Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is based on the assumption that our emotional and behavioral responses are related to the way we perceive and interpret events. CBT focuses on solving daily problems. In other words, it deals with the present rather than the past. However, the past is revisited to understand the person's way of thinking. Subsequently, the individual's irrational thought patterns, cognitive distortions, dysfunctional thoughts, and behaviors are identified. These are worked on. For the therapy to be successful, the client needs to cooperate and fulfill the assignments given to him/her. The main goal in therapy is to help the client change his/her irrational thoughts and behaviors. The client can utilize these skills learned in psychotherapy to solve other problems in his/her life.
Evidence based questionnaires are administered prior to the commencement of therapy. This way, a screening is made regarding the person's situation. After the therapy has concluded, these same scales are repeated to monitor the changes in the individual's condition.
CBT is an effective method used in the treatment of many mental health disorders including generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, depression, phobias, sexual problems, eating disorders and exam or performance anxiety. If needed medication and therapy can be utilized together in collaboration with a psychiatrist. CBT is also a good alternative in conditions such as pregnancy and chronic systemic diseases where the use of medication may not be advisable or in cases where the patient does not prefer to use medication.
ACT assumes that instead of defining behavior as 'good' or 'bad', it should be assessed according to the context in which it occurs. To attain health and happiness, it is important to "accept" that pain is an inevitable part of life. From a psychological point of view, trying to escape from our negative inner experiences (emotions, thoughts, memories, and feelings) that cause pain does not necessarily work. On the contrary, it is better to connect with them sincerely and make room for them, despite the discomfort they cause, rather than trying to control them, to fix them, or to repair them.
The aim of ACT is to increase people's psychological resilience and to enable them to adopt value-driven behaviors. "Psychological resilience" requires “being in the moment" by approaching our inner experiences with attention and openness. It is also about being committed to act in line with our values. To summarize, one of the main goals is to recognize our emotions, thoughts, memories, and feelings that stand in the way of a meaningful life; to weaken their dominance over our behaviors without trying to change them, control them or reduce their intensity or frequency.
Narrative Therapy is a client-centered approach that sees each person as the expert of their own life. It acts on the assumption that individuals and problems are independent of each other, and that people have the skills, beliefs, values, and competencies to ease the impact of their problems. It respects the clients' lives, preferences, experiences, and identities and is non-judgmental.
According to Narrative Therapy, there is no reason for the person to own the problem because the problem comes from outside. Yet if the individual internalizes and embraces the problem, he or she cannot get rid of it or distance it from themselves. It is important for the clients to strengthen their ties with individuals from their past and ongoing relationships while trying to cope with the problems in their lives. The people from whom the clients learn their skills and who witness this development process enrich the clients' life and make them stronger.
Schema Therapy is a holistic approach that brings together many psychotherapy and developmental models in a functional way. Schema Therapy draws on cognitive, behavioral, psychodynamic, attachment and gestalt approaches. Individuals have schemas (thought patterns) that they create during childhood / adolescence to cope with problems. These schemas, which are thought to be useful in the early stages, may be the cause of problems over time. For this reason, it is necessary to work with these schemas in therapy.
Schema Therapy started out with the aim of finding solutions to chronic personality problems (such as borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder). Over time, it has been applied to clinical problems and disorders such as chronic depression, childhood traumas, eating disorders, couples therapy, and substance abuse.
Schema Therapy is a humanistic approach that normalizes psychological disorders instead of accepting them as pathological. Accordingly, we all have schemas (the way of thinking that underlies psychological problems), coping styles (methods of coping with schemas) and modes (structures consisting of many schemas and coping styles).
The development and behavior of one member of the family is closely related to the other members of the family. It is necessary to evaluate the clients’ difficulties not by looking at their adjustment disorders, background, and development, but by looking at the functionality of the system in which they reside, i.e. the family.
To ensure positive change in the individual, it is necessary to consider the family as a whole and the relationships within it. Therefore, in systemic family therapy, not only the individual with the problem, but all members of the family are addressed comprehensively.
In systemic family therapy, the system in which the applicant is living is explored and the whole family is invited to the therapy. The focus is on the relationships within the family that will make the client's problem meaningful. The meanings, rules, cultural and sexual perspectives passed down from generation to generation within the system are tried to be understood. Within this structure, solutions are generated by searching for ways to bring about change.
According to the psychodynamic school of thought, the human mind is multifaceted, layered, and complex. Especially unconscious processes affect our emotions, behaviors, and choices. One of the main elements affecting our unconscious processes is our relationships. The relationship between the therapist and the client is like a small model of the relationships the client experiences in daily life. The therapist works on memories, the unconscious and transference to make sense of the client's experiences.
The therapist helps the client to understand how the defense mechanisms used by the client affect their feelings. It is also aimed to increase the client's level of awareness and insight by understanding the unconscious cycle. In this way, the client is expected to make sense of what they are experiencing and feeling and to reduce the conflicts in their inner world. The ultimate goal in psychodynamic therapy is to let challenging experiences, vicious cycles and blockages gain new meanings in the client's mind and be shaped and experienced in different ways. Thus, it is aimed for the clients to achieve inner freedom by experiencing breakthroughs in their lives.
EMDR is a therapy approach named with the initials of the words "Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing”.
EMDR therapy allows us to make sense of disturbing events, memories, and uneasiness that we experience and cannot get rid of. In this way, EMDR allows us to recover from the effects of painful or traumatic memories and relieve ourselves. EMDR is a form of psychotherapy that identifies the cause of discomfort in clients which are negative and poorly stored memories. It changes these bad memories under the guidance of the adaptive information processing model. False beliefs and maladaptive behaviors stem from these falsely stored memories from our past experiences. We can access these target memories and change them by processing them with therapy.
Although EMDR is mainly applied for PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), intense fears and anxieties, it is a type of therapy that can be used in many psychiatric disorders today.