THERAPEUTIC APPROACHES
COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY
A widely used structured therapy which helps you identify how your everyday negative thinking patterns (self talk) are contributing to negative feelings and behaviour. It offers strategies to challenge and alter these thinking patterns so they become more rational and helpful.
SOLUTION FOCUSED THERAPY
A therapy which focuses on on the future. It assists in shifting your mindset from being stuck in the past and in the problem, and moves you into how you would like to see and experience your life if the problem didn't exist. Can be powerful for shifting people out of a rut
HYPNOTHERY
A gentle enjoyable therapy which uses suggestion to assist you to relax, sleep better and be more receptive to positive images that can promote self-esteem.
SCHEMA FOCUSED THERAPY
Jeffrey Young's Schema Focused Therapy
This builds on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy taking you beyond your everyday thoughts to becoming aware of the underlying core beliefs that generate your daily internal dialogue. This therapy can helps you shift core beliefs through a variety of interventions and thereby promote deeper long term change.
SOMATIC (Body) PSYCHOTHERAPY
Where appropriate learning to tune into the physical sensations associated with your feelings brings you into a deeper awareness of them and their associated beliefs. Working with body, breath and sometimes movement can be a powerful way to access unconscious feelings and experience deeper self-awareness for those ready and willing to do so. Also known as sensori-motor psychotherapy.
MINDFULLNESS
Learning to be fully present and create stillness in the mind can greatly assist recovery. Drawing from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) one can learn to notice and process their emotions free from judgment. This is a mindful approach.
EMDR
Sonia has trained to an advanced Level 2 in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). EMDR uses bilateral stimulation of the brain to help process and change stuck negative feelings and beliefs. Commonly used to treat trauma (PTSD) but also used to assist with a variety of other problems. EMDR is recognised as a Level 1 treatment for post traumatic stress (highest level of evidence) in the "2010 Evidence-based psychological interventions: A literature review" published by the APS to support the Federal Government's Better Outcomes in Mental Health Care program.
ART THERAPY
A picture tells a thousand words. A counsellor can sometimes get a much deeper sense of how a client is feeling and thinking, when the client expresses their feelings through drawings. Pictures can also be of huge benefit in discovering meaning in your experience.