How Integrative Therapy Combines Different Therapy Methods to Fit the Individual Needs of Each Client

One of the great things about integrative therapy is that it encompasses many different therapy methods.

This means that your therapist has a lot of options when designing a treatment program.

It allows for greater flexibility and for creating a tailor-made treatment appropriate just for you.

The Various Therapy Methods of Integrative Therapy

Focus: Logical vs. Illogical Thinking

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a common form of therapy. This is where you and your therapist work together to identify and modify thinking that is not supporting you and helping you achieve your goals.

By doing so, you are able to address the component of integrative therapy that deals with “thoughts.” This means you can discover how your thinking affects you and make changes. Also, you can realize how your thinking impacts your emotions or even physiology.

Similar practices that accomplish the same goal include Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy and Cognitive Restructuring.

Focus: Understanding and Modifying Emotions

Psychodynamic Therapy is a therapy method that investigates your emotions. In specific, the process helps you to recognize patterns that exist in your emotions.

For example, why is it that you always struggle with authority figures and get angry? Or, for what reasons have you always felt anxious at school? Often these emotional patterns stretch all the way back to childhood.

Focus: Using Imagery

Another tool available for integrative therapy is imagery-based techniques. With imagery rescripting, for example, the person is guided by the therapist to remember or even possibly “re-experience” past troubling events from alternative perspectives. That can open the way for you to potentially reframe current experience more productively. You are also more open to suggestion and ideas while engaged in imagery activities.

This allows you to develop a better awareness of how your condition is affecting you—both physically and mentally. Plus, you are more open to ways that can help address the issues.

Focus: Modifying Physiology

A big part of integrative therapy is connecting your physiology to mental health. There are several ways that a therapist can approach this.

Relaxation Therapy – Includes activities such as yoga, biofeedback, aromatherapy, and meditation to control stress and relax
Breathing Exercises – Such as deep breathing where you learn how to increase oxygen levels and stay calm
Energy Psychology – Understanding how your body’s energy can affect your emotional health through meridians and bio-electric energy

These therapy methods are helpful because they develop a better understanding of how your mind and body work together. They also provide solutions for when you are feeling stressed or anxious.

EMDR – A Double Focus

EMDR is short for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a therapy method that combines both imagery and physiology for treatment. The method uses eye movements or similar stimulation while also reflecting on traumatic incidents from the past. The objective is for the patient to find closure and redefine the meaning of particular incidents.

For example, let us say, you once felt powerless after a traumatic experience. EMDR treatment can help you to redefine how you view yourself and process the experience. In turn, you are able to find closure, allowing you to move forward from that trauma.

Therapy Methods That See the Big Picture

Therapy is not meant to be a “nuts-and-bolts” type of practice. You cannot simply fix one part without understanding how it affects the whole. Integrative therapy methods allow both you and your therapist to see what is actually happening.

Clearly, the therapy methods described above lend themselves well to the integrative therapy approach. In combination, these techniques look at the big picture and not an individual component. That’s why they can help you to understand how different parts of yourself can be affected by a single health issue.

This broad-view perspective allows for real change to occur. And in that way, it empowers you to make the changes necessary to facilitate both healing and growth.

Questions, Concerns, Thoughts?

I invite you to call me for a free 15 – minute phone consultation to discuss your specific needs and to answer any questions you have about anxiety, treatment and my practice. Please visit my website @www.theanxietydocseattle.com or call me directly @ (206) 745-4933.