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The chances are that when you first enter recovery, you’ll be led down the path of talk therapy. For some, this might be your first experience with therapy, while for others it’s simply the same old rodeo. No matter what your experience, I’m there is a suitable type of therapy for everyone out there.
But before we begin, it’s important we understand the difference between counselling and therapy.
What is counselling and therapy? Is there a difference?
Typically people take therapy and counseling to be one and the same, but there are some subtle differences to consider. These are usually found in the length of treatment, the training required, and even in the environment.
What is counselling?
Counseling is a therapeutic relationship between two people, usually that of a client and a counselor. The counselor helps the client to make positive changes in his or her life within a short space of time. It can be very beneficial for many people, especially those who may not need long-term intervention.
What is therapy?
Also known as psychotherapy is a medium to long-term process. It focuses on long-standing issues, thoughts, behaviors, etc that have negatively impacted a person’s life. Therapy is often considered the deeper of the two, as it dives into deep-rooted, historical issues. With the correct therapy and hard work on the patient’s part, outcomes can be dramatic.
Therapy gives us the life skills we need for ongoing self-reflection and improvement. We learn to recognise and combat any triggers and impulses. And we can even learn to successfully manage stressful or triggering situations that may occur in the future.
Sessions for both counselling and therapy are roughly the same length (50-60 minutes), and the same core skills are applied.
“I would love to cover each type separately and in-depth, but I just don’t have the knowledge“.
I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of counseling and therapy. I’d even planned to pursue this as a career at one point. And while I’m still working towards my dream of becoming a qualified counselor or therapist, I am not currently trained. Nor am I a substitute for your medical practitioner.
Always seek the advice of your GP or treatment team in regards to therapy. They should be able to point you in the right direction. With that being said, if you feel you need additional support or a whole new approach, never be afraid to advocate for yourself.
3 Types of Therapy For Recovery.
NB; You might find that you need to use several different kinds of therapy at different stages in your recovery. Don’t get tied down to one kind, BUT don’t overlap without the guidance of a professional!
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
CBT is a relatively short-lived type of therapy that focuses on our beliefs, values, and cognitive processes. It aims to help us modify these behaviors into something safer and more sustainable. Within eating disorder recovery it aims to modify distorted thinking in regards to weight, shape, appearance, and food.
As CBT is meant to be a short-term therapy practice it’s usually considered to be more affordable. Therefore, it’s usually the most desired or sought after.
There are several different components and variations of CBT. Have a look at Eating Disorder Hope if you’re a geek like me and want further information.
I was very fortunate to have found the Mind Over Mood book in my local library earlier this year. Having got it home, read it, and printed off the worksheets, I had to get a copy of my own! This book is not a substitute for a therapist. But it’s definitely worth a buy should you ever need a top-up.
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT).
DBT is a type of CBT. It connects the cognitive with the behavioral aspect and helps clients learn to manage painful emotions in a healthier way. In regards to eating disorders treatment, it would include helping the sufferer develop skills to replace harmful eating behaviors.
Although it was originally intended for use with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), it’s proven effective in the treatment of eating disorders and other mental illnesses.
It incorporates the development of four key skills;
- Increase self-awareness.
- Regulate self-defeating thoughts.
- How to manage stress and strong emotional situations.
- How to transform black and white thinking.
Much like CBT, there are many detailed components of DBT.
The Dialectical Behavioural Therapy workbook is an excellent source for those going through therapy. As someone who has problems in identifying and regulating my emotions, I found this to be so helpful in my journey.
I don’t buy anything if the reviews don’t add up, but this caught my eye with its 76% 5-star reviews, leaving it at just shy of an overall 5 stars!
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT).
ACT helps sufferers concentrate on becoming aware of and accepting their emotions and experiences. From a very early age, we’re taught to label emotions as either bad or good. It’s understandable that we try to experience as few painful emotions as we can, opposed to the more positive ones. When we feel emotional pain we tend to try and avoid it, but this doesn’t work well in the grand scheme of things. Emotions, both good and bad, are a part of everyday life. You can’t block out the negative without also blocking out the positive as well, it’s just not possible. What we can do is learn how to correctly respond to and handle them.
ACT helps suffers become more in tune with their emotions, which is specifically beneficial to those in recovery from eating disorders. We tend to run away from the negative feelings through the use of food and starvation.
To learn more about ACT please see Eating Disorder Hope.
Have you tried anything different from these 3 methods?
If you work with a therapist they’ll most likely incorporate different types of therapy at one point in your recovery.In my experience, some counselors borrow from several different areas of different therapy types. That being said it’s important that you work with one professional or clinic at a time so as not to overlap treatment.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your recovery won’t happen overnight. It can take a while to feel the effects of counseling, and it requires your full commitment and effort at all times. It’s not a quick fix so you need to put in the work on your end to get anything out of it.
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My family is pretty familiar with counseling. I spent 3 years in counseling and came out a different person in all the right ways. My now 21-year old son would steal the books off my nightstand barely before I could finish them. He was 16 at the time. He is now a senior in college studying psychology and applying for his master’s degree program.
I am also familiar with CBT although nobody in my family did it.
And I also find any excuse to buy a book. 🙂
Thank you for stopping by and reading 😀
This is a really helpful guide and resource, especially for someone looking into therapy and potential benefits for the first time. I think a lot of people only really associate the word therapy with couch-laying conversations, so this is relevant for many. Thanks for sharing!
In my opinion ACT has been the best type of help for me, it has definitely helped me re define my thoughts, and overall accept myself for who I am and just start embracing evrything about me. Great Post!
Thank you for your feedback. x
This is such an educational and helpful post xx
Thank you so much for stopping by 😀
This is very informative Nyxie! I love your outlook on mental illness and approach to therapy! Now I know what CBT and DBT are! Thanks for sharing.
http://www.kingingqueen.com
Thank you so much for stopping by 😀
Thank you! This means so much to me x
Thank you for stopping by 😀
Thank you for stopping by 😀
Some Great information
This was a very interesting article, its fascinating to learn about the different types of therapies available.
This is do helpful and an eye opener. Please keep on writing more articles like this.
Great post! I had no idea there were three types of therapy. Thanks for sharing 🙂
This was so helpful! I’ve been thinking about seeing a therapist for awhile due to an accident I was in. I feel like now that I have a little more information about it I would feel more comfortable going! Thank your for sharing this!
-WWShepherds
I would love to do it but not right now, not in my current state. But thank you 🙂
I’m trying to get together a few posts full of different types of therapy just so people know what to look for, or what each type of therapy entails. I know I had no clue there was anything other than the normal, and I’m glad there is a bigger pool to go to. It means I’m not a completely hopeless case! Thank you for stopping by and reading 🙂
Thank you for stoping by 🙂
Very informative post i hope it helps more people to seek help
I love this post! I feel like one of the biggest reasons why people hold back or avoid therapy is simply due to a lack of information and understanding. They don’t know what they would be getting involved with, and the fear of the unknown can be too much to overcome. By pulling back the curtain and sharing this information, you may just free someone up to take this step in their own life!
Only ever come across CBT, this was a very interesting read. Also, I think you’d make a fantastic therapist! If it’s something you’d still like to do I say go for it! Never too late. x
Davis |
Thank you for stopping by Joy. I am working my way through these so I’m not sure if they are actually helping if that makes sense? I hope to start ACT therapy at the end of the month. I also want to try hypnotherapy to see if it does anything at all for me. But I have a feeling that this will be more of a long term thing for me.
Thank you for popping by and I am so glad I could share some light into the differences of these types of therapy, although subtle in places.
Thank you so much for popping in and showing your support x
This is really informative, and reinforced a lot of ideas I learned when I was studying CBT! I haven’t come across the ‘Mind over Mood’ book before, but it sounds really good so I may invest in that. Interesting to read about the other types of therapy too. xx
I honestly didn’t know the differences between all of these despite having heard some of the names before! Thanks for giving me some understanding about what they are and how they work.
I actually found none of these therapy’s very helpful. CBT, I have always found patronising. The only thing that’s worked is long term pychotherapy. But that’s just me personally. This is hella informative though ????
Thank you so much for your kind words. It means so much for you me that you’re enjoying my content 🙂 Thank you xx
This is so incredibly helpful. As a former anorexia sufferer, I enjoy following your journey in recovery and wish the best for you. Keep going! xxx
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Great post and very informative. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about the different types of therapy, and this information is good for us to know. Thank you so much for keeping us informed on these very important topics!
This has been a very informative post, especially with the facts on how counseling works. I love that during counseling, you’re typically faced with someone who is empathetic. There are a lot of considerations for the recovery period. Thank you for sharing all of this!
Nancy ♥ exquisitely.me
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I am not sure which has helped me more as I find alot of my therapies overlap with each other. I personally think I am currently being treated with a mixture of all three of these.
Thank you for stopping by and showing your support.
– Nyxie x
Thank you so much for writing this. This was such a great post about recovery. Personally for me, CBT has helped me so much in my recovery for PTSD and other issues regarding my previous eating disorder. Thank you for explaining the differences of these particular therapies <3
xoxo
Amanda – Activated Living
Wow, what an informative and thorough post! You’ve done a great job on research. I had no idea there was so many types of therapy out there and the difference between them. Glad to know it can be also be done online on Skype, etc too. The Mind Over Mood book looks very helpful.
Thanks so much for sharing this with us!
Trace x
I plan to discuss more in time! I am hoping to have a guest talk to us about EMDR, and looking for more. Thank you for stopping by and reading. 🙂
I’ve tried counselling and CBT as well as seeing a psychiatrist for a while and each type of therapy is so different so it’s really good to see someone discuss the differences between them!
Thanks for sharing! ????
Love Lozza xo
http://girlygabble.com
Thank you so much for your support 🙂
They are all an extension of one another – so often they intertwine. I hope to start an independent ACT at the end of May with a group of eating disorder sufferers.
I don’t know where I would be without therapy, but here wouldn’t be an option.
Thank you so much lovely!! x
I’ve tried several different kinds and I am about to embark on group ACT therapy at the end of May! Any port in a storm!
If you ever wanted to share your experiences I would be happy to host them here, I am always interested in different types of therapy. Thank you for popping by and showing your support as always lovely!
Thank you so much! I always love to see you appear in my inbox!
xx
I would do a blog post on therapy but I think I’d just scare everyone off! I’ve had years of therapy; Counselling is nice, and it gave me a safe space to talk about how I felt which I didn’t have anywhere else but I found it never really gave me any tools to move past “everything is shitty”.
CBT was awful for me – from conversations I’ve had it was delivered in a really shitty way – we got told that there was a triangle of thoughts-feelings-behaviours and that if we changed our behaviours (because that was visceral and easy to change) then we would magically feel better. Obviously that was total and utter bullshit (but it does lead into why I find your blog so useful in examining the disordered relationships I still have with food because I never got taught there was anything more than regaining the weight!)
DBT just made no sense. I spent a year doing it as an intensive cycle while inpatient and I went through the entire course 4 times and ended up having logic arguments with the lead (apparently SH not being an effective coping mechanism because if it was then you would only need to do it once does not translate to DBT skills not being effective because if they were I would only need to do them once.
I’ve never tried ACT – that sounds like it could be useful for me.
I’ve done MBT (not useful to me), Transactional Analysis (useful but only had a couple of sessions as they were finishing a cycle when I was inpatient and then stopped delivering it), STEPPS (not useful), Art Therapy (creative process useful – discussion not so much), Music Therapy (good 1-1 not in group) and Aromatherapy (Inpatient – they got one in every wednesday and she taught us how to blend and the effects of different oils and was just very soothing).
I was supposed to be able to access Autism-Adjusted CBT after I was diagnosed with Autism but, well, everybody is playing “she;s no longer our problem” with me so meh.
Thanks for sharing Nyxie 🙂
I love your information. I have found over the years that it takes so much more than just one type of therapy to get to the other side of any issue. Thank you for pointing this out.
This is a fantastic post chloe! You really went into the different types of therapy. Well done girl=)
This was so informative! I am aware of the CBT and DBT and use both but wasn’t aware of ACT – which makes total sense and I believe I’ve been using it as well. I’ve found that therapy isn’t typically just one thing but a combination of many coping habits that we have to learn. Therapy has been such a huge help in my life.
Thank you for this. I wasn’t aware that there are different types of therapies. Keep it up!
I wasn’t aware of some of these types of therapy. Although I’ve never had therapy for an eating disorder, I did have CBT for anxiety when I first went to the doctors about it and honestly, it didn’t help at all. For my type of anxiety it was utterly useless. But I did see a private counsellor after that who focused more on talk therapy and hitting goals and things like that and she was an absolute life saver. I don’t know where I’d be today without her. It’s great that there’s so many options for people though x
Great post. I’ve heard really good things about CBT for a range of things x
Thank you for stopping by and reading. There are literally so many that I hadn’t heard of before doing my research.
Hey this is an awesome read haven’t heard of some of these