In times of difficulty, seeking psychological support can be one of the best investments you will make for yourself and your family’s health.
Amy works with adolescents and adults and can assist in the following areas:
Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) focuses on helping individuals understand how their thinking affects the way they feel and act. In turn, it considers how behaviour can affect thoughts and feelings. In this therapeutic approach, the client and the therapist work together to change the client’s behaviours, or their thinking patterns, or both.
CBT is pragmatic, highly structured, tends to focus on current difficulties rather than explore the historical origins of them, and relies on a collaborative therapeutic relationship between therapist and client.
The therapeutic relationship in CBT is one in which the therapist takes a psycho-educational approach and facilitates change through being a teacher and a coach.
ACT is a third wave cognitive-behavioural therapy that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies together with behaviour strategies to increase psychological flexibility.
The core message of ACT is to accept what is out of your personal control while committing to action that will improve the quality of your life. The aim of ACT is to help people live a meaningful life while handling the pain and stress that is an inevitable part of life. Mindfulness skills are central to ACT and are taught in order to facilitate the development of an ‘observing self’ that can help you notice both your physical experiences and your thinking processes. ACT can also be used as a model for life coaching.
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is a cognitive behavioural approach that integrates the practice of mindfulness meditation with the more traditional methods utilised by cognitive therapy. It helps people recognise when they’re shifting to a negative thought pattern. The word mindfulness has been defined as ‘being in the present moment with intention’ or ‘the state of being conscious or aware of something’. Mindfulness has become increasingly part of western therapies as a desirable skill to cultivate in order to facilitate mental wellbeing. As a therapeutic technique, mindfulness attempts to bring about a mental state that is achieved by focusing one’s awareness in the present moment while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations.
Mindfulness will teach you how to refocus your mind on being in the present moment rather than become overly focused on either regret of the past or worries about the future.
Psychoanalytic therapy is a form of in-depth talk therapy that aims to bring unconscious or deeply buried thoughts and feelings to the conscious mind so that repressed experiences and emotions, often from childhood, can be brought to the surface and examined. The psychoanalytic approach helps people explore their pasts and understand how it affects their present psychological difficulties. It can help clients shed the bonds of past experience to live more fully in the present.
“MI is a collaborative, goal-oriented style of communication with particular attention to the language of change. It is designed to strengthen personal motivation for and commitment to a specific goal by eliciting and exploring the person’s own reasons for change within an atmosphere of acceptance and compassion” (Miller & Rollnick, 2013, p. 29).
MI is a guiding style of communication, that sits between following (good listening) and directing (giving information and advice).
MI is designed to empower people to change by drawing out their own meaning, importance and capacity for change.
Positive Psychology is the scientific study of the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive. The field is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, cultivate what is best within themselves, and enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.
“Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living” (Peterson, 2008).
Supportive counselling allows the therapist to help clients deal with their emotional distress and problems. It includes comforting, guiding, encouraging, reassuring, and listening. The therapist provides an emotional outlet, the chance for clients to express themselves and be themselves while feeling safe.
Please be aware that Amy Greaves Psychology & Counselling is not an emergency or crisis service.
In the event of a mental health-related emergency please contact one of the following:
© Copyright 2022 Amy Greaves Psychology & Counselling | Designed by Jane McKay Communications