TYPES OF THERAPY

Tell me more about the kind of therapy you do... What is relational behavioural therapy? Relational behavioural therapy looks at how patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving develop and are maintained in the context of your life and relationships. Importantly, therapy can also pay attention to patterns as they happen in the relationship with your therapist. This gives you an opportunity to understand and practise different ways of responding in real time rather than only talking about change. How is Power to Live's approach different from traditional Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)? Our approach comes from the same broad behavioural tradition as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and there is considerable overlap. Both approaches look at how patterns of thinking and behaviour can contribute to difficulties and how changing these patterns can improve wellbeing. However, we emphasise behavioural change in the here and now. Traditional CBT often focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thoughts, beliefs and behaviours associated with a particular problem. At Power to Live, we take a functional contextual approach. This means we are interested not only in what you think, feel or do, but in when these patterns occur, what purpose they serve, what maintains them and how they are influenced by your relationships and circumstances. We also pay particular attention to what happens between you and your therapist. If an important pattern from everyday life appears during therapy, such as finding it difficult to ask for what you need, avoiding disagreement, withdrawing when you feel vulnerable or struggling to trust someone, the therapeutic relationship can provide an opportunity to notice and work with that pattern as it happens. Our approach does not reject CBT. It is part of the broader evolution of contemporary behavioural therapies, and are sometimes called 3rd and 4th wave approaches. Is Power to Live counselling or psychotherapy? We provide psychotherapy, which is more intense and actively focus on behavioural change. Your therapist works with you to understand the patterns contributing to your difficulties and creates opportunities to practise meaningful change. Can therapy help if my main problem is relationships rather than a mental health diagnosis? Yes. We do not define treatment by diagnosis, however please note our exclusion criteria for complex mental health issues. We work with patterns such as difficulty connecting with others, social anxiety, avoidance, low self-worth and interpersonal difficulties. Our behavioural approach is particularly interested in understanding what happens in your life and relationships, what keeps those patterns going and how you can respond differently.