Contrary to popular belief, psychotherapy is not only needed for people suffering from depression or autism. It helps to deal with fears and neuroses, cope with difficult life situations, and overcome loneliness or disagreements in the family. Of course, today specialists more often use combinations of different methods, selecting them depending on what a particular client needs. And yet one direction or another may be basic; Knowing how they differ from each other can help you choose a place, or at least decide to finally heal your mental wounds. T&P have compiled a guide to areas of psychotherapy that will help you find the right form of working with a therapist.
Psychoanalysis: Free Associations
Psychoanalysis is one of the oldest, but not outdated, areas of psychotherapy. It appeared more than 100 years ago and was originally used to treat neuroses. Psychoanalysis is based on the cathartic method of Joseph Breuer (Breuer), who used hypnosis in his work, which allowed patients, in the form of a conversation with a doctor, to restore lost memories or impressions and solve problems associated with them. Sigmund Freud became the co-author of this method and at first also resorted to hypnosis. He later abandoned this technique, and this marked the beginning of the formation of psychoanalysis as a method.
Psychoanalysis refers to conversational therapy methods. Its main goal is to help the client answer the following questions:
• what's happening?
• Why is this happening?
• what to do?
This allows a person to become aware of parts of the psyche that previously lay in the unconscious - and this is why psychoanalysis is sometimes also called depth psychology. Instead of hypnosis, the method of free association is used in this case, so that during the session the client can say whatever comes to his mind. The psychotherapist’s task here is to create a situation of safety and trust in which the person who comes to him can relax. An important condition, as in the case of any other psychotherapy, is the absence of friendly or family ties between the therapist and his client. In addition, as in other fields, the specialist is obliged to keep secret everything that is communicated to him, so that free associations do not extend beyond the confines of the office in which they are heard. You need to understand that a therapist who uses hypnosis in his practice and calls himself a psychoanalyst actually practices a different method: including Breuer’s cathartic method. Psychologists have no right to use hypnosis. After all, psychology and psychotherapy are not the same thing. The status in this case depends on the specialist’s education. A psychologist is a person who has received a psychological education (and even a clinical psychologist with a medical school diploma is neither a psychotherapist nor a doctor). A psychotherapist is a psychologist or doctor who has continued his education, received specialization or undergone retraining, and received the right to practice psychotherapy.
Psychoanalysis is a proven progressive method that gives a person the opportunity to deeply work through problematic issues and long-standing psychological traumas or, for example, change the style of communication. True, in this case you need to prepare for long-term work: a short period is considered to be a year and a half, and an average period is about seven years.
Jungian psychotherapy: fairy tales and cultural studies
Jungian psychotherapy is about fairy tales, dreams, myths, parables and even pictures that the client comes up with, writes down, draws, remembers and discusses with the therapist. Anything that has a plot and an idea is suitable as material here. The therapist does not act as a doctor, but rather as a partner of the client, his “companion on the path.”
According to the founder of this movement, Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and opponent of Freud, the unconscious normally exists in a state of balance and can mobilize complexes if this balance is disturbed. Complexes in the Jungian interpretation carry an emotional charge and are usually repressed from the realm of consciousness, but can manifest themselves in dreams, memories, emotions, instinctive impulses, fantasies and behavior. This is why Jungian psychotherapists usually have a deep knowledge of cultural studies, which allows them to understand the meaning of their client's stories. The Jungian approach gives a person the opportunity to work with images, recognizing through them his problems and complexes and establishing control over them.
Like psychoanalysis, the Jungian approach does not bring results. Nevertheless, this method allows you to have a good understanding of systems of relationships, learn to correctly understand and interpret various phenomena, develop your own individuality and become a more holistic person.
Gestalt therapy: contact and balance
Within the framework of Gestalt therapy, communication between the therapist and the client takes place face-to-face, in a fairly free extroverted dialogue. Did you hear or didn't you hear? What can you accept from the environment and what cannot you? Are you able to ask for what you need? When do you want to cut off the conversation and defend yourself? For the client, Gestalt therapy is built on contact: both with the psychotherapist and with himself. This is an open-to-new, dynamic type of therapy that allows a person to resolve psychological problems by establishing or establishing connections with his own self, the people around him and the circumstances of his life. This is mainly achieved by working with actual feelings and their bodily manifestations. You can also use memories, dreams, and even imaginary characters.
The main task of a person during Gestalt therapy is not so much to think as to feel. Awareness of emotions and reactions to them are used as tools. The optimal result of such work is to achieve balance, when you can rely on signals coming from within, and at the same time take into account external circumstances when it comes to action. Gestalt therapy teaches you to adapt to the world around you without violence against yourself and to satisfy your needs in a way that is adequately perceived in society.
The average duration of Gestalt therapy is up to two years. Today, one of the problems of this movement remains that some of its supporters perceive it more as a social movement or even a subculture, so that the process of development or problem solving to some extent turns into leisure and loses its effectiveness.
What should be the outcome of cognitive behavioral therapy?
The patient begins to realize that many harmful actions are illogical. Negative emotions are irrational. He sees how negative feelings originate from lived experience or social environment. He no longer has to act based on his behavior patterns and use substances.
The addict understands why he feels or acts a certain way. He knows how these feelings and actions motivate the use of the object of addiction. This is precisely the mission of CBT, because in this way it is easier for a person to cope with addiction.
We help addicts discover thoughts about the desired substance (or action, if we are talking about games, for example) that arise “automatically.”
Such an “automatic” thought is impulsive and is often the result of misconceptions about oneself, uncertainty, and feelings of fear. Often people try to drown out this moral pain by drinking alcohol or drugs, gambling, etc.
Constantly revisiting painful memories will help reduce the pain they cause. After this, people can learn to behave in new ways so that the need for the object of dependence no longer arises.
Patients are freed from addiction with the help of:
- getting rid of misconceptions about yourself;
- self-help training to improve mood;
- teaching effective communication skills;
- instilling skills in managing triggers – situations that increase cravings for alcohol, etc.
Cognitive therapy: applied behavior work
Cognitive therapy is the only type of psychotherapy covered by insurance in the EU. In this case, we are talking about behavioral work, in a certain sense devoid of psychoanalytic load, when it is necessary to think about long-standing and, at first glance, insignificant events. Cognitive therapy provides a short-term, well-structured, symptom-specific strategy for promoting self-exploration and behavioral change.
The method is one of the directions of the cognitive-behavioral movement, which studies how a person perceives certain situations, how he thinks and how he behaves in connection with this, as well as how all these processes can be corrected if something goes wrong not this way. Cognitive therapy is largely based on the concept of “self-made man”, which asserts that a person is capable of favorable changes despite the pressure of psychological trauma and the dark burden of the unconscious. The focus of the direction is the “knowing person”, an active figure who is able to stop being a slave of the past, control the present and predict possible future scenarios. One of the pioneers of cognitive psychotherapy, American psychiatrist Aaron Beck argued: “A person’s thoughts determine his emotions, emotions determine appropriate behavior, and behavior in turn determines our place in the world around us. It’s not that the world is bad, but how often we see it that way.”
One of the main areas of work within cognitive therapy is negative automatic thoughts. Several tools are used to overcome them:
• reassessment technique, when alternative causes of the problem are checked;
• decentralization of thinking (it is suitable for people suffering from the feeling that they are in the center of everyone's attention and vulnerable to other people's opinions);
• conscious self-observation, useful for depression and anxiety;
• decatastrophizing, which also helps reduce anxiety;
• targeted repetition, when desired positive behavior scenarios are repeatedly tried in practice.
• the “Stop!” technique, which allows you to destroy negative images on command;
• positive imagination, when a negative image is replaced with a positive one, and this allows you to relax;
• metaphors, parables or even poems, which, however, in this case are not the leading instrument.
The psychotherapist selects working methods individually, and they may change during the process. Cognitive therapy does not last long and is a fairly applied way of working on oneself. Its disadvantage is that in some cases the problem can be touched superficially, and the effect of the process may disappear before the end of work with the therapist.
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Indications
Cognitive behavioral therapy has no age restrictions. The technique is useful for preschool children who have all the signs of autism. She often helps schoolchildren who have been diagnosed with intellectual-mnestic disorder and deviant behavior. CBT can be included in the scheme of complex therapy and rehabilitation of patients with organic brain damage, suffering from mental disorders and somatic disorders.
Main indications for CBT:
- anxiety disorders, panic attacks;
- depression;
- eating disorder;
- sleep problems;
- social maladjustment;
- autism;
- post-traumatic stress;
- personality disorder;
- various types of addictions: alcohol, drugs, etc.;
- low self-esteem;
- lack of restraint in expressing emotions;
- somatoform disorder.
Psychodrama: theater "I"
Unlike all of the above areas, psychodrama is group therapy. It uses dramatic vocabulary and dramatic action as a tool. Romanian psychiatrist, psychologist and sociologist, opponent of Sigmund Freud and inventor of this method, Jacob Levi Moreno, wrote that this allows you to go through different life situations outside of ordinary circumstances.
In psychodrama there are always five key figures and elements: the protagonist, the director, the auxiliary self, the audience and the stage. During the session, the protagonist explores aspects of his personality, the director, played by the therapist, determines the direction of progress, and the auxiliary selves represent significant people, phenomena and even objects. Spectators watch from the side, and any spacious room can become the stage, since participants in psychodrama often need to move a lot. Within each psychodrama there are three stages: warm-up, dramatic action and sharing. It is at the sharing stage that viewers join the process, who can share their feelings and talk about the similarities between their experiences and the experiences of the protagonist. At the same time, the audience should not interpret his problems, since the hero of a psychodrama at this moment usually feels extremely vulnerable.
Jacob Moreno himself called psychodrama “a science that seeks truth in a dramatic way.” “One of its tasks is to teach people to resolve their conflicts in the microcosm of the world (group), free from conventional frameworks, through acting out their problems, ambitions, fantasies and fears,” Moreno wrote. “It presupposes the maximum involvement of all those present in the study of current conflicts in the form in which they exist, supplementing it with the early impressions and memories of the hero.”
This method is suitable for working with psychological trauma, conflict situations in the family or in a group, for child psychotherapy, as well as for the treatment of psychosomatic disorders.
Family-systemic constellations: theater of domestic problems
Family-system constellations are somewhat reminiscent of psychodrama, but in this case all the roles are alternately played by the same person. He also shows the group members who help him what to do. During the process, “deputies” convey what is happening in the family system, based on the information offered by the main character.
The author of the constellation method is the German psychotherapist and philosopher Bert Antoine Hellinger, born in 1925. He argues that most of a person's psychological problems stem from problems in his family system - the circle of relatives and people of equal importance to them. Hellinger lists such problems as murder, suicide, early death, rape, immigration, loss of property, breakdown of family relationships, and so on. According to the philosopher, they, as a rule, become the cause of psychological trauma, conflicts, psychosomatic and other diseases. To resolve a conflict or problem, Hellinger suggests working through it in action. Experts also recommend visiting a therapist of a different profile after a constellation session to assimilate the experience gained.
Story
1950s
Systemic family therapy emerges simultaneously in the USA and Europe, absorbing the ideas of cybernetics and communication theory. Doctors, anthropologists, mathematicians and psychologists have developed ideas about the structure of the family, its crises, and the feedback system. Psychotherapist Virginia Satir was the first to consider the family as a whole as a client. British anthropologist Gregory Bateson created the double message theory. This message is a paradox: for example, a mother expresses love for her child in words, but her behavior indicates hostility.
Body-oriented psychotherapy: working with matter
Today, this area of psychotherapy represents a whole bunch of techniques that are often used in combinations. They are suitable for people who are faced with body diagram disorders, neuroses and other manifestations of psychological problems through their physical condition. The basis of any body-oriented psychotherapy is the procedures of bodily contact. The main concept here is the muscular armor or system of muscle “clamps” - dense areas of compression in the muscles that do not relax at rest. Such areas can be observed throughout the body, from the head and face to the pelvis. According to the founder of the technique, Wilhelm Reich, a student of Sigmund Freud, who eventually moved away from psychoanalysis, they are created as a defense against unwanted worry, anxiety, fear, tears, anger, screaming, rage, passion and excitement.
In order to work out the “clamps”, a variety of methods are used: massage, exercises, breathing practices and thanatotherapy - a practice based on maximum muscle relaxation. However, any body-oriented psychotherapy is aimed at “uncluttering” suppressed feelings, body awareness and emotional response. It allows you to bring back onto the stage problems and traumas that were previously repressed into the unconscious and work through them. However, such psychotherapy often allows not so much to analyze the trauma, but to restore connection with it and free yourself from feelings that have been suppressed for years. Because of this, experts recommend alternating sessions of body-oriented and analytical psychotherapy. Otherwise - without awareness and the psychological changes associated with it - the results of the work done may be short-term.
Icons: 1) AM Briganti, 2), 3), 4), 6), 8) Luis Prado, 7) jon trillana.
When do you need the help of a psychotherapist?
It is difficult to imagine a person for whom everything is perfect, without problems or conflicts. But we are also not accustomed to running to a psychotherapist at the slightest ailment. How do you understand: do you need the help of a professional or is it possible to cope with the situation yourself?
You definitely need the help of a specialist if:
- you are grieving the death of a loved one and cannot get out of this state;
- after the birth of a child, you lost the desire to live;
- insomnia has become chronic;
- you often experience a feeling of aggression, have difficulty restraining impulses to hit someone or break something;
- you feel persistently dependent on someone/something;
- you regularly have panic attacks.
You should seriously consider visiting a psychotherapist if:
- you are systematically fired from your job;
- you are increasingly thinking about divorce;
- you were raped or beaten;
- you have suffered a serious illness or injury;
- you were betrayed by a loved one;
- you notice that you have become overly emotional and may burst into tears over a trifle.
Less dangerous situations that a psychotherapist can help you deal with include:
- a vague feeling of causeless anxiety that appears more and more often;
- minor illnesses that often occur;
- rejection of one's own appearance;
- serious illness of someone close to you;
- feeling that you are being watched;
- strong love without reciprocity;
- constant feeling of guilt before someone;
- inability to refuse requests from family, friends, colleagues, and superiors;
- you are over 30, but you live with your parents;
- fear of flying on an airplane, riding the subway or in an elevator;
- your life doesn't suit you.
If you have an idea that a specialist can help you, you can go to one consultation; many specialists conduct the first introductory conversation for free.
