My Current Therapy Practicum At Hartgrove Hospital

While Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has been in development since the 1980’s, it has only recently risen to prominence and is sometimes described as a ‘new wave’ therapeutic technique. ACT is a

Cognitive behavioral therapy differs in several respects from more traditional forms of therapy. It focuses on two specific elements: cognitive restructuring and behavioral activation. The client and therapist work together in cognitive restructuring with the goal to restructure thinking patterns. In behavioral activation, the client overcomes barriers to participating in activities. The main focus is on the present and on specific problems. cognitive behavioral therapy is a goal oriented and educational therapy, because goals for both the short and longer term are identified and it teaches the client to modify mood en behavior. The client has therefore an active role in learning e.g. coping skills. Multiple strategies are used in cognitive behavioral therapy, like imagenary, role

My role as the clinician is quite important. The primary task is to engage the client in identifying cognitive errors, refuting them, and replacing them with more adaptive thoughts. A sound therapeutic relationship is necessary for effective therapy, but not the focus of the therapy. Many forms of other counseling believe that the main reason people get better in therapy is because of the positive relationship between the therapist and client. Cognitive-behavioral therapists believe it is important to have a good, trusting relationship, but I know that is not nearly enough. We believe that the clients change because they learn how to think differently and they act on that learning. Therefore, CBT tries and focuses on teaching rational self-counseling skills. CBT is the teamwork that exists between the therapist and the client. This form of therapy is used to seek ways of learning what their clients want out of life and then helping their clients achieve those goals. The therapist's role is to listen, teach, and encourage, while the client's roles is to express concerns, learn, and implement that learning (Pucci1).

In this session, Dr. Meichenbaum uses cognitive behavior therapy in a way that integrates the key concepts of cognitive behavior therapy tasks. These key concepts of cognitive behavior therapy include the general quality and nature of the relationship between the therapist and the client, therapeutic alliance, generating empathy and genuineness, a non judgmental approach, an outline that aligns with the cognitive behavior therapy framework, a guided discovery, and the take away piece for the client from the corresponding session. Dr. Meichenbaum emphasizes that cognitive behavior therapy is a sensitive approach and has an intersection between one’s thoughts, feelings,

They both have a “positive view of human nature and view the individual as not necessarily being a product of their past experiences, but acknowledge that they are able to determine their own futures” (Holder, 2013). They both attempt to improve their client’s wellbeing by implementing a two-way therapeutic relationship where both client and therapist collaborate to enable the clients coping mechanisms (Holder, 2013). CBT and PCT both instil the three core conditions of empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence but in CBT it is used mainly in the establishing of the working alliance (Holder, 2013). In both methods, the relationship between client and therapist is congruent and they both use the skills of reflection, paraphrasing and

The dynamics of the client-therapist relationship in cognitive therapy is a collaborative effort. Cognitive therapists elicit patient’s goals at the beginning of treatment. They explain their treatment plan and interventions to help patients understand how they will be able to reach their goals and feel better. At every session, they elicit and help patients solve problems that are of greatest distress. They do so through a structure that seeks to maximize efficiency, learning, and therapeutic change (Robert & Watkins, 2009). Important parts of each session include checking the client’s mood, a connection between sessions, setting an agenda, discussing specific problems and teaching skills in the context of solving these problems, setting of self-help assignments, summary, and feedback (Robert & Watkins, 2009). The status that CBT has with insurers and funding agencies is a result of concrete and measurable goals, goal-focused processes and clear outcomes-based evaluations/results. Therapy is typically conducted in an outpatient setting by trained therapist in cognitive behavioral techniques. Treatment is relatively short in comparison to some other forms of psychotherapy, usually lasting no longer than 16 weeks.

My preferred theoretical orientation is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The main assumption of CBT is that events and situations in life do not cause emotional problems (e.g., guilt or depression); rather problems are due to irrational beliefs and perceptions about the situations (Corey, 2009). The goals of CBT focus on correcting the client’s automatic and self-defeating thoughts, which should ultimately help them to develop a more adaptive philosophy of life (Corey, 2009). I like that this approach focuses on challenging and changing the client’s cognitive distortions, core beliefs, automatic thoughts, and schemas. Another positive aspect is that this approach focuses on the cognitive triad,

In it's simplest form, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, (or CBT as it will be referred to from here on out), refers to the approach of changing dysfunctional behaviors and thoughts to realistic and healthy ones. CBT encompasses several types of therapy focusing on the impact of an individual's thinking as it relates to expressed behaviors. Such models include rational emotive therapy (RET), rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT), behavior therapy (BT), Rational Behavior Therapy (RBT), Schema Focused Therapy, Cognitive therapy (CT). Most recently a few other variations have been linked to CBT such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectic behavioral therapy (DBT), and

Although ACT emerged in the 1980s, it wasn’t till 2005 that awareness and its popularity grew (Bach, & Moran, 2008). ACT was initially constructed as a substitute to the more classical forms of psychotherapy (Flaxman, Blackledge, & Bond, 2011). Rather than focusing on the reduction of indifferent cognitions and emotions, which is a primary focus in psychotherapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), ACT looks at the possibility of increasing effective and progressive behaviours (Flaxman, et al., 2011). The contrast however between ACT and a psychotherapy such as CBT is that the therapist doesn’t focus on the presence or altering the unlikable emotions and thoughts of individuals, however they do in fact decrease through the ACT process

“The goal of CBT is to teach clients how to separate the evaluation of their behaviour from the evaluation of themselves and how to accept themselves in spite of imperfections” (Corey, 2009, p. 279). In CBT the clients are expected to change their current behaviour (normally full of automatic thoughts) to a more rational way of thinking. The clinician will challenge the client’s behaviour in order for the client to understand his or her behaviour and get alternatives to change his/her behaviour. When using CBT, the client’s behaviour changes when they are aware of the abnormal behaviour. This approach allows the client to focus on improving his/her wellbeing. This enhances the client’s awareness of an existing issue and that changes are necessary. The client will develop new coping skills to deal with the situation and develop a new way of thinking from negative (automatic thoughts) to positive (more realistic thoughts). Initially the client may not recognise that a problem exists, but through this process will get

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is one of the recent contemporary psychological interventions used today. Researched over the past 40 years, and more effectively utilized in the past decade for a diverse range of clinical conditions. The initial industry reaction to (ACT) was free- flowing, both positive and negative. Nevertheless, Hayes (2008) suggested that the negative reactions mainly stemmed from just the misunderstandings of ACT. Hofmann & Asmundson (2008) had much to say about the technical level (ACT), and made comment that it was too similar to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

Researchers such as Hayes and Strosahl (2005) defines acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) as an empirically based intervention technique from the cognitive behavior model of psychotherapy that employs mindfulness and acceptance methods mixed in various ways. Grounded within the practical concept of functional contextualism and based on the comprehensive idea of language and cognition, ACT is different from the normal or traditional cognitive behavioral therapy. The differences are manifested in the paradigm of instead of teaching people to control their emotions, ACT teaches them to acknowledge, accept and embrace the emotions and or feelings (Hayes, Louma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006). Primarily, western traditions

In “Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond”, Judith Beck (2011), the daughter of Aaron Beck, highlights ten basic principles that all CBT therapists should follow. The

Among the three main approaches to insight therapy (psychoanalysis, client-centered, or group therapy), the one that l believe has the most reasonable way to deal with psychological problems, is client-centered therapy. Client-centered therapy is an insight therapy that emphasizes providing a supportive emotional climate for clients, who play a major role in determining the pace and direction of their therapy (pg. 459). According to Carl Rogers, the man who devised client-centered therapy, three elements were necessary to promote positive changes in therapy: Genuineness (honest communication), Unconditional positive regard (therapist remains supportive, non-judgmental) and Empathy (therapist understands issues from client’s point of view) (pg. 460). In following these three elements, client and therapist were working together equally and helped client become more aware of themselves and even feel more comfortable with their therapist and the idea of therapy. Some people don’t seek help because they feel therapy might be too intimidating for them or it’s a step that they fear having to take. I can agree with this, because from my personal experience, l had pushed off therapy for so long because l was afraid to admit that l needed it.

The third wave of behavioral therapy includes acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. These types of therapies are designed to help people accept difficult life experiences and to persuade individuals to act on their core values. An evolution of cognitive-behavioral therapy, ACT, MBCT, and DBT not only include the thought process within the behavioral network, but mindfulness and acceptance as well. Instead of teaching people to control their thoughts and feelings in the case of CBT, ACT & DBT draws from far eastern philosophies of noticing and accepting the things in life that you cannot change.