

Triggers often point to underlying issues that may be addressed in therapy. Therapists work with clients to identify situations that cause a significant reaction.


These triggers may invoke feelings of anger, shame, or envy. Identifying Triggers - An emotional trigger is any experience that makes us feel uneasy. Goal/Progress Review - Therapists and clients can collaborate on goal-setting for desired therapy outcomes and periodically review progress towards goals. This type of therapy involves the therapist directing the client’s lateral eye movements or providing other external stimulus while the client revisits the traumatic experiences gradually over time, in small increments.Įxploration of Feelings - Therapists can direct a client’s examination of how feelings impact behaviors and the body’s physiological responses. This process often involves gradually replacing unhealthy coping skills with healthy ones.ĮMDR - Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR, is a technique used to assist clients in processing traumatic life events. Common coping skills include meditation, mindfulness, physical activity, spending time in nature.

Therapists assist clients in identifying coping skills that best fit their lifestyle and individual needs. Active listening and rephrasing or questioning the speaker to ensure understanding are also communication training skills.ĭeveloping Coping Strategies - Positive coping skills help clients to work through difficult circumstances in a healthy way. These may include stressing positives over negatives and using validation to increase the comfort level of the listener. This technique involves three steps: gathering information about the challenging situation from the opposing perspective, sharing your own vantage point, and then working together to create a realistic plan to resolve the difficulty through mutually agreeable compromise.Ĭommunication Training - The goal of communication training is to provide individuals with tools to be more effective communicators in a variety of work and interpersonal contexts. Cognitive restructuring techniques focus on increasing awareness, challenging the accuracy of troublesome thoughts, and developing a more mindful awareness with the goal of lessening the frequency and intensity of difficult emotions.Ĭollaborative Problem-Solving - Originally designed for use with children and adolescents exhibiting challenging behavior, CPS has been applied successfully in a range of applications that involve conflict. A positive reinforcer will encourage the likelihood of the behavior’s repetition, while a negative reinforcer is likely to decrease the chances of that behavior being repeated.Ĭognitive Restructuring - One of the core components of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT, cognitive restructuring operates on the assumption that it’s not what happens to us that makes us unhappy, anxious, or depressed - rather, it’s how we think about what happens to us. Therapists use this intervention to help clients more easily recognize when they’re becoming angry and develop strategies for expressing this powerful emotion in an appropriate way that will benefit them rather than create additional problems.īehavior Reinforcement - A behavior that’s followed up with a reinforcement will either increase or decrease the possibility of that behavior being repeated in the future. Anger Management - At their core, anger management techniques help clients to recognize that anger is a normal emotion that we all feel.
