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If you’re dealing with depression, anxiety, or another mental health concern, it can impact all aspects of your life. You may become distant in your relationships, struggle in your careeror even find it difficult to enjoy your favorite activities. You are not alone.
Many people struggle with mental health issues. They don’t have to stop you from enjoying your life. If you’ve been thinking about speaking to a mental health counselor, make an appointment with a therapist today at Qlarity Counseling.
Please click on the different sections below for a brief explanation of how each type of therapy typically works.
Individual Therapy
The client meets with the therapist one-on-one. Together, they establish a working relationship through regular appointments whereby the therapist gets to know the client, his or her life challenges, and the strategies they employ to navigate those challenges. The therapist seeks to identify strategies that may be maladaptive and works to help the client eliminate or modify them in favor of more effective ones that will help them adapt to ongoing and future obstacles.
Couples Therapy
The couple, whether they be married or in any other meaningful relationship, meets with the therapist together on a regular basis. (There may be times when the therapist wants to meet with each client individually for a session) Together, they discuss the issues that each person feels is creating conflict that they have not been able to resolve. The therapist helps to clarify the conflicts and perhaps identify some which were not recognized by the couple and help them to work through those conflicts.
The meetings with the therapist create a forum where each individual feels more comfort and security talking through sensitive issues. Couples therapy can be hard work. Emotions often run hot, and there can still be intense arguments during the sessions. The therapist is trained to weather those storms and to help the couple do so as well.
Over time, as a group they work to establish effective ways of communicating and working through conflicts. While the initial goal of couples therapy is almost always to help the couple work through their conflicts, it does not always result in the couple staying together. It is sometimes established that the goal may not be to maintain the relationship in its current form but to help work through the sadness and pain associated with its transformation or demise.
Obviously, this is most salient when there are children or other family members whose own emotional well-being is affected by the couple’s ability to get along. In the circumstance in which the couple cannot resolve their conflicts by staying together, the therapist can still help the couple work to achieve a healthy new understanding and establish an environment in which children or other loved ones can feel secure and emotionally healthy.
Family Therapy
At times the dynamics in a family can become so entrenched with conflicts that the family members feel stuck as if in an emotional morass. Frustration and intense anger can establish themselves as the norm of the family interactions. As in couples therapy, the psychotherapist is there to help identify the root conflicts. By doing so and helping the individuals to see and understand those conflicts, the individuals of the family can start to recognize when they are manifesting at home. The therapist helps to establish healthier, more successful methods for dealing with those conflicts in the field, so to speak.
We all know that family dynamics can be filled with landmines, and you never know when you’re going to step on one without realizing it! The therapist’s job is to help the family members to detect those landmines and avoid them, or when avoidance is impossible to minimize the negative impact. Like couples therapy, it can be hard work, but with commitment and good faith from each member, the home environment can radically change for the better.
Psychodynamic Therapy
When most people think of psychotherapy they think of psychodynamic psychotherapy. And they often think of Freud. Many of Freud’s hypotheses and methods are no longer the norm. Some of them remain part of the foundation of psychodynamic therapy. There have been many psychologists and psychiatrists who have contributed to the development and enhancement of the field since Freud’s time. Their insights and methods have helped to improve and maintain the modality as a sound and effective one.
The basic theory of psychodynamic psychotherapy posits that all of us are endowed with both conscious and unconscious thoughts. Dreams are the classic example of unconscious thoughts. While conscious thoughts can cause us trouble sometimes, it is the unconscious ones that most often get us into conflict. They are, by definition, thoughts that we are not aware of. As a consequence, they influence our behaviors and can lead us to make decisions and act in ways that create conflicts with others in our lives.
By identifying those thoughts and feelings under the surface of our conscious awareness and bringing them into our conscious mind, we can explore them and look at them for what they are. By doing so we can furthermore start to recognize the ways in which those thoughts and feelings have led to actions that may not have served us well in the past and may have led to patterns of behavior that created a multitude of problems. When we identify those unconscious motivators and patterns of behavior we can start to modify and replace them with more constructive ones that lead to healthier relationships and greater fulfillment.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
If psychodynamic psychotherapy is all about the unconscious mind, then cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is all about the present, conscious mind. CBT seeks quickly to establish the thoughts and behaviors that are causing emotional turmoil for the individual. Once established, the goal is not to identify the underlying, unconscious motivations that might lead to them but simply to address the evident thoughts and behaviors through a set of standardized tools intended to mitigate their influence and reduce their prevalence.
The tools acquired through CBT are basically straightforward psychological techniques for eliminating maladaptive thoughts and behaviors. Nonetheless, while the techniques can be straightforward, implementing and maintaining them can be quite challenging. The therapist not only teaches the techniques but facilitates their establishment through repetition and reinforcement during each session. The client then does the “homework” by practicing the techniques at home. The greater the rigor with which the client utilizes the tools, the quicker and more robust the improvement. CBT can be a powerful psychotherapeutic modality. But it too can be hard work, though different in character from psychodynamic psychotherapy.
Eclectic Therapy
In addition to CBT and psychodynamic psychotherapy, there are quite a number of psychotherapeutic methods in which therapists are trained. They all have their advantages. Some work better for certain individuals than others. Most therapists draw upon their knowledge of multiple methods and tailor the therapy to what they think best suits the client. That selection could be based on the client’s personality profile or the nature of his or her conflicts or symptoms, e.g. anxiety, depression, obsessive thoughts, etc. With careful consideration, the therapist constructs the best treatment plan he or she can to fit the circumstances of the client.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a transformative, evidence-based psychotherapy modality that helps people heal from the emotional distress that are typically catalysed by traumatic or deeply distressing experiences. Unlike traditional talk therapy, which primarily focuses on exploring thoughts and feelings through conversation, EMDR uses a structured eight-phase approach to target the root cause of emotional pain.
At the core of EMDR is bilateral stimulation—such as guided eye movements, tapping, or auditory tones—which helps the brain process and reframe traumatic memories that may feel “stuck.” This unique method allows individuals to move beyond merely coping with their symptoms to experiencing a profound sense of relief and resolution.
EMDR is highly effective for individuals struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, grief, obsessive compulsive disorders, phobias, or even performance-related stress. It’s also beneficial for anyone who feels “held back” by persistent negative beliefs or unresolved past events.
Whether you’ve experienced a single traumatic incident or carry the weight of complex life challenges, EMDR offers a path to healing, resilience, and emotional freedom.