Psychology in Waurn Ponds near Geelong

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a talk therapy that can support change to the way you think and behave. CBT can help you become aware of unhelpful automatic thoughts that can lead to unhelpful behaviors that can increase or perpetuate the cycle of symptoms with presentation like depression and anxiety.
CBT can also be helpful with many other mental and physical difficulties.

How it works:

• CBT uses the understanding that your thoughts, emotions, physical sensations and behaviors (actions) are all interconnected and negative thoughts and feelings can cause unhelpful or negative patterns that we can become trapped in.
• CBT’s focus is to support you to deal with overwhelming problems in a more positive way by reducing them into smaller parts.
• You will be shown how to change negative patterns to improve the way you feel.
• CBT focuses on your current problems and difficulties rather than focusing on issues from your past.
• CBT can provide practical ways to improve your state of mind on a daily basis

Effective for the treatment of a range of problems including:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Phobias
• Trauma
• Addictions

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT, pronounced act) uses a mindfulness based approach. ACT provides a reduced focus on symptom reduction with an understanding that you can live fulfilling and enriched lives by using the principles of ACT regardless of your symptoms.

How it works:
ACT focuses on the understanding that language, negative self-talk, undesired memories and unhelpful thinking patterns can lead to interpreting experiences in a negative way. Using a wide range of experiential exercises and values-guided behavioral interventions ACT incorporates mindfulness skills and metaphors to build skills.

Effective for the treatment of a range of problems including:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Chronic pain
• Stress
• Addictions

Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) is a strength-based approach that focuses on solution-building rather than problem-solving. SFBT focuses on your default solution patterns, assesses them for effectiveness, and alters or replaces them with problem-solving approaches that work.

How it works:
SFBT model is most effective when you understand and align the following assumptions:

• Change is constant and certain and the client wants to change;
• Emphasis will be on what is changeable and possible;
• Clients must develop their own goals;
• Therapy is short-term;
• The focus is on the future—a client’s history is not a key part of this type of therapy

Effective for the treatment of a range of problems including:

• Eating Disorders
• Gambling addiction
• Relationship problems
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Behavioural problems

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a treatment technique that supports processing of traumatic memories while moving your eyes a specific way. The goal of EMDR is to support healing from trauma or other distressing life experiences.

EMDR therapy doesn’t require talking in detail about a distressing issue. EMDR focuses on supporting a change to your emotions, thoughts or behaviors that result from a distressing experience (trauma) allowing your brain to resume a natural healing process.

How it works:
Your brain can store trauma memories in a way that doesn’t allow for healthy healing. Trauma can be like a wound that your brain hasn’t been allowed to heal. Your brain can respond like the danger isn’t over because it didn’t have the chance to heal.

When you undergo EMDR, you access memories of a trauma event in very specific ways. Using guided instructions with eye movements while accessing the trauma memories allows for reprocessing what you remember from the negative event.

The reprocessing helps “repair” the mental injury from that memory. This can result in no longer feeling like you are reliving it when you remember and sensations and feelings related will be much more manageable.
EMDR is an eight-phase treatment method.
1. History taking,
2. Client preparation,
3. Assessment,
4. Desensitisation,
5. Installation,
6. Body scan,
7. Closure
8. Reevaluation of treatment effect

Effective for the treatment of a range of problems including:

• PTSD
• Trauma memories
• Phobias
• Anxiety
• Panic disorder

In Schema Therapy (ST) one of the first steps is to support you to identify your Early Maladaptive Schema. In ST an Early Maladaptive Schema is defined as: “broad, pervasive themes regarding oneself and one’s relationship with others, developed during childhood and elaborated throughout one’s lifetime, and dysfunctional to a significant degree.”

How it works:
Schema therapy emphasizes the therapist-client relationship and its potential for corrective influence. ST aims to help you understand your core emotional needs and ways to meet those needs adaptively. ST focuses extensively on processing memories of aversive childhood experiences, making use of experiential techniques to change negative emotions related to those memories

Effective for the treatment of a range of problems including:

• Childhood trauma
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Personality disorders
• Eating disorders
• Addictions

Mindfulness-based interventions promote the practice of good physical and mental health. Mindfulness-based interventions are included in stress reduction, mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy (MBCBT), dialectal behavior therapy (DBT), and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).

Mindfulness supports you to focus your attention on the present experience in a non-judgmental way. Mindfulness refers to the state in which we increase our awareness of our emotional, physical, and mental condition in the present moment, with acceptance.

How it works:
We can learn to pay attention to a range of experiences, such as cognitions, feelings and bodily sensations while accepting them without being influenced by them. Mindfulness practices can help you better control your thoughts, rather than you being controlled by them. Mindfulness can be achieved through a variety of techniques, although they are most commonly delivered through the use of mindfulness meditation.

Effective for the treatment of a range of problems including:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Phobias
• Physical pain
• Self control
• Stress