Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is about helping people take action when they’re stuck, whether they’re stuck in depression, anxiety, chronic pain, stress, or trauma. However, it’s not about taking just any action; it’s about exploring what matters most to people and helping them take steps in that direction in a way that they’re fully open to their experience and what they’re doing. It’s about “mindful” action.

Mindfulness and acceptance are important components of ACT. In addition to taking physical action, you’ll learn to step back and separate yourself from your thoughts, feelings, and memories so that you don’t get “hooked” by them. You’ll learn to accept (be open to) inner experiences rather than suppress them. Ironically, the less we suppress, the more in control of our thoughts and feelings we feel.

ACT helps people live more fulfilling lives driven by what they value the most.

Attachment-based psychotherapy focuses on helping clients overcome the impact of negative early life experiences in their relationships. The therapist aims to create a safe and secure relationship with the client, enabling them to explore how current emotions and behaviours relate to the past.

Through attachment-based psychotherapy, clients discover new behavioural patterns, work through unresolved hurts from their past, change how they see and relate to themselves, and improve their ability to form meaningful connections with others.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) combines cognitive and behavioural therapies. The focus in CBT is on changing distressing emotions and behaviour by changing the way we think. CBT is a skill-based treatment: It helps people build a set of skills so that they become more aware of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours; it teaches them how to challenge and change the way they think; and it supports the development of skills to help people reduce unwanted emotions. CBT can be highly effective in treating mood, anxiety, and eating disorders.

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is an effective treatment for PTSD or those struggling with anxiety-related symptoms resulting from traumatic events. It focuses on helping people who are “stuck” in their thoughts about a trauma.

In CPT, you and your therapist will look at what you’re thinking and telling yourself about the trauma. You’ll examine those thoughts through writing and the evidence for why you’ve drawn the conclusions you have about what happened to you, which often brings about emotions like shame and guilt.

You’ll then learn how to organize your thinking through your writing so that you can step back and re-evaluate what actually transpired. In CPT, you can develop more balanced ways of thinking, which is what often gets distorted by trauma and blocks our ability to heal from it. In the process, people create a new understanding of the traumatic event and change how they feel about it, themselves, others, and the world.

CPT works best when clients can commit to 12 weekly therapy sessions.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)-informed treatment differs from DBT proper. DBT proper was developed by Dr. Marsha Linehan as a treatment for people struggling with emotion regulation, chronic suicidality, and self-harming behaviours. It is normally one year in duration and is comprised of the following 4 elements: weekly individual therapy sessions, weekly group therapy sessions, between-session phone coaching, and therapist team meetings.

We currently do not offer DBT proper as it was originally developed and, instead, take a DBT-informed approach to counselling and psychotherapy.

A DBT-informed approach is less formalized and integrates elements of DBT within the therapeutic process when useful or needed, including guiding clients through emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and mindfulness skills. These skills help people gain distance from strong emotions, decrease feelings of being overwhelmed, and reduce self-harming behaviours. They can also help people feel more grounded (in contact with their body and surroundings) when they struggle with dissociation (“spacing out”), which is a common characteristic of panic attacks and response to psychological trauma.

Existential psychotherapy focuses on understanding the essence of being human and the challenges we all encounter as we navigate through life. It helps individuals explore the fundamental questions of existence, purpose, and meaning.

Existential psychotherapy recognizes that suffering and the anxiety that arises from awareness of our mortality are inevitable. It helps people confront these concerns and find ways to live in harmony with them instead of being controlled by them.

It also encourages people to take ownership of their choices and actions, and supports them in creating meaning in their lives, even in the face of adversity. It emphasizes the importance of self-reflection and encourages individuals to explore their values, beliefs, and personal experiences. Through this exploration, individuals can gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their place in the world, leading to a more fulfilling and authentic existence.

Existential psychotherapy is often beneficial for people struggling with substance use, anxiety, depression, PTSD, chronic health conditions, feelings of loneliness and isolation, major life changes or decisions, and a lack of meaning, purpose, or direction in their lives.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy is highly effective for those who have experienced trauma. It can also be effective for anxiety, depression, and grief.

EMDR works on the premise that our brain is constantly processing and integrating our experiences and sometimes gets overwhelmed. When our brain gets overwhelmed, things get stuck or stored incorrectly, which is what happens with trauma. Things like flashbacks, nightmares, racing thoughts, panic attacks, depression, and feelings of being unworthy and unloveable are all signs that our brain didn’t process or integrate an experience correctly.

To help “re-process” stuck experiences and make them more digestible, EMDR uses a technique called bilateral stimulation.

During bilateral stimulation, a therapist guides you through eye movements, tones, or taps to access and move a memory that’s been incorrectly stored to a more functional part of the brain so that the memory loses its emotional charge. This allows you to react to the present, instead of feeling like you’re reliving the past. Additionally, because the memory is integrated, the negative beliefs associated with the trauma shift to more rational and realistic ones. For instance, an adult who felt “It was my fault” and “I deserved it because I’m not loveable” may start to recognize that the abuse wasn’t their fault, they didn’t deserve it, and they are, in fact, loveable; it was never about them.

By helping individuals reprocess painful memories, EMDR can provide long-term trauma resolution and improved emotional well-being.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy recognizes that we’re all made up of multiple parts and, like interpersonal relationships, these different “parts” of the self interact, sometimes causing conflict or distress.

In IFS therapy, the therapist helps you enter into your inner world, identify the parts causing distress, and develop a compassionate and curious stance toward all parts, fostering understanding, empathy, and healing.

The goal of IFS therapy is to establish a healthy and balanced relationship between the different parts of ourselves and the core Self. By cultivating a harmonious internal system, clients often experience increased self-acceptance, self-compassion, and overall well-being.

Mindfulness is a state of being. It involves moment-by-moment awareness of, and open curiosity toward, one’s experience without judgment, including one’s thoughts, feelings, reactions, sensations, and surroundings. Mindfulness-based psychotherapy involves cultivating this state, and can help people detach from problematic thoughts and feelings so that they can live more fully in the present, instead of the past or future. Mindfulness practice is effective in relieving symptoms of chronic pain, anxiety, stress, depression, and other chronic health conditions.

Prolonged Exposure (PE) Therapy helps people emotionally process traumatic experiences by gradually confronting safe but anxiety-arousing situations. By staying in safe but feared situations long enough, our bodies naturally adapt to them. We also experience that what we fear typically doesn’t happen, thereby challenging beliefs that keep the fear intact. In turn, we feel less anxious and scared.

In PE, you’ll be provided with education about common reactions to trauma and taught breathing exercises to help regulate the anxiety response. You’ll also engage in repeated exposure to situations or activities that you’re avoiding because they remind you of your traumatic experience and make you anxious or distressed. You might be exposed to real-life situations, situations in your imagination, or a combination of the two.

Through PE, you learn that the memories of the trauma, and the situations or activities associated with the memories, are not the same as the trauma. The anxiety and distress you feel will go down over time and you will learn how to tolerate anxiety when it does arise.

PE can help you reclaim your life from PTSD.

Psychodynamic therapy involves the development of a strong therapeutic relationship in which clients feel safe exploring their inner self and relationship experiences. At its core, it explores unconscious beliefs, thoughts, and feelings and how they impact our behaviour.

Some features that distinguish psychodynamic therapy from other therapies are a focus on:

● Emotions and how they’re expressed;
● Recurring themes or patterns;
● Interpersonal relations;
● Wishes and fantasies;
● Attempts to avoid distressing thoughts and feelings;
● Discussion of past experiences (e.g., early life relationships); and
● A client’s feelings and response to the therapist.

The goals of psychodynamic therapy are to help clients gain self-awareness and understand how the past influences the present. It can help people work through unresolved experiences and feelings and change behavioural patterns that are no longer serving them. Other potential benefits include improved self-esteem, the ability to foster more satisfying relationships, and increased recognition and tolerance of a wider range of emotions.

Sex therapy is a type of psychotherapy that focuses on addressing sexual issues, both physical and emotional. It’s designed to help individuals and couples improve their sexual satisfaction and overall well-being.

Common issues addressed in sex therapy include:

● Erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, low libido, pain during sex;
● Communication problems, lack of intimacy, infidelity;
● Sexual abuse, assault, or other traumatic experiences;
● Negative feelings about one’s body or appearance; and
● Exploring one’s gender identity and sexual orientation.

We approach therapy from a sex-positive, inclusive, nonjudgmental perspective. Through open communication, we help clients:

● Identify emotional or psychological factors contributing to sexual problems;
● Learn techniques to manage anxiety, stress, or negative thoughts related to sex;
● Improve communication between partners to address sexual needs and desires
● Discover and embrace one’s sexual preferences and fantasies.

Sex therapy may be helpful if you’re experiencing sexual difficulties or are unsatisfied with your sex life. At Oceanside Psychology Group, we work with adults (individually and together with partners) of all ages, genders, orientations, backgrounds, and identities.

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) is a short-term, future-focused, goal-directed therapy that focuses on finding solutions to problems in the present, instead of focusing on problems from the past.

In SFBT, the therapist will help you clarify what you want to achieve and will help you work toward your goals. They do this by generating a detailed understanding of how your life will be different when the problem is gone or your situation is improved. Next, they’ll explore your life experiences and help you identify strengths and resources that you can implement to work toward your goals. The process is collaborative. The therapist is like a guide, helping you discover your own solutions rather than imposing their ideas on you.

SFBT is effective for a range of issues, such as anxiety, depression, and relationship challenges.