I think it is important to be flexible and utilize treatment orientations that feel genuine to you as well as being aimed towards addressing your presenting problems or challenges. While there are many orientations to choose from, here are the ones that I typically use and a description of what each one means to me.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Is it possible that you sometimes think about experiences in a rigid or distorted manner and may not be aware that you are doing this? Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help you to recognize these distorted thoughts and aim to shift them towards alternative more balanced ones. Thoughts, emotions and behaviors can be quite interconnected. By changing the way you think about an experience, this can affect the way you feel, as well as your actions.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT): Are you having challenges in managing how you feel, or interacting with other people? Dialectical Behavior Therapy can help you to build up your awareness levels of your feelings and everyday interactions and activities. It teaches specific skills that can be useful for regulating your emotions and communicating more effectively with others.

Solution Focused Therapy - Do you have a specific challenge that is impacting you at home, school, work, in your relationships, or within yourself. Let’s identify what it is and find a workable solution, utilizing your strengths.

Narrative: Does it seem like your life sometimes has a particular challenging theme or story, which repeats itself or feels stuck? With Narrative Therapy, you can start to share that story in ways that can help you recognize the different influences on that story. You can also look for times in your life that were unique and different from your general theme or story. Through this process you can create a new story from a fresh perspective.

Attachment-based: Do you currently form insecure, anxious or avoidant attachments? If so, this can make it challenging to develop and maintain stable relationships and can impact your communication skills. Through Attachment Based Therapy you can learn about your attachment patterns and how to change them to stay more genuinely connected with others.

Person Centered: I believe a Person Centered orientation is an important part of building the therapeutic relationship. Its emphasis on the therapist being genuine, empathetic and having unconditional positive regard for the client can be very meaningful in developing a connection between the therapist and client.