If you have a specific problem that’s getting in the way of you living your best life, individual counseling is a tremendously helpful process that can resolve issues in a fairly brief period. Behavioral therapies are goal-specific and focused on one or two major issues that are troublesome.

The goal of behavior therapies is to boost positive healthy behaviors while reducing harmful habits. Naturally, what’s healthy for one person might not be ideal for another. That’s what makes individual counseling ideal. It’s personalized to each person’s unique situation and needs.

Multiple Approaches to Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most recognized approaches to behavioral therapy. CBT helps clients understand how thoughts, opinions, and beliefs affect one’s behavior. CBT is suited for the treatment of phobias, anxiety, and depression. CBT rests on the idea that people suffer more from their assumptions and thoughts about events than they do from the events themselves. Essentially, people add to their troubles by approaching them with a negative mindset. In many instances, people trouble and torment themselves by imagining situations that are unlikely to happen.

CBT helps clients understand that their thoughts affect their behaviors strongly and that altering behavior can change their thinking while making changes to their ingrained thought processes will also lead to new, more helpful behaviors.

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

Going with the idea that reflexive, automatic thoughts cause people to distort reality to fit their negative thinking, REBT focuses on identifying self-defeating and irrational beliefs and thought processes and changing them. Again, it’s habitual patterns of thought that tend to cause people a great deal of distress. Learning how to address those thoughts is the first step in changing unhelpful or even harmful behaviors.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) helps people develop new skills that benefit and improve interpersonal relationships. DBT refers to learning new and helpful skills in four areas:

Mindfulness. Mindfulness is a type of mental focus that concentrates on accepting the present as it is, without judgment or overreaction.

Distress tolerance is the ability to accept and tolerate negative emotions and psychological discomfort rather than automatically rejecting it and trying to escape.

  • Emotion regulation helps a client develop strategies for managing intense and overwhelming emotions that cause serious problems.
  • Interpersonal effectiveness is based on techniques that teach the client how to communicate effectively with others by being assertive, respectful to others, direct and self-respecting. Interpersonal effectiveness is essential for strengthening relationships.

Dialectical behavior therapy is a skill-based approach that helps people learn new ways to reduce problems in personal relationships and manage painful emotions.

“Dialectical” refers to the necessity of holding both the acceptance and tolerance of painful situations and emotions alongside the skills needed for changing emotional pain, as opposed to attempting to escape it.

If you’re interested in learning how to manage problems in your life, Damaris Aragon, ARNP, BC provides a full spectrum of mental health care to people in Spokane, Washington, and surrounding areas. Reach out to Damaris through her contact page or calling 509-342-6592.