DBT is a skills-based intervention designed to address emotion dysregulation and to provide the client with practical tools to reduce self-harming behaviors.

DBT skills and education training is broken down into four main pillars: Mindfulness Skills, Distress Tolerance Skills, Emotion Regulation Skills, Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills.

A goal of DBT is to challenge extreme black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking and emotional behavior, to sit in nuance, hold two opposing or challenging truths at once, to find ‘the middle path’ while leaning into ‘Radical Acceptance.’

CBT combines parts of Cognitive Therapy (identifying and modifying negative thought patterns and beliefs that contribute to emotional distress and psychological symptoms) and Behavior Therapy (identifying internal and external factors that create distress and motivate the client to participate in unwanted behavior patterns).

The goal of CBT is for the client to understand how their thoughts, feelings and behaviors are all connected and that changing one part of the cycle can lead to change with the other parts.

Clients will be encouraged to participate in Socratic questioning, identify and restructure thinking errors and to participate in behavior activation.

ACT encourages the client to embrace their thoughts and feelings without judgment or guilt by combining mindfulness and self-acceptance.

ACT helps clients identify and come to accept what is out of their control and to identify and lean into what’s in their control.

Homework can look like clarifying values, cost of avoidance worksheets, mindfulness exercises, goal setting and identifying triggers.

Narrative therapy helps the client understand how their inner-dialogue, the stories we tell ourselves, how we talk about ourselves shape our beliefs about ourselves and our behaviors.

Narrative therapy is used to reflect and make sense of old stories and to also encourage the client to access their autonomy in how they are currently writing their story.

Narrative Therapy helps the client externalize the problem, separate from their identity.

The more narrow, rigid and critical our view of ourselves, the small we keep ourselves.

For example, a client might think they are stupid or embarrassing and begin to isolate from others.

Narrative therapy will reflect on where this origin story came from and ask the client to rewrite this story to asses how that would change their beliefs about themselves and create room for behavior changes.

IFS Therapy might also be known as ‘Parts Work’. IFS encourages a curious and non-bias approach to better understand the many nuanced and contradicting parts of ourselves.

IFS recognizes that how we currently operate has much to do with the family systems we grew up in. IFS labels certain behaviors as learned protective parts and defense mechanisms. Sometimes these defense mechanisms learned in childhood are outdating and don’t serve us anymore.

“Part'“ can refer to a belief, emotion or behaviors.

For example, a client can have a part of them that’s people-pleasing/passive and another part of them that’s direct/assertive. A client might not understand why, when or how their passive part takes over in certain unwanted scenarios.

IFS will ask the client something like, “How is that part serving you? Where did that part come from? How old is this part of you? What would happen if you let that part go?”

Gestalt Therapy emphasizes the present-moment awareness, personal responsiblity and encourages integration of fragmented parts of the self.

The goal in Gestalt Therapy is for the client to become more self-aware and begin to foster a holistic integration of how their mind, body and emotions can foster growth.

Techniques include: role-play, the ‘empty chair’ dialogue and mindfulness focused on in-the-moment somatic sensations during session.

These techniques might sound like:

“What are you experiencing tight now in your body as you share this with me?”

“What emotions are coming up for you as you share this?”

“Where in your body are you holding this emotion?”

Existential therapy encourages the client to find greater, personal meaning with life’s circumstances and to try to find purpose or value during moments of suffering.

Existential therapy focuses on the physical, psychological and spiritual aspects of the client.

Psychodynamic therapy emphasizes early childhood development, focuses on transference and counter transference, free association, analysis and explores the unconscious (including dreams, fantasies, inner world and memories).

MI is used to motivate the client toward behavior change. MI explores ambivalence to change with empathy, curiosity, rolls with resistance and also uses confrontation and reflection.

MI helps clients clarify their goals, helps them identify where they have agency and reminds them of times in the past where they may have created positive change for themselves.