Treatment Methods
The goal of therapy is to respond to problems in a new, adaptive way. During our initial sessions, we will identify together therapies that will help to achieve your goals.
All treatments described below are considered cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a form of research-backed therapy for a range of clinical challenges including PTSD, anxiety, depression, marital issues, and personality disorders. CBT is based on the principle that mental health problems are the result of unhelpful thinking and learned behavior.
Some of the descriptions below have timelines or session numbers. They are not absolute, but give a general sense that you will see and should expect progress.
You will learn skills and begin to move toward mastery.
You will likely find yourself ready to move on. It’s important to acknowledge the work required but also the success you will see.
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT):
- Helps identify how your trauma(s) affect the way you see the world, other people, and yourself
- We practice understanding how your trauma can color your view of current life situations
- You will develop flexible thinking and the ability to explore many possible explanations for what
you see
12 CPT therapy sessions and involves at-home practice between sessions
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT):
- Learning mindfulness (how to focus your attention on the present moment and increase self-
acceptance), improving relationships, managing day-to-day life stressors, surviving crisis situations - Helps with managing intense emotions, such as anxiety or anger
Choose to complete all sections of this treatment or select one section that might be particularly
helpful. Typically includes one year of weekly appointments
Emotion-Focused Therapy: Couples
- This therapy supports greater relationship satisfaction though understanding how couples respond
to each other when one another’s needs are not being met - Encourages couples to better understand their own emotions as well as their partner’s
- Each spouse learns to express themselves in ways that strengthen the relationship
15 virtual couples therapy sessions
Cognitive Behavioral Conjoint Therapy (CBCT): Couples
- Couples learn about the impact of trauma on their relationships then develop strategies to
manage conflict and communicate effectively - Partners emotionally process how trauma has affected them and learn new ways of thinking about
what happened in the past
15 virtual couple therapy sessions where one or both of the partners have trauma symptoms
Exposure, Relaxation, and Rescripting Therapy (ERRT):
- Designed to help you have fewer nightmares and make them less intense
- You will learn about healthy sleep habits, relaxation techniques, and a process of writing out your
nightmares that will disrupt and change the dreams
Brief treatment program of 5 ERRT sessions
Mastery of Your Anxiety and Panic:
- Strategies and techniques for dealing with both panic disorder and agoraphobia (fear of being in
public places) - Learn breathing techniques, thinking skills to calm yourself, and facing public situations at your
own pace - See the overwhelming physical symptoms of panic from an entirely new perspective, becoming
your own therapist and effectively managing panic attacks on your own
12-session treatment of weekly appointments
Mindfulness:
- Focuses on developing awareness of our emotions, body sensations, behaviors, and thoughts in the
present, in a nonjudgmental way - Involves recognizing when your thoughts wander into the future or the past and then grounding
yourself in the here-and-now. Sometimes we react to our emotions with a critical tone, wishing we
felt more one way and less another way - We mistakenly believe that beating ourselves up for having a particular emotional response will
help us change - We will work toward accepting emotional experiences as they are, identifying what emotions are
trying to tell us, and deciding how to effectively respond to them
12-session mindfulness treatment
Prolonged Exposure (PE):
- Educates about common reactions to trauma and what maintains trauma-related symptoms
- Provides opportunity for real-life exposure to situations that are objectively safe but that the person
is avoiding because they are trauma-related and cause distress - Assists to emotionally process trauma memories through “imaginal exposure,” or repeated
recounting of the trauma memory followed by processing the emotions experienced during the
trauma
Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO-DBT):
- Targets problems related to excessive self-control by helping individuals develop openness to new
experiences - Through practicing flexibility in new situations and forming greater closeness with others, you will
grow in your willingness to learn from experiences
Typically includes one year of weekly appointments
Schema Therapy:
- Identifies how we were taught to think about ourselves and the world in childhood and how these
beliefs affect us now - These beliefs from childhood, or “schemas,” follow a certain theme, like fear of abandonment, fear of
being harmed if you trust someone, or fear of failure - Identifying schema-related thoughts that do not help you, then learning to see new possible
interpretations - Select new behaviors to replace schema behaviors
Approximately 16 weeks
Skills Training in Affective and Interpersonal Regulation (STAIR):
- Effective for those with a history of childhood abuse (e.g., emotional, neglect, physical, and/or sexual)
- Helps individuals who have a difficult time knowing how they feel, fear that emotions control them,
or worry that expressing emotions will make them feel weak
12-session STAIR treatment:
- The first six sessions teach you how to handle challenging emotions (such as anger,
depression, and hypervigilance) - The second half of the treatment focuses on interpersonal skills to improve relationships
Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders (UP):
- Transdiagnostic treatment that can be used to treat a range of different disorders and problems (e.g.,
panic attacks, social anxiety, depressed mood, PTSD) - Overarching goal is to learn new ways of responding to uncomfortable emotions that reduce
symptoms across a patient’s range of problems - Combines mindfulness, seeing your thoughts from different perspectives, and learning to manage
your strong emotions in difficult situations
12-session treatment