Psychotherapy is a process of discovery whose medical goal is to eliminate or control troubling and painful symptoms so that you can return to normal functioning. It is also used to help you overcome a specific problem or to stimulate overall emotional growth and healing. You work to identify, learn to manage, and ultimately, overcome emotional and mental problems.

Multimodal counselling and therapy is a technically eclectic (selecting or borrowing from a variety of styles, systems, theories, etc; characterised by such selection or borrowing; choosing the best out of everything; broad, as opposed to exclusive) and systematic approach. It is an approach developed by Arnold A. Lazarus in response to the constraints of traditional behavioural therapy. Client’s needs are often better served by working in multimodal rather than unimodal or bimodal fashions. The assessment procedure deals in great depth with sensory, imagery, cognitive and interpersonal factors and their interactive effects

Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) is a brief, collaborative therapy which integrates at a theoretical and pragmatic level psychoanalytic and cognitive approaches. The therapy developed both within and outside of the NHS to meet the psychotherapy demand of a very wide variety of people with minimum selectivity.

CAT is cognitive in the sense that it is problem focused and aims to describe accurately and explicitly the difficulties people face as a process involving links between their aims, beliefs, thoughts and actions. It is psychoanalytic in its emphasis on relationship and in its expectation that early relationships are likely to help explain current difficulties and influence the therapy. CAT therefore uses the conscious and unconscious aspects of the therapeutic relationship as a way of promoting change, as well as having recourse to a wide variety of techniques that cognitive behaviour therapists may use. CAT is not indiscriminate but works from a specific unified model of how emotional problems develop and are maintained.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, often shortened as CBT, is a very practical treatment in which therapist and client work together collaboratively. It centres on the understanding that our thoughts, beliefs and ideas affect the way in which we feel and act towards ourselves and other people in our daily life.

CBT is based on the knowledge that many of our problems are caused and maintained by our unhelpful beliefs and deeply held assumptions about others and our selves in our life. These underlying assumptions and beliefs are usually learned through our past experiences and interactions with significant people around us. At the time when we learned these, they may have helped us to cope with our experiences. Some of these beliefs may even now be helpful still, but there may be others that are no longer helpful and that really hinder our effective functioning.

What is the aim of CBT?

The aim of CBT is for therapist and client to work together to try and understand those underlying beliefs and assumptions that are no longer helpful and affect a person’s current feelings, behaviours and functioning. Depending on the individual problems that clients are experiencing, therapist and client work together to identify goals and develop a treatment plan.

In CBT, the focus of therapy is to find solutions to the problems clients are experiencing that will help enhance effective functioning and well-being in daily life. The focus of CBT is mainly in the here and now. Sometimes it can also be very helpful for a person to focus and work through some of the negative experiences they have experienced in the past and then explore how they want to start living their life differently now. This often involves using the time between therapy sessions for clients to try things out differently. CBT can be used completely on its own, but it can also work well in conjunction with medication, that clients have sometimes been prescribed.

How long does CBT take?

CBT is usually time-limited and 10 to 15 sessions may be enough. However, the length of therapy depends on client’s individual problems and the goals that they want to achieve and it can therefore sometimes take significantly longer than that. Usually, therapist and client would meet for an initial assessment session, after which the therapist would often be able to give the client some idea on how long it might take.

After therapy is completed, it is helpful for clients to have a limited number of follow-up sessions, which usually have quite long time gaps between them, to monitor and maintain the progress that has been achieved.

Behaviour therapy is aimed at changing observable and measurable human behaviour. These changes are chosen by the therapist and the client together. As this approach is aimed at behaviour change, some problems are better suited to behaviour therapy than others. The therapist is directive, giving the client clear guidelines about what to do in order to bring about such changes. This direction is guided by the therapist’s detailed assessment. The assessment considers three main areas: the factors immediately preceding the problem, the problem behaviour itself and the consequences of the behaviour for the client (as well as those people around him or her)

Behaviour therapy covers a range of approaches. At one end, the focus is entirely upon behaviour; thoughts (cognitions) are not denied but are considered to be peripheral to therapeutic work. At the other end, thoughts are considered to be a central and mediating factor of behaviour, and are therefore taken fully into account in bringing about behaviour change. The range of approaches therefore merges into cognitive behaviour therapy.

Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) is a system of psychotherapy which teaches individuals how their belief systems largely determine how they feel about and act towards events in their lives. For example, three people working for the same firm lose their jobs at the same time. The first person is angry because she believes she should have been promoted and not sacked; the second person is depressed because she believes that without a job she is worthless; and the third person is happy to have lost her job because she always found it boring. The important lesson to learn from this story is that though the loss of the job contributes to the various emotional reactions, it does not cause them: how each individual perceives being made redundant is the key factor in determining these emotional reactions.

REBT's emphasis on the way thought influences feeling places it within the cognitive-behavioural school of therapy of which it is a founding member.

Solution Focused Therapy (SFT) is a form of brief therapy which builds upon clients' strengths by helping them to evoke and construct solutions to their problems. It emphasises the future, more than the past or the present. In a solution focused approach the counsellor and client devote a greater proportion of time to solution construction than to problem exploration. They try to define as clearly as possible what the clients would like to see in their lives.

SFT fosters a sense of collaboration between the counsellor and the client, with the latter being viewed as competent and resourceful. It pays little attention to the 'roots or causes' of a client's problem. This stance could be compared with driving a car where it is useful to look in the rear mirror from time to time but it is advisable to spend most of your time looking through the front windscreen! Solution focused counsellors believe in minimal intervention in the client's life - their task being to initiate an impetus for change which the client will continue after the counselling. The counsellor negotiates with the client to identify a priority concern which has attainable goals.

NLP (NEURO-LINGUISTIC-PROGRAMMING) is the art and science of personal experience. Art, because everyone brings their own unique personality and style to what they do and this can never be captured in words or techniques. Science, because there is a method and process for discovering the patterns used by individuals in any field to achieve outstanding results. This process is called modelling, and the patterns, skills and techniques so discovered are being used increasingly in counselling (and business) for more effective communications, personal development and learning

NLP is a systemic way of working. This means we see people as a system of interactions (for example physical, mental emotional and spiritual) and also see the system within a system within a system (for example, a child within a family, living in a village, living in England and so on).

NLP arose from studying the structure of an individual's everyday experience in detail, particularly focusing on people who were considered exceptional in their field. From this NLP developed:

• a set of presuppositions (guiding principles and attitudes)
• a methodology for modelling (what to observe and how to 'frame' that)
• a system of coding (the how to - a detailed description)
• a series of models (different ways of understanding)
• a trail of techniques (things to do)

An NLP therapist will encourage you to interact trustingly with your unconscious, and help you learn how to do that using movements, sensations, sounds, language and visualisations. The words we use will be taken seriously and literally. By paying close attention to language, and sharing an understanding of the deeper implications of using certain words, phrases and tenses, the therapist will help you to explore and experience different ways of thinking, and to consider alternative meanings behind your hopes, behaviours and experiences. When coming for help you will probably have explored most of the conscious solutions (those we are aware of). The NLP process is designed to help you become more aware and use all the possibilities which are within you, including the unconscious ones, which have been out of your awareness, lying dormant and unknown.

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