Therapy

The Emerging blogger series on Mental Health @ Home

Applying DBT Skills (Guest Post)

This emerging blogger post by Tina from Really Real Blog is about the value of dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) skills. The most life changing program for my mental health has been my DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) Skills Classes. DBT is a method created by Marsha M. Linehan, originally to treat Borderline Personality Disorder, however, now …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is psychodynamic psychotherapy. Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a type of talk therapy that does a deep dive into the past to help uncover what’s going on in the unconscious mind in order to figure out problems in the person’s life. It’s …

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Finding Wise Mind in DBT

Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) has a lot of useful concepts, but one of my favourites is wise mind. Wise mind is the area of overlap between our emotional mind and our reasonable/rational/logical mind. Emotional mind deals in feelings, while reasonable mind deals in facts and evidence. Neither emotion mind nor reasonable mind is wrong or invalid, …

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Setting Sail with the ACT Life Compass

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a type of psychotherapy that takes the stance that avoidance and resistance to internal experiences identified as negative is what causes cognitive distress. To resolve distress, ACT suggests that we need to employ strategies like mindfulness, de-fusion from our thoughts, and recognizing the self as the context in which …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Transference & Countertransference

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s terms are transference and countertransference. The concept of transference was first proposed by Sigmund Freud.  In therapy, it occurs when a client unconsciously redirects feelings associated with one person, often an important figure in the earlier part of their …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Motivational Interviewing

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is motivational interviewing. Motivational interviewing (MI) is a therapeutic communication approach. It’s often used in the field of addictions, but it’s got some very useful tidbits that are more broadly applicable to motivation for any sort of change. …

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Psychotherapy alphabet soup: so many forms of therapy, so many initials

Psychotherapy Alphabet Soup: CBT, DBT, ACT, and More

Some studies have shown that the quality of the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist is a stronger predictor of therapeutic outcomes than the type of therapy used. However, it seems logical that the type of therapy should at least to some extent match up with how you tend to conceptualize the problems you’re experiencing. …

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Free mental health workbooks

Free Mental Health Workbooks

There are a lot of excellent mental health resources out there, and quite a few of them are actually free. Here are some of the good mental health workbooks and worksheets that I’ve come across, most of which are available as printable PDFs. They’re based on therapeutic approaches that have proven to be effective. This …

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Cognitive Distortions in CBT

I’m sure many of you are already familiar with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), but I thought it was still worth taking a look at cognitive distortions, a key ingredient in the CBT soup. Cognitive distortions are common unrealistic patterns of thinking. They’re not delusional, but at the same time, they don’t accurately reflect reality, and …

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