Different Types of Therapy – Anxiety, Depression, Trauma and PTSD

You may not have ever considered it, but there are different types of psychological therapies to deal with anxiety, depression, trauma and PTSD. And these go beyond listening to the patient’s problems. There are as many modalities as there are personalities individuals have. And its effectiveness is linked to the technical skills, knowledge of the professionals, online therapy and counseling services.

Why go to psychological therapy? The problem has a solution

But why go to psychological therapy? How can we realize that psychotherapy can be the solution we need for our problems? In general, there are a series of situations that can alert us to this need:

• Having different types of phobias, such as social phobia.
• Suffering from generalized anxiety disorders.
• Suffering from disorders associated with food, such as anorexia or bulimia.
• Being continuously depressed.
• Have self-esteem problems.
• Being dependent on different substances, such as drugs or alcohol.
• Facing school failure.
• Solve cases of aggressive or rebellious children.
• Relationship problems, such as emotional dependence, psychological abuse, jealousy, crisis in the couple by one of the two members, etc.
• In this case, the different types of psychological therapies for couples will help to improve the communication of both individuals, and to control impulses, emotions and conflicts in the relationship.
• Sex-related disorders.

Going to psychotherapy is a way to unblock these disorders. Psychotherapists help us to obtain the necessary tools to achieve a fuller life.

Types of psychological treatments

There is a wide variety of types of psychological therapies that allow the expert to select the psychotherapy model that works best for each patient. Although the techniques are different, the goal is the same: improve the patient’s quality of life and achieve positive change.

Next, we are going to take a tour of the types of psychological therapies most used:

1. Gestalt therapy

It is one of the most famous humanistic therapies. It was developed in the 40s. This therapy helps the patient learn to live centered in the present and become aware of both their feelings and their desires. This makes it easier to act consistently.

For which people and in what situations is Gestalt therapy most useful? Gestalt is perfect for those who seek personal growth and show difficulties in achieving a balance between what they feel and what they do. It is ideal to follow the path of self-discovery. It has no age limit.

2. Cognitive-behavioral therapy

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) was born from the fusion of cognitive and behavioral therapy. This treatment aims to modify our way of thinking to change the way we act and feel. CBT is based on the idea that facing problems in a negative way causes negative behaviors and feelings that end up leading to phobias and other types of disorders.

Through CBT, the patient learns to locate negative thoughts. In this way, CBT breaks complex problems into smaller parts so that they can be covered and modified using different techniques.

Who is CBT useful for? CBT has proven useful in treating cases of anxiety, social phobias, depression, anxiety, panic, post-traumatic stress disorder or obsessive compulsive, and so on.

3. Neuropsychological therapy

Neuropsychological therapies are aimed at patients suffering from brain or nervous system damage. It does not matter if this problem has been caused by an accident or is congenital. It is appropriate for people of any age and achieves amazing improvements on many levels: in communication, memory, concentration capacity and so on.

To apply this type of therapy it is necessary to have several experts, such as neuropsychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists.

4. Systemic therapy

Systemic therapy is one of the most used to solve family and relationship problems.

This therapy is responsible for giving importance to social relationships in people’s lives. It develops jointly with other members of our environment (partner or family). It considers that the way in which we interact is linked to the functioning of our social environment, with which we create a system. The difficulties that the patient may have are an expression that something is wrong in their social groups.

This therapy proposes new modes of interaction with our social group. The idea is to look for alternatives to the dynamics that do not work in our relationships.

Brief systemic therapy uses the principles of systemic therapy, but treats the patient individually, without the need to work with the rest of their social environment.

5. Psychoanalytic therapy

Psychoanalytic therapy is the best known to all thanks to American cinema. Sigmund Freud was in charge of developing the theory of psychoanalysis. In this psychotherapy the subconscious has a great importance when it comes to solving therapeutic problems. According to this specialty, our behavior is associated with conflicts that, unconsciously, arose during our childhood. These conflicts mark our behavior and are reflected in our dreams, emotions, thoughts, and so on.