Category: Self Help Resources
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Examples Of SMART Goals In Low Intensity CBT
Cognitive behavioural therapy is a short-term effective treatment that addresses many mental health concerns – depression, anxiety, insomnia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress, among many others. CBT is an excellent treatment option because it doesn’t require medication and turns you into your own therapist. However, the problem is that getting these services are either very expensive…
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The Beachball Analogy On The Power Of Letting Go: Acceptance And Commitment Therapy
Many people often think of acceptance as the same as giving up or staying stagnant in our lives. They view acceptance as bad and the enemy of change. However, there is a lot of power in acceptance. In fact, acceptance has formed the core of more recent ‘third wave’ therapies, such as acceptance and commitment…
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Green Flags Of A Good Therapist – What To Look For When Starting Therapy
The process of starting a therapy is often scary, and it can be daunting to decide who would be the best to work with in terms of a therapist. Fortunately, you don’t have to decide immediately, and most therapists often provide a free consultation session so that you can get a sense of whether the…
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Understanding Limits To Confidentiality: What Therapists Can And Cannot Talk About
Confidentiality – what therapists can and cannot share with other people outside the therapy room – is often a concern that people have when thinking about starting therapy. They worry that their “crazy” thoughts and/or urges to harm themselves, could mean that the therapist will immediately tell the police and send them to the hospital.…
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5 Common Therapy Goals For Anxiety And How To Work On Them
Anxiety is a common problem that people come into therapy to treat. However, what exactly are folks hoping to change by coming into treatment? This post discusses five goals for anxiety commonly discussed in therapy. The first four relate to overarching goals that most folks with anxiety problems could probably benefit from improving. The final…
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What To Expect In Group Therapy
In many hospital-settings, group therapy tends to be the norm for folks wanting to receive therapy. This is because of the high demand for mental health services and limited resources in these healthcare settings. As a result, individual therapy is more rare compared to group-based therapy. When people think about group-based therapy, there can be…
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How to Be Your Own Therapist and Increase Motivation to Change
Working through ambivalence It is normal for people to have ambivalence about whether this is the right time to make a commitment to change something in their lives. Even in therapy, people come at different stages of change – from precontemplation (“I see no problems with what I’m doing”) to preparation (“I’m already thinking about…
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5 Common Pitfalls In SMART Goal Setting And How To Avoid Them
SMART goal setting is a practical way to support mental health because it makes the abstract into the concrete. Example: being happy is abstract. Spending more time with friends is concrete. Therefore, SMART goals help us to operationalize what ‘happy’ means, which can be different from person to person. We can then plan actions and…
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Simple SMART Goals To Improve Your Mental Health Today
When we think about changing our lives, completing large projects, or improving our mental health, we can often feel crushed by the mountain of work that seem to be needed to get to the finish line. We then feel overwhelmed by this daunting beast and decide to retreat to something that reduces our distress but…
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5 Benefits Of Using The Downward Arrow Technique
The Downward Arrow technique is a common technique that therapists use particularly in cognitive behavioural therapy. The downward arrow is an effective strategy to understand the core of a person’s fears or beliefs. The downward arrow techniques works by asking the question: “If that were true, then what?”. Let’s take an example: Patient: If I…
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