Both counselling and psychotherapy are often referred to as talking therapies. This is because, the therapist uses a combination of questions, reflections and summaries which enable you to obtain a clearer understanding of the challenges you face and to uncover more effective ways of addressing them.

There are several different types of talking therapy. Some have a strong past and present focus, for example, psychodynamic, psychoanalytic or person centred therapies. During these meetings, the client does most of the talking and the therapist provides summaries and/or interpretations which help build awareness. It is assumed that through awareness change emerges. Some people find these approaches spend too much time focusing on the past in the work and would prefer more future focus and active strategies for their lives now, the therapies below have more of this element.

Other psychotherapies, such as Solution Focussed Therapy, Gestalt, Transactional Analysis (TA) or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) have additional proactive elements and include a stronger future focus, similar to coaching. Here suggestions, exercises and experiments are also used. TA and CBT also include a psycho-educational element and when combined with developmental theory, they can provide you with a very helpful understanding of why you feel and behave certain ways. Armed with this information you can begin to tackle difficult feelings more effectively and move more actively towards achieving your current and future goals.

To learn more about different therapy approaches we use click here Our Therapies.

There are a variety of specialists in the field of psychology, ranging from research to health or business psychology. Not all psychologists are trained to provide therapy. Therefore, if you are seeking therapy for emotional difficulties, I recommend Counselling Psychologists as the most appropriate specialists from this field. They are trained in a number of therapies most often, psychodynamic, CBT and person centred. The approach of a counselling psychologist will be similar to that of a psychotherapist who has trained in a range of therapies.