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Counselling Therapies

Theoretical Principles of Narrative Therapy

A narrative approach to counselling examines the stories people have constructed to define their lives and identities. Using narrative techniques, the counsellor assists the client in modifying narratives (stories) that are unhelpful or ineffective. If, for example, I have a dominant narrative that says that I am simply no good at cooking, it is likely […]

History of Behaviour Therapy

Behaviour therapy had its beginnings in the early 1900’s and became established as a psychological approach in the 1950s and 1960s. At this time, it received much resistance from the current school of thought, psychoanalysis. There have been a number of people that that have contributed to the development of behavioural therapy: Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) […]

Strategic Therapy in Couple Counselling

Strategic therapy involves the therapist designing specific approaches to each of the presenting issues. Symptoms and problems are viewed as a couple’s dysfunctional way of communicating and specific strategies are used to alleviate these problems. The strategic therapist places great emphasis on the sequence of interactions between couples. Sequence of interactions refers to habitual ways […]

Motivational Enhancement Therapy

Motivational enhancement is a style of person-centred counselling developed to facilitate change in health-related behaviours. The core principle of the approach is negotiation rather than conflict. It aims to help people explore and resolve their ambivalence about behaviour change. It combines warmth and empathy with focused reflective listening and the development of discrepancy between where […]

Tharapeutic Approaches and Applications

Most therapists utilise an integrative approach towards counselling that combines approaches and methods from a broad range of theoretical orientations as they assist clients through the various challenges of life. To help counsellors come to a better place of integration in being able to “pick” the right approach at the right time, we’ll overview four […]

Focus on Solutions

Solution focused therapies are founded on the rationale that there are exceptions to every problem and through examining these exceptions and having a clear vision of a preferred future, client and counsellor, together, can generate ides for solutions. Solution focused therapists are competency and future focused. They highlight and utilise client strengths to enable a […]

Albert Ellis, Rational and Irrational Beliefs

Albert Ellis was born in Pittsburg (1913). He spent most of his life in New York. A natural counsellor, Ellis studied psychoanalysis and was supervised by a training analyst. Ellis, however, grew increasingly frustrated by psychoanalysis which he concluded was unscientific and superficial (Corey, 2005). In the early 1950s, Ellis experimented with other treatment frameworks, […]

CBT: Applications and Challenges

Cognitive approaches have been applied as means of treatment across a variety of presenting concerns and psychological conditions. Cognitive approaches emphasise the role of thought in the development and maintenance of unhelpful or distressing patterns of emotion or behaviour. Beck* originally applied his cognitive approach to the treatment of depression. Cognitive therapy has also been […]

Behavioural Techniques in Counselling

Techniques in behavioural therapies apply the learning principles to change maladaptive behaviours (Weiten, 2007). The techniques do not focus on clients achieving insights into their behaviour; rather the focus is just on changing the behaviour. For example, if a behavioural therapist is working with a client that has an alcohol problem, the behavioural therapist will […]

Person-Centred Therapy: History and Concepts

The person-centred approach was developed from the concepts of humanistic psychology. The humanistic approach “views people as capable and autonomous, with the ability to resolve their difficulties, realize their potential, and change their lives in positive ways” (Seligman, 2006). Carl Rogers (a major contributor of the client-centred approach) emphasized the humanistic perspective as well as […]

Solution-focused Technique: Presupposing Change

When clients are focused on changing the negative aspects (or problems) in their lives, positive changes can often be overlooked, minimised or discounted due to the ongoing presence of the problem. The solution focused approach challenges counsellors to be attentive to positive changes (however small) that occur in their clients’ lives. Questions that presuppose change […]

Motivational Enhancement with Eating Disorders

In this post, we look at how Motivational Enhancement Therapy can be applied to a practical situation. More specifically, we’ll discuss how counsellors can utilise this model to assist clients suffering from eating disorders. To start, consider the Four Fundamental Principles (Lacey & Lister, unpublished) outlined below: The client’s drive towards thinness is ego-syntonic – […]

Contracts in Transactional Analysis

The treatment contract is an element that distinguishes transactional analysis from other therapeutic approaches. It is a specific agreement between a therapist and a client to accomplish clearly stated goals. Berne (quoted by Stewart and Joines, 1987) defined a contract as an explicit bilateral commitment to a well-defined course of action. James and Jongeward’s (1973, […]

An Introduction to Ego States

Eric Berne, the pioneer of transactional analysis, made complex interpersonal transactions understandable when he recognised that the human personality is made up of three “ego states”. Each ego state is an entire system of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours from which we interact with one another. Parent, Adult and Child ego states and an interaction between […]