Individual Counseling
The most popular form of therapy, individual therapy, may encompass many different treatment styles including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and motivational enhancement therapy (MET), among others.
Individual therapy allows the therapist and client to focus on each other, building rapport and working together to solve the client's issue.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive-behavioral therapy, (CBT), is a model of psychotherapy based on exploring the connection between thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
To illustrate how the CBT model works, consider the following example: A phobia sufferer believes that a feared situation is inherently dangerous. This belief leads to negative automatic thoughts that occur as soon as the feared situation is encountered (“I am unsafe if I leave my house”) and the automatic thoughts lead to a phobic behavioral reaction (refusal to step outside the door).
Through the skilled guidance of a therapist, the process of challenging these automatic thoughts, understanding their power over our feelings and actions, and replacing them with more realistic and adaptive thoughts can help overcome this fear with incremental steps.
Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET)
Motivational enhancement therapy (MET) relies on a person-centered approach that helps individuals resolve their hesitation about seeking help, and access their internal motivation for change. MET is built on Motivational Interviewing principles that works to identify the motivating factors for the individual seeking treatment and encourages them to be honest about the ways that the problem behavior has served them in the past.
For example, in order to overcome aggressive behavior, it’s beneficial to first understand and let go of the ways you believe that acting that way is benefiting you, be it the reputation as “the tough guy,” getting what you want by means of intimidation, or just the release of pent-up energy. To overcome this, it’s important to understand what you are losing out on by pursuing these things. It may be a loss of authentic relationships with loved ones among other negative impacts including health concerns or legal problems.
After raising awareness of a problem and the ways it is no longer helpful to the individual in therapy, the therapist will spend time helping to challenge and replace any self-defeating thoughts regarding the problem and increase confidence in their ability to do something different. Rather than identifying a problem and guiding the individual step-by-step, MET therapists will encourage the client’s own problem-solving capabilities and help develop their resolve to change.