Counselling Techniques

Cognitive behaviour therapy is a treatment that helps people learn to determine, understand, identify, and change behaviour that is destructive and negatively impacts emotions or behaviours. This is a form of therapeutic support that focuses on changing the thoughts that automatically pop into your head that are often negative. Those negative thoughts have a poor impact on emotional challenges, such as anxiety and depression, that the person may be feeling.

Cognitive behaviour therapy helps a person change those thoughts into more positive and realistic thoughts. Cognitive Beahviour Therapy helps the person identify the patterns of thoughts and uses various strategies to help individuals overcome those thoughts. These strategies case by case can differ depending on the individual's needs and can include role-playing, journaling, and relaxation.

This form of therapy can also include mindfulness to help regulate emotions. It also uses multi-modal therapy which believes the issues can be treated when addressing seven different modalities. The belief is that these modalities are all interconnected. Those modalities are; affect, behaviour, imagery, sensation, cognition, interpersonal, and biological concerns. This can be used as a short-term type of treatment that is based on helping a specific problem. This form of therapy can help the individual focus on the present. Research has identified that it can help with addiction, anxiety, anger problems, depression, panic attacks, and phobias. It can also help with eating disorders and personality disorders. This therapy is focused on achieving realistic and measurable goals.

Conflict resolution is when a practitioner supports individuals or couples learn strategies and skills to manage and effectively engage in to resolve conflict. Relationship therapy and coaching works on the relationships between two or more people who are aiming at enhancing engagement in better communication and interaction with one another. In conflict resolution, the practitioner works with the individual or couple in a 1:1 or 2:1 capacity.

You are encouraged to share about the challenges, barriers, and any form of conflict/s experienced and work towards better understanding one another. You learn how to determine options for managing the conflict and work through approaches to resolving it.

Relationship Therapy can be done with both parties in the relationship, or it can be done with just one, depending on the intended outcome. If the goal is to help you better manage all situations involving conflict, you might benefit from 1:1 support. If you are in the middle of a specific challenge and it seems like it cannot be resolved, you both may benefit from Couples/relationship therapy.

Conflict happens often and both parties must be in a place where they are willing to compromise to work through their differences and learn to listen and communicate more effectively. In some cases, having an unbiased third-party listen and guide you to work through the barrier objectively can be beneficial. Even though the practitioner is there, ultimately you are the one doing the work and making the decisions towards change and how to overcome the conflict. The practitioner is only there to guide, equip and empower you with the tools and strategies you need to see the conflict more clearly to make better decisions.

Life skills coaching is when someone helps others work through problems and challenges they may face in their lives. Life skills are usually the things that help us get through the day and provide a better quality of life. This type of counselling support may help someone through a specific event, such as divorce or loss of a house, or job. Life skills coaching is intended to enable the person and help them feel confident that they can solve their problems. This type of coaching helps people feel better about themselves and gives them the strength to make good choices.

When someone seeks this type of counseling support, they typically have low self-confidence. They may also find themselves in a place where they feel like there is no enjoyment in life. A life coach in collaboration with the client can help restore the person’s confidence and see that they have everything they need inside of them. A life coach can provide guidance for the person to have an open mind and enhance their perspective to see that they can reach their goals.

A life coach empowers the individual to understand why their own self worth has fallen away. The coach also empowers the individual to learn how to believe in themselves. The coach can help the individual improve by creating a plan. For the person to have a plan, they must first understand what they want to achieve. Then with the right support, the individual can create SMART goals to help reach those short or long-term goals. It does not matter what concern the individual is facing, as long as the person is willing and open to change the life coach can guide by providing the necessary tools and strategies to create new routines to your lifestyle.

Mindfulness is not something many of us actively work on in our busy lives. It is easy to get caught up in all the things we need to do and not even enjoy the moments we are in. Mindfulness is the fact of intentionally focusing your attention on the present and what is happening right now. Then you must accept it without judegment. This is a difficult practice, especially at first, which is why mindfulness support is so important. This practice has been believed to reduce stress and improve happiness. Mindfulness can be incorporated in various different avenues, whether it be through meditation or a faith-based approach to help bring about positive change in attitude, health, and behaviour. It has been shown to help improve depression & anxiety.

Mindfulness Support can help improve overall well-being because it makes it easier to live in the moment and enjoy exactly what is happening right now. You can become fully engaged in whatever is happening in front of you. This can help you be better able to deal with negative events that may take place. Focusing on the present can help you not focus on future worries or past regrets. You can also be less concerned about success. Being mindful can help your physical health improve. Reducing stress in your life can decrease blood pressure, reduce pain, improve sleep, and even help with heart disease.

Mindfulness can help mental health, also. Many therapists use mindfulness therapy to help depression & anxiety. It has helped people find better ways of handling eating disorders and substance abuse, as well as obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Trauma-informed care support comes into play when someone has suffered or is believed to have suffered from some sort of trauma. In this type of care, the counsellor recognizes how trauma has impacted the person. They understand the symptoms of trauma that exist. Trauma-informed care respects the fact that trauma is there and responds to the impact that trauma had on the person’s life. This type of support changes the way practitioners may have dealt with this in the past. Instead of thinking about what is wrong with the person, the thought process shifts to what happened to this person. This can make a huge difference when offering mental health support. The idea is to make services available to someone that has experienced trauma in an environment where they feel safe and will not trigger trauma symptoms.

It may not always be easy to determine when someone has been through trauma. For some, it is obvious but for others, they have learned to protect themselves and hide and it is not as easy to determine. It is important to be able to understand the signs when providing mental health support. The key is sensitivity to a person and their needs. It is not always necessary to determine if they have a diagnosis. When someone has mental health problems, their symptoms may not look like someone else’s with the same concerns. Every person is different. One of the symptoms that may be obvious is if that person has a sudden change in behaviour. You may notice that someone has less confidence, no interest in activities, a lack of appetite, or is easily tired. You may even notice problems with concentration, irritability, and avoidance of certain places or situations. These are just a handful of symptoms you may notice in someone.