principles, and knowledge in the end help them regain their life from a problem.

NLP techniques provide new ways of dealing with emotional problems such as low self esteem, anxiety, lack of confidence, destructive relationship patterns and are successful in effective bereavement counselling. It is suitable for business professionals, teachers, sales people, counselors and therapists.

Advantages of Neuro Linguistic Program Therapy

• Improves management skills
• Improves Communication
• Increase motivational and leadership skills
• Develop the right attitude and behavior in dealing with illnesses or other medical condition.
• Improve the personality for better interpersonal relations with co-workers or with family members.
• Help people to improve and attain success in any area of their lives.

Neuro Linguistic Program Therapy is designed to provide expedited results and to provide comprehension to a person’s behavior and cognitive patterns.

Psychoanalysis is a treatment approach based on the observation that individuals are often unaware of many of the factors that determine their emotions and behaviour.

Psychoanalysis, as a treatment method, is based on concepts concerning unconscious mental processes originally developed by Sigmund Freud and further developed by a considerable number of experienced psychoanalysts who have followed.

The aim of the practice of psychoanalysis is to assist clients in achieving a greater self awareness of hidden emotions and patterns of thinking that could be influencing current behaviors and other emotional processes. It is commonly believed that most behavior comes from the subconscious or unconscious mind. Since behavior is determined by subconscious thought, the analyst attempts to reach the patient with concepts such as free word association. This helps to bring out things that may be hidden from the conscious mind. The objective is to allow individuals to continue to speak in a comfortable and non-judgmental environment where hidden thoughts and emotions are gradually brought to the conscious awareness.

Psychoanalysis is commonly used to treat

• Depression
• Anxiety disorders

Psychoanalysis is an effective treatment for many people with moderate to severe difficulties and who have had unsuccessful attempts with briefer therapies. Many people come to analysis because of a pattern of repeated failures in work or in love. Others recognize self destructive patterns of behavior they are unable to change. Others need analysis because the way they are their character substantially limits their choices and their.

Psychoanalysis can take years of regular therapy sessions. If you are suffering with a great deal of emotional distress and have no clue as to why, you may benefit from psychological therapy.

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is a form of psychotherapy and a philosophy of living. It was one of the very first types of cognitive therapies. Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) is based on the concept that emotions and behaviours result from cognitive processes; and that it is possible for human beings to modify such processes to achieve different ways of feeling and behaving. REBT was originally called ‘Rational Therapy’, soon changed to ‘Rational-Emotive Therapy’ and again in the early 1990’s to ‘Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy’.

REBT has been successfully used to help people with a range of clinical and non-clinical problems,

• Depression
• Anxiety disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, agoraphobia, specific phobias, generalized anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, etc.
• Eating disorders, addictions, impulse control disorders
• Anger management, antisocial behaviour, personality disorders
• Sexual abuse recovery
• Adjustment to chronic health problem, physical disability, or mental disorder
• Pain management
• General stress management
• Child or adolescent behaviour disorders
• Relationship and family problems
• Personal growth
• Workplace effectiveness

The Basic Steps in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

• Identifying the underlying irrational thought patterns and beliefs
• Challenging the irrational beliefs
• Gaining Insight and Recognizing Irrational Thought Patterns

The goal of REBT is to help people change their irrational beliefs into rational beliefs. Changing beliefs is the real work of therapy and is achieved by the therapist disputing the client’s irrational beliefs.

Spiritual Psychotherapy is a kind of therapy to deal with life issues through the perspective of your spiritual world. it reveals the basic rule that how you relate to yourself is how you relate to others.  Therefore, how others are relating to you and how you feel about it, offers a good reflection of how you really are relating to yourself. It helps you attune to and release bound emotional pain from the body, energy system and causal level of consciousness.

Benefits of Spiritual Psychotherapy

• Release guilt, shame, humiliation, disappointment, resentment, fear, anxiety, anger, sadness and grief.
• Resolve inner conflicts; find personal integration and inner peace.
• Develop Self-Love, forgiveness, compassion and acceptance, as well as inner strength and personal empowerment.
• Heal relationship, sexuality and intimacy issues and learn to develop healthy relationships.
• Find deep meaning & spiritual perspective during times of crisis, change & life transition.
• Create the life and relationships your heart most deeply desires.
• Live your life as a Sacred and Meaningful Journey

Therapists may inquire about a client’s spiritual beliefs and encourage clients to connect with their spiritual communities. They may also point out areas where spiritual beliefs, practices or relationships seem to be causing, not relieving unnecessary suffering, or seem to contradict a value, goal or belief the client has expressed.

Technique of Transactional Analysis

Transactional analysis utilizes the ‘parent adult child’ theory and is applied throughout many fields, including medical, therapeutic, communications, business management, clinical, organizational, behavioral and personal.

• The Parent, which consists of what a person does and tells others to do because they were told it was the right way by authority figures, such as their parents, teachers, and government.
• The Adult, which consists of thoughts and behaviors resulting from reason, careful consideration, and the intellect.
• The Child, which consists of purely emotional thoughts and behaviors, such as anger and humor.

 Uses of Transactional Analysis

Transactional analysis is used by counselors and clinicians who strive to address the present problems. It is also used widely in the educational arena and provides a vessel through which educational principles and philosophy can be transformed into the daily lives of students. It can be used in any field where there is a need for understanding of individuals, relationships and communication.