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Coaching for Depression

This report has examined coaching for depression, drawing on principles and techniques found in various therapeutic modalities. Coaching-informed approaches differ from traditional therapy by focusing on solutions and positive emotions rather than problems, viewing the client as the expert rather than the therapist, and emphasising possibilities over impossibilities. Potential advantages include building confidence, fostering hope, and promoting action-oriented strategies. For clients, coaching can be preferable due to feeling more understood, empowered, and less blamed. Practitioners may benefit from a more collaborative role and the fulfillment of helping clients achieve lasting positive change. A critical element in coaching for depression is the constant monitoring of progress, often done through scaling questions, tracking goal achievement, and regular check-ins to identify what is better. Key techniques include using positive focus, finding exceptions, externalising problems, challenging negative thoughts, setting SMART goals, and promoting behavioral activation.

Comparing Havening Techniques and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Mental Wellbeing

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and its variants like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) are established psychological approaches that address anxiety, depression, stress, and trauma by focusing on changing thoughts, behaviours, and responses to internal states. CBT often involves techniques like exposure therapy and thought records, aiming to modify reactions that interfere with life goals. While self-help resources exist for CBT, professional guidance is recommended for complex issues and challenging techniques.

Havening Techniques are a newer psychosensory modality that targets the neurobiological encoding of distress, particularly in the amygdala. It involves gentle touch (self-applied or by a practitioner) and aims to depotentiate traumatic memories and reduce stress quickly and effectively. Havening can be used content-free and integrates well with other therapies. It is effective for anxiety, stress, and trauma, helping to provide a sense of safety and facilitating shifts in perception. Self-Havening is a valuable tool for self-care, stress reduction, and building resilience, but professionals are necessary for treating significant or complex trauma. Both approaches offer distinct pathways to support mental wellbeing, with professional guidance being crucial for more severe or complex challenges.

A Comprehensive Understanding of Anxiety Treatment Options

Anxiety treatment encompasses a range of self-help strategies and professional therapeutic approaches aimed at helping individuals manage and reduce the impact of excessive worry and fear. Self-help options include breathing techniques, mindfulness, lifestyle changes, setting boundaries, examining unhelpful thoughts, and engaging in valued activities. Professional help is recommended for more significant anxiety and involves working with a trained practitioner who can provide understanding, identify unhelpful patterns like avoidance, teach specific skills, and offer support. Different professional approaches to anxiety treatment include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), exposure-based methods, Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), neuroscience-informed approaches, and techniques from NLP. Choosing the right approach depends on the severity and impact of anxiety, the success of previous efforts, the specific type of anxiety, and finding a professional with relevant experience and a good connection. Anxiety treatment is a journey that requires patience and commitment, ultimately aiming to help individuals live a more meaningful life less controlled by fear.

ACT’s primary goals in treating anxiety disorders

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has two major primary goals when treating anxiety disorders: (1) fostering acceptance of unwanted thoughts and feelings whose occurrence or disappearance clients cannot control, and (2) commitment and action toward living a life that they value. This means that ACT aims to help clients both accept their internal experiences and… Read More »ACT’s primary goals in treating anxiety disorders

The Benefits Of Depression Coaching

Depression coaching offers a solution-focused and action-oriented approach to overcoming low mood. By prioritising future goals, identifying existing strengths, and implementing practical techniques derived from methodologies like SFBT and NLP, it can help individuals to break free from negative thought patterns and build a more positive and fulfilling life. This approach directly addresses neurological changes associated with depression by stimulating the frontal lobe, rewiring negative pathways, increasing positive emotion, shifting focus towards solutions, and fostering a sense of control.

The Amygdala Brain Function

The amygdala is a critical part of the brain’s emotional processing system, primarily involved in detecting threats and generating fear and anxiety responses. It forms emotional memories that can influence future reactions. While its protective function is vital, an overactive amygdala or the misinterpretation of non-threatening stimuli can lead to negative issues such as heightened anxiety and inappropriate fear responses. Individuals can employ various self-help strategies like deep breathing, mindfulness, exercise, and trigger identification to help regulate amygdala activity. However, when anxiety significantly impacts life, professional help from therapists offering CBT, ACT, exposure therapy, or EMDR, and potentially medication, can provide more targeted support in retraining the amygdala and managing anxiety.

The Skills and Practices of a Stress Therapist

A stress therapist is a trained professional who specialises in helping individuals understand, manage, and reduce the negative impacts of stress in their lives. They utilise a range of evidence-based techniques and tools, tailored to the client’s specific needs, to promote well-being, improve productivity and relationships, and support a life aligned with personal values. Their role involves assessment, psychoeducation, teaching coping strategies, and providing a supportive environment for clients to develop resilience and regain control over their experience of stress.

Steps to Overcoming Dread: Calming Your Mind and Building Resilience with Self-Help Techniques

Feelings of dread often involve activation of the brain’s threat system (amygdala) and an overwhelmed cortex, accompanied by negative thinking patterns, anticipation of threat, and negative self-talk. To overcome dread, techniques such as CPR for the Amygdala (combining self-havening and brain games), self-havening alone, challenging negative self-talk, practising mindfulness and acceptance, focusing on solutions, ACT-based defusion, applied relaxation (breathing), cultivating self-compassion, and the LLAMP approach can be effective. These methods work by calming the nervous system, redirecting attention, creating psychological distance from negative thoughts, promoting self-acceptance, and shifting focus towards positive possibilities and values. Consistent practice and patience are key to building resilience and reducing the impact of dread.

Social Anxiety: Exploring Therapeutic Approaches

Social anxiety therapy offers a range of approaches beyond CBT and cognitive restructuring to help individuals manage their social anxiety. Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) focuses on future solutions and exceptions to the problem. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) emphasises accepting anxious feelings and committing to value-driven actions using techniques like acceptance, mindfulness, and defusion. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) aims to change thought and behaviour patterns through techniques like altering submodalities. Exposure Therapy involves gradual confrontation of feared situations. Social Skills Training focuses on improving social competence through modelling and feedback. Applied Relaxation teaches techniques to manage immediate anxiety symptoms. Mindfulness cultivates present-moment awareness. Compassion Focused Therapy promotes self-compassion. These therapies help by altering the individual’s relationship with anxiety, fostering psychological flexibility, and building confidence in social situations. Successful use requires willingness, practice, a gradual approach where needed, and a supportive therapeutic relationship, leading to reduced anxiety, increased confidence, and improved quality of life. 

Counselling for Anxiety:When it could be right for you.

Counselling for anxiety offers a supportive space to understand and manage anxiety. It involves building a therapeutic relationship, normalising anxiety, and exploring patterns of avoidance. Goal setting focuses on the client’s desired life beyond anxiety. Techniques like mindfulness and acceptance-based approaches help shift the relationship with anxious thoughts and feelings. Developing coping mechanisms, addressing potential trauma, and fostering self-compassion are also key aspects. Counselling for anxiety is a personalised process aimed at empowering individuals to live more fully.

Leveraging Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) for Anxiety Relief

NLP for anxiety is a set of techniques that aims to help individuals understand and manage their anxiety by exploring and modifying their internal mental processes and behaviours. It operates on the principle that anxiety is a learned response pattern that can be reprogrammed. Several factors contribute to its potential for faster, better, and more lasting results, including its focus on the structure of individual experience, the empowerment it provides, its methods for identifying and reframing triggers, its approach to accessing inner resources, its work with subconscious associations, and its perspective on anxiety as a learned skill. NLP for anxiety can be effectively combined with other approaches such as hypnotherapy, Havening Techniques, mindfulness-based practices, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to enhance therapeutic outcomes. Havening is being used by some NLP practitioners to help process traumatic memories and reduce anxiety through psychosensory touch, often facilitating a relaxed state while maintaining client control.

Exploring Interventions in Private Anxiety Treatment

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): Focuses on accepting anxious thoughts and feelings and committing to valued actions despite anxiety. Employs mindfulness, value clarification, and ACT-style exposure.
Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT): Assumes clients have inner resources for solutions and focuses on preferred futures, exceptions to anxiety, and small, achievable changes.
Exposure Therapy: Involves gradual and systematic confrontation of feared situations or stimuli to reduce avoidance and anxiety. Can be in vivo, imaginal, or interoceptive.
Mindfulness-Based Approaches: Cultivate present moment awareness without judgement to foster a different relationship with anxiety, allowing observation without automatic reaction.
Hypnotherapy: Uses a relaxed state to access the emotional mind, potentially facilitating clearer thinking and addressing underlying anxiety issues.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP): Offers techniques to recognise and modify maladaptive coping strategies and build positive thought habits to reduce anxiety.
Expressive Writing: Involves writing about emotional experiences as a potential therapeutic process.
Self-Help Resources: Include books and online materials offering information, techniques, and exercises for independent anxiety management or as a supplement to therapy.

The Distinctions Between an Anxiety Specialist, General Therapist, and Coach

An anxiety specialist is a mental health professional with dedicated training and experience in diagnosing and treating anxiety disorders using specialised, evidence-based therapies like CBT and ACT. Their focus is on alleviating anxiety symptoms, understanding underlying patterns, and developing long-term coping strategies. Psychiatrist anxiety specialists can also prescribe medication. A general therapist provides therapy for a wider range of mental health concerns, including anxiety, but lacks the specific, in-depth expertise of an anxiety specialist. A coach concentrates on helping clients achieve specific goals and improve performance, without the therapeutic training to address anxiety disorders. Choosing the right support depends on the individual’s needs, with an anxiety specialist being the most appropriate choice for significant or persistent anxiety.

Social Anxiety with Therapeutic Support

A social anxiety therapist specialises in helping individuals overcome intense social fear and avoidance. This requires an approach that directly addresses the anticipation, experience, and rumination associated with social interactions, focusing on changing one’s relationship with social discomfort. Therapists use various techniques such as psychoeducation, exposure exercises, social skills training, and sometimes solution-focused or acceptance-based strategies. They tailor their interventions to the client’s stage of change, supporting them from awareness to action and maintenance. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) provides a framework that helps clients accept anxious feelings, defuse from negative thoughts, be present, recognise a broader sense of self, connect with their values, and take committed action in social situations despite their anxiety.