Heather MacGibbon

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a psychotherapeutic approach designed to aid you in embracing life’s challenges. Grounded in mindfulness principles, ACT proposes that enhanced well-being results can conquer negative thoughts and emotions. We’ll explore your character traits and behaviors to help diminish avoidant coping strategies. Additionally, ACT delves into your commitment to change and offers guidance for navigating challenges when adhering to goals becomes difficult.

Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) is a talk therapy centered on trauma. Incorporating attachment theory and body-focused methods, it engages coping mechanisms. AEDP includes exploring past experiences, unearthing emotions, and confronting defense mechanisms. Through our guidance, you will cultivate new coping abilities, rebuild trust, and embrace your emotions. AEDP effectively alleviates symptoms of depression, anxiety, and avoidance, making it applicable to trauma, PTSD, attachment issues, and associated symptoms.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) emphasizes the impact of thoughts on emotions and actions. It operates on the premise that negative feelings are a result of thoughts rather than external factors. We help you by recognizing, assessing the validity of, and rectifying dysfunctional beliefs that underlie your thinking. Subsequently, We assist in modifying both your thoughts and their corresponding behaviors. CBT involves a structured collaboration with homework assignments, and its clinical efficacy has been demonstrated in efficiently addressing various disorders, including depression and anxiety.

Eclectic therapy blends elements from cognitive-behavioral and psychodynamic methods to formulate a personalized strategy. We collaborate with you to devise a treatment plan incorporating diverse techniques tailored to effectively tackle specific issues and resonate with individual sensibilities.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a psychotherapeutic approach that recognizes and addresses multiple sub-personalities or families within an individual’s mental system. These sub-personalities encompass wounded parts carrying emotions like anger and shame, along with protective parts attempting to control and shield the person from the pain of the wounded aspects. Often in conflict with each other and the core Self, representing the confident and compassionate essence within, IFS aims to heal the wounded parts and restore mental balance. This is achieved by altering the dynamics that generate discord among the sub-personalities and the core Self.

IPT is a brief psychotherapy where the we collaboratively pinpoint your interpersonal relationship issues. We delve into your life history to identify problematic areas and then work together to devise strategies for resolution.

Distinct forms of Interpersonal therapies, like Imago therapy, concentrate on intimate relationships.

It’s important not to confuse Interpersonal therapy with transpersonal psychology, which explores states where individuals perceive a deeper understanding of self or a heightened connection with others, nature, or spirituality.

For those with chronic pain, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, and other health issues such as anxiety and depression, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, or MBCT, is a two-part therapy that aims to reduce stress, manage pain, and embrace the freedom to respond to situations by choice. MCBT blends two disciplines–cognitive therapy and mindfulness. Mindfulness helps by reflecting on moments and thoughts without passing judgment. MBCT clients pay close attention to their feelings to reach an objective mindset, thus viewing and combating life’s unpleasant occurrences.

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a therapeutic approach designed to actively involve you in the process of behavior change. It encourages you to examine and address your ambivalence. We actively guide you to contemplate and consider making changes rather than taking a non-directive, exploratory approach. Motivational Interviewing is commonly employed in situations involving problem drinking or mild addictions.

Person-centered therapy employs a non-authoritative method, enabling you to play a more active role in discussions, facilitating the discovery of their own solutions. We serve as compassionate facilitators, listening without judgment and recognizing your experience without steering the conversation elsewhere. Our role is to encourage and support you, guiding the therapeutic process without disrupting or impeding your journey of self-discovery.

In contrast to conventional psychology, which primarily addresses the origins and symptoms of mental illnesses and emotional disruptions, positive psychology focuses on forward-thinking aspects such as traits, thinking patterns, behaviors, and experiences that enhance the overall quality of an individual’s daily life. These elements encompass optimism, spirituality, hopefulness, happiness, creativity, perseverance, justice, and the exercise of free will. Positive psychology revolves around the exploration of strengths rather than weaknesses. Its objective is not to substitute traditional therapies centered on negative experiences but to broaden and bring greater balance to the therapeutic process.

Derived from Freudian psychoanalysis, psychodynamic therapy, or insight-oriented therapy, shares the belief that making the unconscious conscious enhances insight and resolves conflicts, akin to psychoanalysis. However, psychodynamic therapy is more concise and less intensive than psychoanalysis. It places emphasis on the therapeutic relationship between you and your therapist, serving as a means to understand your relational patterns with others in your life.

Solution-focused therapy, also known as “brief therapy,” directs attention towards what you aspire to achieve in therapy rather than your difficulties or mental health issues. We assist you in envisioning a positive future, mapping out both small and significant changes essential for the realization of your vision. Emphasizing your successes, we encourage building on strengths rather than fixating on problems or limitations.

Strength-based therapy, a form of positive psychotherapy and counseling, places greater emphasis on your internal strengths and resourcefulness while minimizing attention to weaknesses, failures, and shortcomings. This emphasis cultivates a positive mindset, facilitating the development of your best qualities, enhancing resilience, and fostering a shift toward a more positive worldview. This positive attitude, in turn, contributes to the development of more realistic expectations of yourself and others.

Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) assists individuals dealing with post-traumatic stress from a traumatic event in their journey toward regaining a state of well-being.  We also use Written Exposure Therapy (WET) which is a brief, evidence-based treatment that involves individuals writing about their traumatic experiences over several sessions.  Together, TF-CBT and WET provide powerful tools for individuals seeking recovery from the impacts of trauma, catering to different needs and preferences in the healing process.