Which Therapy Should You Choose?

Understanding Which Therapy Does What

We are often asked by clients which therapy would be best for their specific problem, and although one might think that this is an easy question to answer, in fact there are numerous factors to take into consideration when trying to come up with a definitive answer.

The reality is that what is effective for one person may not be effective for another, and this is because therapy, in itself, does not bring about a change in a person, the person brings about a change in themselves THROUGH a particular form of therapy.

Each form of 'intervention' works on a different 'part' of the person's 'perceptual modelling' and in most cases this can be determined by how comfortable the person feels with the process.

Therapeutic Equivalence

A great deal of the psychotherapy research literature supports the idea that, to all intents and purposes, ALL therapies are effective and rather than specific factors or types of therapy being better than another, that all therapies have common factors that mean they work in the same way.

As you will have seen in the video (above), most academic psychologists regard the quality of the therapy relationship as THE key ingredient within the therapeutic setting.

Transformational versus Incremental Change

Ultimately the choice of which therapy you should follow amounts to one of personal preference.

Depth Psychology approaches tend to take longer, but do not involve doing lots of 'homework' or any 'exposure' work whereas directive approaches, such as CBT Therapy (CBT) actively involve the client in doing 'work' as part of the healing process.

You can read more about the two main types of change that are brought about by different therapies below.

Transformational Change

Transformational change is what happens when the 'cause' of any particular psychological symptom is 'uncovered' or 're-processed' in such a way that the symptom no longer serves any useful purpose.

This type of change occurs at the emotional level through a process called 'memory re-consolidation' and effectively 're-writes' the unhelpful emotional learning that produces the pathological symptom.

The type of therapy we use at Tranceform to bring about a transformational change is Psychoanalysis, a psycho-dynamic therapy that helps a person to explore these deeply embedded 'emotional learnings' and in doing so, to replace them with newer and more balanced learnings gained throughout the life course to date.

Many of our therapies may also use elements of 'attachment' based theory which seeks to help clients identify and then change attachment patterns that developed during earlier childhood.

Transformational change, once effected, is permanent and total.

Incremental Change

Incremental changes are 'step improvements' brought about by the development of improved management of thinking (cognition) and therefore of the behavioural responses brought about that those 'improved' thoughts.

This is the central tenet of the 'cognitive' therapies which are available in two forms here at our clinic.

Our cognitive therapies include the Tranceformental CBT programme.

Technically, the incremental changes affected by cognitive therapies are not 'permanent' or 'transformational' (although they can become 'normalised' with deliberative practice) but for many people still represent a significant improvement that is more than acceptable.

An advantage of incremental change is that it does not require the detailed examination of emotional experiences from the person's past and focuses almost exclusively on the thoughts and feelings that are experienced in the 'present context'.

Many people find this approach much more 'comfortable' and manageable to deal with.