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Counselling Therapies

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR): What the Research Shows

Read the first part of this article series here. Here’s a question: What therapy is fairly new to the scene, works in non-traditional ways, and is showing itself to be as effective as some gold standard therapies, but in less time? If you answered “EMDR” – Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing Therapy – you are right […]

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR): Background, Structure and Applications

In this article, we explore what Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is, how it works, which conditions are being treated with it, and what’s involved in each of its eight phases. A companion piece offers a snapshot of research conducted so far, outlines the main effects the therapy induces, and notes the requirements for […]

Lockdown Emergence: Integrating Our Various Selves

During the rage of COVID-19, few people have been able to continue, unmodified, the daily life schedule they employed before the pandemic. The months of “sheltering-in-place” incarceration have generated some wonderful humour (witness all the jokes about home schooling and weight gain!), and more than a little reflection on what truly matters — and what, […]

Working with Angst in Counselling

What do you say to a client whose presenting issue is deep angst over the question of relationship? Whether the person is in a primary relationship and deeply unhappy, questioning whether to stay or to go, or the person longs for that primary relationship in order to feel happy and fulfilled, the issue is a […]

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing for Trauma

If your client was suffering from trauma, which approach would you choose to help them? In this post we explore eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, or EMDR. Background EMDR is a trauma-focused psychological intervention created from an accelerated information-processing model. Because it also incorporates dissociation and nonverbal representation of traumas (such as visual memories), EMDR […]

Book Review: Stress-free Health Management

Haim, Jenetta. (2014). Stress-free health management: A natural solution for your health. Bloomington, IN: Balboa Press. When faced with reviewing books relating to stress management and natural therapies there can be some degree of scepticism involved as many texts tend to tout the adage that their way is the only way to health and well-being. […]

Positive Interactive-behaviour Therapy for Intellectual Disability

Given that an estimated 60 percent of persons who have intellectual disability also experience severe communication deficits (AIHW, 2008), the literature on counselling this client group consistently refers to the importance of using “creative approaches” (WWILD, 2012, p 60) which allow the client to respond in both verbal and nonverbal ways. Thus, in addition to […]

CBT in a Nutshell

We can broadly define CBT as a combination of cognitive and behavioural therapeutic approaches used to help clients modify limiting, maladaptive thoughts and behaviours, ones that are often inconsistent with consensual reality (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979). The basic premise of CBT is that troublesome emotions are difficult to change directly, so CBT targets […]

CBT Techniques: Cognitive and Behavioural

In CBT, verbal techniques are used to bring forth the client’s automatic thoughts, analyse the logic behind the thoughts, identify unhelpful assumptions, and examine the validity of the assumptions. Assumptions, once identified, are open to modification, which can occur by asking the client if the assumption seems reasonable, by having the client generate reasons for […]

Emotion in Motion

If you look at the Oxford Dictionary entry for the word ‘emotion’, you will find it is a noun, a thing, described as follows: A strong feeling deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others: she was attempting to control her emotions: his voice was shaky with emotion. Instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished […]