Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a structured, active, and collaborative therapy which can help to improve low mood and anxiety.
What to expect from CBT?
The therapist will work with you to help change any unhelpful thinking patterns and behaviours that are causing or maintaining your current difficulties.
You will be given the opportunity to discuss your problems in relation to how you think about yourself, the world, and other people as well as how what you do, or don’t do, affects how you think and feel.
Treatment usually involves practical exercises and trialling different techniques alongside your therapist and as homework between sessions. CBT mainly focuses on your here and now’ problems and difficulties, but a “formulation based approach” also considers the influence of previous existing difficulties.
For more information go to the NHS website.
Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) is a structured therapy for people with moderate to severe depression.
A central idea in IPT is that psychological symptoms, such as depressed mood, can be understood as a response to current difficulties in our everyday interactions with others. In turn, the depressed mood can also affect the quality of these interactions.
When a person is able to interact more effectively with others, their psychological symptoms often improve.
What to expect from IPT?
IPT typically focuses on the following relationship areas:
- Conflict with another person
- Life changes that affect how you feel about yourself and others
- Grief and loss
- Difficulty in starting or keeping relationships going
For more information go to the NHS website.
Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR) is another talking therapy used to help people who have post-traumatic stress disorder or have experienced a ’one-off’ trauma that remains unresolved.
This can leave them feeling overwhelmed and their brain cannot process the information as a ‘normal’ memory.
When a person recalls an unresolved memory, they can re-experience what they saw, heard, felt, smelt or tasted and this can be intense. Sometimes the memories are so distressing the person tries to avoid thinking about them or avoids things related to the memory, to avoid re-experiencing distressing feelings.
What to expect from EMDR?
With support from your therapist EMDR helps the brain reprocess memories of the traumatic event so you can let go of them.
The lingering effects and distress of the memory reduce, releasing the negative self-beliefs related to the trauma. It does not require detailed description of the trauma event, or homework outside of the treatment sessions.
For more information go to the NHS website.
Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) is for people with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, phobias and relationship difficulties. It explores patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaviour that are unhelpful and causing difficulties.
What to expect from CAT?
CAT is a time limited therapy, typically 16 sessions, and uses cognitive psychotherapies and psychoanalytic approaches to understand the underlying causes which have often developed in early life and in early relationships.
It can be particularly helpful in understanding complex psychological problems which may hold the person back or create difficulty in their life, mood and their relationships.
CAT aims at helping a person to make positive change by developing new ways of understanding and new strategies for managing problems and difficult feelings.
For more information go to the ACAT website.
Through exploring issues with a counsellor you may gain a new understanding which can support you in finding your way forward; giving you more confidence and control over how to deal with these emotional issues.
Our counselling service is delivered in partnership with Sunderland Counselling Service.
It offers up to 6 sessions face to face with a qualified counsellor, typically on a weekly basis with each session lasting 50 minutes.
Counselling is not advice or telling you what to do, it can provide a safe place where you can feel listened to, understood, and not judged.
For more information go to the NHS website.
Psychology is helpful for people who have experienced early trauma or who might benefit from a different type of therapy.
What to expect from psychology?
You will be seen by one of our experienced clinical/counselling psychologists who can offer a full psychological assessment of your current difficulties and offer a range of therapy tailored to your individual needs. Following the assessment you will work with your psychologist collaboratively to develop a plan for therapy and agree the particular difficulties to be addressed.
We offer a range of psychological therapies for people with a long-term health condition with depression and anxiety disorders related to this such as COPD, heart disease and diabetes.
We also offer therapies for people with persistent physical symptoms (sometimes called medically unexplained symptoms).
What to expect from psychological therapies?
We can offer online cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for support managing chronic pain, COPD, diabetes and for help with sleep, courses and guided self-help (face to face or via telephone).
People who have long term physical health condition or persistent physical symptoms may require additional support and be offered therapies including counselling, CBT, interpersonal psychotherapy and eye movement desentisation reprocessing depending on which therapy best meets their needs.