
We can draw on a range of psychological approaches which are best suited to meet your specific needs. These can include:
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) encourages us to get in touch with what really matters to us and use these values to guide and motivate us. It teaches us how to embrace our thoughts and feelings instead of trying to get rid of them and getting frustrated with ourselves.
One technique in ACT that you may have heard of is “mindfulness”. But what really is mindfulness?! Mindfulness aims to connect us with the present moment. Concentrating on the present moment can be hard as our minds are busy thinking, problem solving, analysing…which is usually OK! But sometimes our minds get stuck on a problem that can’t be solved, or play an upsetting moment over and over again. This can leave us feeling worried, upset and stressed.
Mindfulness offers us another option to this usual way of thinking. It simply teaches us skills to focus on the present moment, without getting tangled up in difficult thoughts or emotions. Studies all over the world have shown how helpful mindfulness is to our mental and physical health. We have put some mindfulness exercises for you to try in “useful resources”.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
CBT is a widely support psychological therapy and is the recommended approach across many mental health problems.
With CBT we can better understand how we think (thoughts), how we feel (emotions) and how we act (behaviour) all link together.
Therefore, if we experience negative thoughts, we can experience distress, low mood, anxiety, and it can impact what we do.
By becoming aware of how we interpret our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour we can learn new ways of coping. Usually we start CBT by exploring what problems you want to work on and what your goals for therapy are. We then work together using weekly therapy sessions and between-session tasks to try and achieve your goals.
Metacognitive Therapy (MCT)
MCT is a psychological therapy which focusses on helping people to modify unhelpful beliefs about worry. The therapy aims to help people discover new, and more helpful ways to react to distressing thoughts, so it is less likely that you will spend time dwelling/ruminating on these, and learn to develop more helpful ways of managing when distressing thoughts occur.
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)