Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) & Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT)

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You want something to change in your life, but you aren't sure how to get there. Maybe your relationships aren't thriving the way you want. Or you are unhappy at your job. When you're at home, you wish you had more energy to do things you liked and enjoyed them more when you did get yourself to do them.

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I appreciate you being willing to try something new. It can be hard and scary to do, but to come here, you are also ready to try. To put yourself out there and see if things can be better.

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Two of the main types of therapy that I regularly draw from are Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) & Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT). CBT combines cognitive therapy with behavioral changes to help you to make changes; by changing how we think we can change how we act and sometimes vice versa. For example, if you wanted to wake up earlier in the morning, we could work on changing how you think about it. We could talk about what would motivate you to wake up, how you wouldn't be late to things anymore, and what else you could do with your morning time. Or, behaviorally, we could set a really loud alarm, possibly across the room, to help wake you up on time. Both would probably work and both have different benefits. Typically, we work to change thought patterns to help you make changes, but sometimes changing behaviors can be a different way to approach it using CBT.

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CBT does typically involve practice assignments; the reason is pretty simple, the more you practice, the faster you tend to get better. That's not to say that we can't modify the approach, because sometimes life happens and gets in the way.

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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a cousin to CBT. There is definitely some overlap, but ACT tends to focus on underlying values in our lives as vehicles to increasing the meaning in our lives. ACT says that life isn't perfect; pain is a part of it, but the suffering part is optional. ACT helps us figure out the difference between pain and suffering and let go of the (optional) suffering portion. This type of therapy  can be particularly helpful, in my experience, for helping figure out what to do when we feel stuck or perhaps there has been a big loss in life that we don't know how to navigate. It can also help with chronic pain.

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The truth is that I tend to lean on these modalities more than do strict "manualized" (aka, from the book) treatment. For the most part, I've found that to work really well for me and for my patients. However, if you ever do want to do more of a traditional stint of CBT, I am happy to offer that as well and can also follow the Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) manual for trauma treatment (as that is a type of CBT designed specifically to treat trauma). Essentially, I individualize my treatment depending on what seems to work for you and may draw from a variety of these modalities.

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You can book an appointment by using my email or phone number below or by going to my Contact Page.