We provide tailored support for each individual client in English or Dutch. Working together with a young person’s social network (school, family, friends etc.) is central to our work because of the effectiveness of this approach. Therapy can include individual sessions with the young person, parental support and family sessions. We tend to work eclectically in order to tailor to your needs. The therapy techniques that we use include the following:
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) encourages people to embrace their thoughts and feelings rather than fighting against them. By learning to accept your feelings and thoughts you can learn to, for example, feel less guilty about them. Psychological flexibility is also developed during ACT. This type of therapy is a combination of behavioral therapy with mindfulness skills and the practice of self-acceptance. Additionally ACT focuses on your personal values in life, and committing to living more value oriented.
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) combines mindfulness techniques including meditation and breathing exercises with elements from cognitive behavioral therapy to help break through negative thought patterns. Mindfulness exercises help create awareness of our internal and external world, and bring us back to the present moment when our thoughts carry us away to other places.
Schema therapy
Schema Therapy is an integrative therapy which includes elements of cognitive and behavioral therapy. Schemas determine the way we think, feel, act and interact with others. The origins of these unhelpful schemas and behavioral patterns are usually found in the past. Identifying and changing unhelpful schemas is central to schema therapy.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a therapy form for individuals, who experience psychological difficulties as a result of a traumatic event. Many people who experience a traumatic event can process a traumatic event independently using their own resources. Others can develop psychological difficulties including the re-experience of the traumatic event through flashbacks or intrusive images and nightmares. Additionally they can experience anxiety and show avoidant behavior. Through EMDR the traumatic event is reprocessed so that the memory of the event no longer causes an intense emotional response.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a type of therapy that helps you to identify and modify unhelpful or negatieve thought patterns that have a negative influence on behavior and emotions. During CBT there is a focus on altering automatic negative thoughts that can cause or worsen emotional difficulties. These negatieve thoughts are changed by challenging them and replacing them with alternative, more helpful and realistic thoughts.
Solution Focused Therapy (SFT)
Solution Focused Therapy is a form of therapy that is goal oriented and includes positive psychology principles. During SFT the focus is on solutions instead of problems. A detailed description is made of how life would be different if certain difficulties where no longer an issue. Following this, the skills, resources, and abilities needed to achieve this vision successfully are identified. Goals are then set, to make the vision a reality.
