Evidence-based practice brings together research, clinical expertise, and your needs and preferences. Research support varies by model and condition. Your clinician will discuss approaches suited to your goals and their training.
At your first appointment, your therapist will discuss your goals, preferences, and clinical needs, explain relevant research, and help you consider treatment options within their training and scope of practice.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT explains how thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and behaviors influence one another. The meaning we give a situation affects our emotional response; our actions can then reinforce or change that response. CBT works with these connections to reduce distress and build useful patterns.
What it is used for
Common uses: depression and anxiety; patterns of avoidance, low self-esteem, and harsh self-criticism. Specific CBT protocols also address conditions such as OCD and PTSD.
The thoughts–feelings–behaviors connection
- Thoughts: Interpretations, predictions, and beliefs about yourself, other people, and events.
- Feelings: Emotional responses, such as fear, sadness, anger, or relief, often accompanied by bodily sensations.
- Behaviors: Actions and habits, including avoidance, withdrawal, problem-solving, and seeking support.
CBT examines the accuracy and usefulness of thoughts and changes patterns of behavior. It is collaborative and goal-focused, helping you notice how thoughts and actions shape distress and practice new responses.
Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT)
IPT is a structured psychotherapy that focuses on the relationship between mood and current interpersonal experiences. Treatment commonly explores grief, role transitions, interpersonal conflict, and changes in relationships, while strengthening communication and social support.
What it is used for
Common use: depression and distress connected with grief, relationship changes, and life transitions.
Read the APA adult depression guideline ↗
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
DBT combines acceptance with change: your experience deserves understanding, and new skills can help you respond differently. It is a behavioral treatment originally developed for severe difficulties with emotions and recurring self-harm, and its skills are used across several clinical concerns.
What it is used for
Common uses: borderline personality disorder, intense or rapidly shifting emotions, impulsive reactions, and recurring relationship conflict. DBT skills can support people affected by trauma; DBT skills can also help people affected by trauma strengthen emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal skills.
The four DBT skills modules
- Mindfulness: Notice the present moment with awareness and less judgment.
- Distress tolerance: Get through painful situations without making them worse.
- Emotion regulation: Understand emotions, reduce vulnerability, and respond more effectively.
- Interpersonal effectiveness: Communicate needs, set boundaries, and balance relationships with self-respect.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
IFS views the mind as having different “parts”—patterns of emotion, belief, and protection—and a capacity for calm, compassionate awareness called Self. It uses parts language to explore the roles these patterns play in a person’s inner experience.
What it is used for
Used to explore: self-criticism, shame, inner conflict, and patterns linked to painful experiences. Research on IFS is developing, with evidence continuing to grow across clinical concerns.
Parts, protection, and Self
- Managers: Protective patterns that try to prevent pain through control, planning, or self-criticism.
- Firefighters: Protective patterns that react urgently when distress becomes intense.
- Exiles: Vulnerable parts associated with painful feelings or experiences.
- Self: The model’s term for a compassionate, curious, steady way of relating to inner experience.
IFS emphasizes understanding protective roles rather than fighting or eliminating parts.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR is a structured, eight-phase psychotherapy that addresses distress connected with traumatic memories. During memory processing, it combines attention to a selected experience with guided bilateral stimulation, such as eye movements. EMDR has strong research support for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
What it is used for
Common use: PTSD and distress linked to traumatic experiences, including troubling memories and reminders. Suitability depends on assessment, preparation, and the person’s needs.
The eight phases of EMDR
- History and treatment planning: Understand concerns, resources, and treatment priorities.
- Preparation: Explain treatment, establish trust, and develop coping resources.
- Assessment: Identify a target memory and associated beliefs, emotions, and sensations.
- Desensitization: Process the memory while tracking changes in distress.
- Installation: Strengthen an adaptive belief connected with the memory.
- Body scan: Check for remaining physical distress.
- Closure: Support stability before ending the session.
- Reevaluation: Review progress and determine further treatment needs.
Phases can span multiple sessions and be revisited. The goal is reduced distress and a more adaptive understanding of memories and reminders.
“WHAT IS EMDR” by Roy Kiessling · Vimeo · 2 minutes, 43 seconds
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
Our clinicians offer CPT, a structured, trauma-focused psychotherapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It helps people identify “stuck points”—beliefs that keep the mind caught in trauma—and develop more balanced understandings of safety, trust, power, esteem, and intimacy.
What it is used for
Common use: PTSD and distress connected with traumatic experiences. CPT can help reduce PTSD symptoms and support daily functioning.
Learn about CPT from the National Center for PTSD ↗
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT develops psychological flexibility: the ability to stay connected with the present and act in ways that reflect your values, even when difficult thoughts or feelings are present. Acceptance means making room for internal experiences while taking values-guided steps toward change.
What it is used for
Common uses: anxiety, depression, stress, and difficulties living in line with personal values. ACT emphasizes flexible, meaningful action rather than requiring uncomfortable feelings to disappear first.
The six core processes of ACT
- Acceptance: Allow feelings and sensations without an endless struggle to eliminate them.
- Cognitive defusion: Recognize thoughts as thoughts rather than automatic facts or commands.
- Present-moment awareness: Attend to what is happening here and now.
- Self-as-context: Notice that you are more than any single thought, feeling, or self-description.
- Values: Identify the qualities and directions that matter to you.
- Committed action: Take practical steps guided by those values.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
ERP is a first-line, evidence-based treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). It addresses the cycle in which an intrusive thought creates distress, a compulsion brings temporary relief, and that relief reinforces the need to repeat the compulsion.
What it is used for
Common use: OCD, including intrusive thoughts, compulsive checking, contamination fears, mental rituals, and reassurance-seeking. Treatment is tailored to the person’s OCD pattern. See the International OCD Foundation’s ERP overview ↗
Exposure + response prevention
- Exposure: Deliberately approach agreed-upon, objectively safe situations, thoughts, or sensations that trigger obsessional distress.
- Response prevention: Refrain from compulsions, including mental rituals, avoidance, and repeated reassurance-seeking.
- New learning: Develop tolerance for uncertainty and discover that discomfort can be managed without rituals.
ERP is collaborative and carefully planned. It uses gradual exposure to triggers or uncertainty while helping clients practice response prevention. Its aim is to reduce OCD’s interference in daily life.
