At Anxiety House Brisbane, we provide evidenced based therapies when treating children, adolescents, and adults. This ensures you receive treatment that has strong research evidence proving its effectiveness and can be confident that you are working with your psychologist towards your treatment goals. Additionally, your psychologist will work with you to provide a treatment plan that is individualised to your needs, guided by one of the following therapies. This will maximise your time and effort, and minimise your financial commitment to therapy.

Attachment-Based Therapy offers a brief, process-oriented treatment that focuses on developing (or rebuilding) relational trust. It often involves emotional expression in a safe and compassionate environment, repairing negative early attachment experiences, and strengthening your capacity to have secure, rewarding adult relationships. As an evidence-based treatment, it draws on attachment science, and can provide intervention to repair early attachment ruptures.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an action-oriented psychotherapy that stems from more traditional cognitive and behavioural style therapies. At its core, ACT allows you to accept that which is beyond your personal control, and take action to improve and enrich your life in key personal ways. This hands-on approach to your treatment allows you to sit more comfortably and deeply with your emotions, accept these as appropriate responses to important situations, and actively change behaviours so that you can live more in-line with your values.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a well-known evidenced based treatment aimed to engage you with your thoughts, and how they can impact your feelings and behaviours. CBT focuses on unhelpful thinking patterns that can lead to avoidance, worry, or maladaptive behaviours. With this treatment modality, you will be able to explore your negative thinking patterns, problem solve, and ultimately change your responses to difficult situations. CBT is an effective therapy that can be useful in the treatment of a wide range of mental health concerns.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is often effective in the management of painful emotions that can cause interpersonal conflict and distress. It focuses on providing helpful skills in the domains of mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. In doing so, DBT can open up more effective communication with others whilst supporting you to maintain self-respect and assertiveness. This can help you to develop a deeper and more meaningful connection with yourself, your emotions, and your relationships with others.

Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) encourages you to be more compassionate towards yourself, moving away from negative self-talk, towards increased self-acceptance. It also encourages a more compassionate mindset toward others, promoting positive relationships and improved mental and emotional health. Through understanding the emotion regulation systems and bringing them into balance, CFT can be effective in the treatment of various mental health concerns with evidence showing practicing compassion can have a profound positive effect on psychological, physiological, and social wellbeing.

EMDR is a unique, non-traditional psychotherapy which can assist with desensitization to negative feelings that result from memories of traumatic events. Rather than focussing on these painful memories through traditional talk therapies, EMDR focuses on altering the emotions, thoughts and responses that result from traumatic experiences through eye movements that help reprocess the way these memories are stored in the brain. This can be an effective treatment that reduces problematic symptoms associated with traumatic experiences.

Family Systems Therapy can assist in resolving family conflict that may be impacting on the health and wellbeing of the family unit. Underpinning the treatment is the belief that what happens to one family member happens to the whole family. As such, this is a collaborative therapy that encourages members to work together to better understand family dynamics, the impact of individual actions, and emotional responses. Evidence shows families have a profound effect on each other’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, therefore treatment focus is on family connectedness, understanding, cohesion, and cooperation.

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) focuses on strategies that help to resolve problems that can arise in four domains: social isolation, unresolved grief, life transitions, and role disputes within relationships. Effective in the treatment of a variety of mental health concerns, IPT focuses on your current relationships, how they may be impacting on your wellbeing, and strategies for improving your social interactions. This is intended to improve your interpersonal functioning, increase your social support, and decrease your psychological distress.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is a modification to the traditional forms of cognitive therapy, and incorporates mindfulness practices to assist with a range of mental health difficulties. At its core, MBCT joins the two modes of the mind: the ‘doing’ mode and the ‘being’ mode. Similar to cognitive therapies, the goal of MBCT is to develop consistent awareness of your thoughts and reactions, acceptance of the present moment, and acceptance of thoughts without judgment. This therapy mode is an experiential process, focussing on accepting thoughts and letting them go.

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is an evidence-based treatment for young children who may be experiencing behavioural difficulties. It combines play therapy and behavioural therapy for young children and their care providers. PCIT aims to help young children control their frustrations while building parent/caregiver confidence to strengthen the relationship between you both. This dynamic treatment approach focuses on the parent, the child, and your interactions, and how this can be improved to benefit your relationship and your child’s development.

Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PET) is an effective psychotherapy for those experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After a traumatic event, some people struggle with unwanted thoughts, disturbing nightmares, and feelings of hopelessness, depression, or hypervigilance. Naturally, the response to this is to avoid thoughts, feelings, and situations that remind you of the trauma. PET supports you to gradually approach trauma-related memories, feelings, and situation and learn that these memories and cues are not dangerous and do not need to be avoided, helping you reduce your PTSD symptoms and re-engage with life.

Psychodynamic Therapy can assist with a range of mental health conditions, exploring the root cause of symptoms, and helping you to understand yourself better through self-examination and self-reflection. Psychodynamic Therapy looks at the “why” behind our thoughts and actions, explores all emotions, self-defeating patterns, and defenses. This can help you gain insight into yourself, supporting you to have a more intimate understanding of how your early experiences have shaped your current behaviours, and foster more positive interpersonal relationships.

TF-CBT is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy that can be particularly helpful for children, adolescents, and their care providers overcome trauma-related difficulties. It helps young people to address distorted or upsetting beliefs, and develop coping skills to help manage stressors. It also assists parents/caregivers to cope effectively with their own emotional distress and develop skills to support their children. TF-CBT is sensitive to the unique difficulties faced by young people with post-traumatic stress and emotion dysregulation that results from abuse, violence, or grief.

Virtual Reality (VR) Therapy is an evidence-based treatment that can be used in conjunction with CBT, Exposure Therapy, and ACT, and incorporates technology in enhancing treatment outcomes. For more information, go to https://anxietyhouse.com.au/virtual-reality-therapy/