TYPES OF THERAPY
ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY (ACT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an evidence-based approach that helps people respond differently to difficult thoughts, emotions, and internal experiences. Rather than trying to eliminate distress, ACT helps clients build psychological flexibility so they can manage pain more effectively, stay grounded in the present, and make choices that are more aligned with their values. ACT is often helpful for anxiety, depression, OCD, trauma-related stress, life transitions, and other emotional challenges.
TYPES OF THERAPY
ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY FOR INSOMNIA (ACT-I)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Insomnia (ACT-I) is an ACT-based approach designed to help individuals who struggle with chronic sleep difficulties. ACT-I focuses on changing the relationship people have with sleeplessness, worry, and nighttime distress rather than trying to force sleep. It helps reduce the struggle around sleep, increase flexibility, and support healthier sleep patterns by addressing the emotional and behavioral cycles that often keep insomnia going.
TYPES OF THERAPY
APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS
Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a structured, evidence-based approach that focuses on understanding behavior, building practical skills, and increasing behaviors that support daily functioning and quality of life. ABA can be used to help individuals strengthen communication, social, emotional, and adaptive skills while also addressing behaviors that may interfere with learning, independence, or relationships.
ABA is often used with children, adolescents, and individuals with developmental or behavioral challenges, but its principles can be applied in many settings. Treatment is individualized and goal-oriented, with strategies tailored to the person’s needs, strengths, and environment. The overall goal of ABA is to support meaningful growth, improve functioning, and help individuals develop skills that are useful in everyday life.
TYPES OF THERAPY
BIOFEEDBACK
Biofeedback is a therapeutic approach that helps individuals become more aware of how their body responds to stress, anxiety, and other physical or emotional challenges. Using real-time information about functions such as breathing, heart rate, muscle tension, or nervous system activation, biofeedback can help people learn to regulate their body more effectively and build greater control over stress-related symptoms.
Biofeedback is often used to support concerns such as anxiety, stress, tension, headaches, sleep difficulties, and other conditions influenced by the mind-body connection. By learning how physical responses are connected to thoughts, emotions, and behavior, clients can develop practical skills for calming the nervous system, improving self-regulation, and supporting overall well-being.
TYPES OF THERAPY
FAITH BASED / CHRISTIAN COUNSELING
Faith-based / Christian counseling integrates evidence-based therapeutic care with a client’s spiritual beliefs, values, and faith traditions when that is important to the individual seeking treatment. For clients who want it, counseling may incorporate Christian faith, prayer, spiritual reflection, and discussion of how faith relates to healing, relationships, decision-making, and personal growth.
This approach can be helpful for anxiety, depression, grief, relationship concerns, life transitions, and other emotional struggles. Treatment is always tailored to the client’s goals and comfort level, with the aim of providing thoughtful, respectful care that supports emotional well-being while honoring the client’s faith and spiritual life.
TYPES OF THERAPY
CLIENT-CENTERED THERAPY
Client-centered therapy is a supportive, nonjudgmental approach that helps individuals explore their thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a safe and accepting environment. This style of therapy emphasizes empathy, authenticity, and unconditional positive regard, allowing clients to feel heard, understood, and respected as they work through challenges and move toward personal growth.
Client-centered therapy is based on the belief that people have an inherent capacity for healing, insight, and change when given the right support. Rather than directing the process, the therapist works collaboratively with the client, helping them build greater self-awareness, confidence, and clarity. This approach can be helpful for anxiety, depression, relationship concerns, self-esteem issues, life transitions, and a wide range of emotional struggles.
TYPES OF THERAPY
COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL (CBT)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a structured, evidence-based form of therapy that helps individuals identify and change unhelpful patterns of thinking and behavior that contribute to emotional distress. CBT is based on the idea that the way we interpret situations affects how we feel and respond, and that by recognizing distorted or unproductive thought patterns, people can begin to make meaningful changes in mood, behavior, and daily functioning.
CBT helps clients become more aware of the connection between thoughts, emotions, and actions. In therapy, individuals learn to recognize patterns such as catastrophizing, harsh self-criticism, all-or-nothing thinking, avoidance, and other habits that can keep anxiety, depression, stress, and low self-esteem going. The goal is not simply to “think positively,” but to develop more balanced, realistic, and helpful ways of understanding situations and responding to them.
This approach is practical, goal-oriented, and skills-based. CBT often includes learning coping strategies, improving problem-solving, increasing emotional awareness, building healthier routines, and gradually changing behaviors that reinforce distress. It can be helpful for anxiety, depression, panic, OCD, trauma-related symptoms, stress, anger, relationship difficulties, and many other emotional and behavioral concerns. CBT gives clients tools they can use both in and outside of therapy, with the aim of creating lasting change and improved overall well-being.
TYPES OF THERAPY
COGNITIVE BEHAVIOR THERAPY FOR INSOMNIA (CBT-I)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is an evidence-based treatment designed specifically for persistent sleep difficulties. It focuses on identifying and changing the thoughts, habits, and behavioral patterns that can keep insomnia going over time. Rather than relying only on sleep medication, CBT-I helps individuals understand the factors that interfere with rest and build healthier patterns that support more consistent sleep.
CBT-I often addresses issues such as irregular sleep routines, spending too much time awake in bed, worry or frustration about sleep, and behaviors that unintentionally reinforce sleeplessness. Treatment may include education about sleep, changes to sleep habits and routines, and strategies for responding differently to nighttime wakefulness and sleep-related stress. The goal is to reduce the cycle of struggle around sleep, improve sleep efficiency, and help individuals develop a more stable and sustainable relationship with rest.
TYPES OF THERAPY
COGNITIVE PROCESSING THERAPY (CPT)
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is an evidence-based treatment developed to help individuals recover from trauma and post-traumatic stress. CPT focuses on the way traumatic experiences can affect beliefs about safety, trust, control, self-worth, intimacy, and the world. After trauma, people may begin to feel stuck in painful thoughts, self-blame, guilt, shame, or negative assumptions that continue to fuel distress long after the event has ended.
CPT helps individuals identify and challenge these trauma-related patterns in a structured and supportive way. Through treatment, clients learn to examine how trauma has shaped their thinking, develop more balanced and accurate perspectives, and reduce the emotional grip of the experience. CPT can be especially helpful for PTSD, trauma-related anxiety, guilt, shame, and other long-lasting effects of traumatic events. The goal is to help individuals process trauma more fully, reduce distress, and move forward with greater clarity, safety, and emotional freedom.
TYPES OF THERAPY
DIALECTICAL BEHAVIORAL (DBT)
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based treatment that helps individuals manage intense emotions, reduce impulsive or self-defeating behaviors, and build healthier ways of coping with stress and relationships. DBT combines acceptance and change, helping clients learn to recognize and validate their emotional experience while also developing practical skills to respond more effectively.
DBT focuses on four core skill areas: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. These skills help individuals become more aware of their thoughts and feelings, tolerate difficult moments without making things worse, manage overwhelming emotional reactions, and communicate more clearly and effectively in relationships.
DBT can be especially helpful for people who feel emotionally overwhelmed, reactive, chronically stressed, or stuck in painful relational patterns. It is often used for mood instability, self-harm, impulsivity, trauma-related symptoms, anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, and other concerns involving emotional dysregulation. The goal of DBT is to help clients create greater stability, self-control, and confidence while building a life that feels more manageable and meaningful.
TYPES OF THERAPY
EXISTENTIAL THERAPY
Existential therapy is a reflective, insight-oriented approach that helps individuals explore questions of meaning, identity, freedom, responsibility, change, and mortality. Rather than focusing only on symptom reduction, existential therapy looks at the deeper human struggles that can underlie anxiety, depression, emptiness, grief, relationship conflict, and major life transitions. It helps clients examine how they relate to themselves, others, and the larger questions of life.
This approach encourages individuals to look honestly at their choices, values, fears, and patterns of living. Clients may explore concerns such as feeling disconnected, uncertain about purpose, overwhelmed by responsibility, or stuck in ways of living that no longer feel authentic. The goal is to increase self-awareness, strengthen personal meaning, and help individuals live more intentionally and fully, even in the face of uncertainty, pain, or change.
TYPES OF THERAPY
EXPOSURE AND RESPONSE PREVENTION (ERP)
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is an evidence-based treatment designed to help individuals reduce fear, avoidance, and compulsive behaviors. ERP is most commonly used for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but it can also be helpful for phobias, panic-related avoidance, and other anxiety-driven patterns. The treatment involves gradually facing feared thoughts, situations, sensations, or triggers while resisting the urge to engage in compulsions, rituals, reassurance-seeking, or other behaviors meant to reduce distress in the moment.
Over time, ERP helps individuals build tolerance for uncertainty, discomfort, and anxiety without relying on avoidance or compulsive responses. Rather than trying to make fear disappear immediately, the goal is to change the way a person responds to it. This process can help weaken the cycle that keeps obsessions and compulsions going, increase confidence in handling distress, and make everyday life feel more flexible, manageable, and free.
TYPES OF THERAPY
EYE MOVEMENT DESNSITIZATION & REPROCESSING (EMDR)
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an evidence-based therapy designed to help individuals process and heal from distressing or traumatic experiences. EMDR works from the understanding that painful memories can sometimes remain unprocessed in the nervous system, causing them to continue affecting emotions, beliefs, physical reactions, and behavior long after the original event has passed.
During EMDR, clients focus on specific memories, thoughts, emotions, and body sensations while engaging in guided bilateral stimulation, such as eye movements or other rhythmic forms of stimulation. This process can help the brain reprocess distressing experiences in a way that reduces their emotional intensity and allows more adaptive beliefs and responses to develop. EMDR is often used for trauma, PTSD, anxiety, panic, phobias, and other experiences that continue to feel emotionally “stuck.” The goal is to help individuals feel less overwhelmed by the past and more able to move forward with greater stability and relief.
TYPES OF THERAPY
FAMILY SYSTEMS THERAPY
Family systems therapy is an approach that looks at individuals within the context of their relationships and family dynamics rather than viewing problems in isolation. It is based on the understanding that patterns of communication, roles, emotional responses, and unresolved conflict within a family system can strongly influence a person’s mental health, behavior, and sense of well-being. This approach helps identify how these patterns develop and how they continue to affect current functioning.
Family systems therapy can be helpful for family conflict, parenting difficulties, relationship stress, blended family challenges, life transitions, and emotional or behavioral concerns affecting one or more family members. The goal is to improve understanding, strengthen communication, reduce unhealthy patterns, and create more supportive and effective ways of relating. Even when only one person is in therapy, family systems work can help that individual better understand their role in the system and make healthier choices within it.
TYPES OF THERAPY
GOTTMAN METHOD FOR HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS
Gottman Method Couples Therapy is a structured, research-based approach to couples counseling that helps partners improve communication, manage conflict more effectively, and strengthen emotional connection. Based on decades of relationship research, this method focuses on identifying patterns that damage closeness and replacing them with healthier ways of relating. It helps couples better understand each other’s inner world, respond more effectively to stress and conflict, and build a stronger foundation of trust, respect, and friendship.
This approach can be helpful for couples dealing with communication problems, recurring arguments, emotional distance, betrayal or loss of trust, parenting stress, and major life transitions. Gottman Method Couples Therapy combines practical tools with deeper relational work, helping partners improve day-to-day interactions while also strengthening the overall health of the relationship. The goal is to help couples create a more stable, connected, and resilient partnership.
TYPES OF THERAPY
INTERPERSONAL THERAPY (IPT)
Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) is a structured, evidence-based approach that focuses on how relationships, social roles, and life changes affect emotional well-being. IPT is based on the idea that symptoms such as depression, anxiety, grief, and stress are often closely connected to difficulties in important relationships or major transitions in life. Rather than focusing primarily on the distant past, this approach looks at current interpersonal patterns and helps clients improve the way they relate to others and cope with change.
IPT can be especially helpful for concerns involving grief and loss, conflict in relationships, role transitions, social isolation, and communication difficulties. Treatment focuses on identifying the interpersonal issues most connected to a person’s distress and developing healthier, more effective ways of responding. The goal is to improve relationships, strengthen social support, reduce emotional symptoms, and help individuals function more confidently in their daily lives.
TYPES OF THERAPY
JUNGIAN THERAPY
Jungian therapy is a depth-oriented approach that focuses on understanding the unconscious patterns, symbols, emotions, and inner conflicts that shape a person’s life. Rooted in the work of Carl Jung, this approach looks beyond surface symptoms to explore deeper issues related to identity, meaning, relationships, personal growth, and the parts of the self that may be hidden, neglected, or not yet fully understood.
Jungian therapy often involves exploring recurring patterns, dreams, imagery, life themes, and emotional experiences in order to increase self-awareness and foster personal integration. It can be helpful for individuals struggling with anxiety, depression, life transitions, inner conflict, questions of purpose, or a sense of feeling stuck or disconnected. The goal is to help clients better understand themselves at a deeper level, develop a stronger sense of wholeness, and move toward a more authentic and meaningful life.
TYPES OF THERAPY
MINDFULNESS-BASED COGNITIVE THERAPY
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (MB-CBT) combines the practical, skills-based strategies of cognitive behavioral therapy with mindfulness practices that help individuals become more aware of their thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations in the present moment. This approach helps clients notice distressing patterns without immediately reacting to them, making it easier to respond in more intentional, balanced, and effective ways.
MB-CBT can be helpful for anxiety, depression, stress, relapse prevention, emotional reactivity, and chronic patterns of worry or self-criticism. Treatment often includes learning how to recognize unhelpful thought patterns, develop healthier coping responses, and use mindfulness to reduce automatic reactions and increase self-awareness. The goal is to help individuals build greater emotional regulation, resilience, and clarity while improving overall well-being.
TYPES OF THERAPY
MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING
Motivational Interviewing is a collaborative, client-centered approach that helps individuals explore ambivalence and strengthen their own motivation for change. Rather than pushing or persuading, this approach is designed to help people clarify what they want, understand what may be keeping them stuck, and identify their own reasons for making meaningful changes. It is especially useful when someone feels conflicted, uncertain, or resistant about taking the next step.
Motivational Interviewing is often used in work involving substance use, health behavior change, treatment engagement, relationship patterns, and other situations where readiness for change may vary. The therapist works in a supportive, nonjudgmental way to help the client build confidence, resolve internal conflict, and move toward choices that are more aligned with their goals and values. The goal is to support lasting change by helping individuals access and strengthen their own internal motivation.
TYPES OF THERAPY
PARENT-CHILD INTERACTION THERAPY (PCIT)
Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is an evidence-based treatment designed to improve the relationship between parents and young children while also addressing challenging behaviors. PCIT helps caregivers build more effective parenting skills, strengthen attachment, and respond to behavior in ways that increase cooperation, emotional regulation, and positive connection. The approach is structured, active, and focused on real-time coaching to support both the child and caregiver.
PCIT is often used for concerns such as defiance, aggression, tantrums, impulsivity, emotional dysregulation, and difficulties with listening or following directions. Treatment typically involves helping parents learn skills that improve warmth, consistency, limit-setting, and confidence while reducing patterns that may unintentionally reinforce problem behaviors. The goal is to create a calmer, more connected parent-child relationship and support healthier behavior and functioning at home and beyond.
TYPES OF THERAPY
PSYCHODYNAMIC THERAPY
Psychodynamic therapy is an insight-oriented approach that helps individuals understand how unconscious patterns, past experiences, and unresolved emotional conflicts influence current thoughts, feelings, relationships, and behavior. This form of therapy looks beneath the surface of immediate symptoms to explore the deeper emotional themes that may be shaping a person’s life, often outside of conscious awareness.
Psychodynamic therapy can be helpful for anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, low self-esteem, recurring emotional patterns, and a general sense of feeling stuck or disconnected. Treatment often involves exploring early experiences, attachment patterns, defenses, and relational dynamics in order to increase self-understanding and emotional insight. The goal is to help individuals develop a clearer understanding of themselves, improve relationships, and create more lasting and meaningful change.
TYPES OF THERAPY
RATIONAL EMOTIVE BEHAVIOR THERAPY
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is a structured, action-oriented form of therapy that helps individuals identify and challenge irrational beliefs that contribute to emotional distress and unhelpful behavior. REBT is based on the idea that it is not only situations themselves that upset us, but the rigid, extreme, or unrealistic beliefs we hold about those situations. By changing these beliefs, individuals can reduce distress and respond in healthier, more flexible ways.
REBT can be helpful for anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, shame, perfectionism, low frustration tolerance, and self-defeating patterns. Treatment focuses on recognizing thoughts that are overly harsh, absolutist, or unrealistic and replacing them with more balanced, rational, and constructive ways of thinking. The goal is to help individuals build emotional resilience, improve problem-solving, and respond to life’s challenges with greater perspective and self-control.
TYPES OF THERAPY
SOLUTION-FOCUSED BRIEF THERAPY
Solution-Focused Therapy is a goal-oriented, strengths-based approach that helps individuals focus on solutions, progress, and existing abilities rather than staying centered on problems. This approach emphasizes what is already working, what the client wants to be different, and the small, realistic steps that can move them toward meaningful change. It is designed to help clients build on their strengths and resources in a practical and hopeful way.
Solution-Focused Therapy can be helpful for anxiety, depression, relationship concerns, stress, life transitions, parenting challenges, and other situations where clients want clearer direction and forward movement. Rather than spending extensive time analyzing the origins of a problem, treatment focuses on identifying goals, recognizing exceptions to the problem, and strengthening the patterns that support improvement. The goal is to help individuals create change efficiently, increase confidence, and move toward a more satisfying and manageable life.
