Popular Therapy Approaches
Whether your initial training was psychodynamic, behavioral, experiential, cognitive, or something else, staying abreast of the latest developments in clinical practice is crucial. These articles unpack today's most popular therapy approaches. Join us as therapy's thought leaders offer fresh perspectives on widely used modalities like CBT and DBT. And stay current on the latest discussions around evolving modalities like hypnosis and psychedelic-assisted therapy. Learn from Diane Fosha, Judith Beck, David Burns, Sue Johnson, John and Julie Gottman, Kate Chard, Steven Hayes, Irv Yalom, David Grand, Deb Dana, Michael Yapko, and many others.
Psychiatry Has a New Hero
Awais Aftab Envisions a Humbler Approach to Mental IllnessAcceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps clients stop struggling against painful thoughts and feelings and instead develop the fortitude to move toward value-based living. Rather than eliminating symptoms, ACT teaches clients to hold difficult experiences lightly while remaining committed to meaningful action. These articles offer honest insights from psychotherapists who have used ACT with clients that have "tried everything," those facing systemic trauma, and others caught in cycles of avoidance that have amplified suffering. Learn more about the transformative power of ACT.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) remains one of the most researched and widely practiced therapeutic approaches. From exposure therapy for anxiety to cognitive restructuring for depression, CBT offers concrete tools for change. Still, debates continue to arise about whether CBT has lost its innovative edge and how to know when techniques become formulaic rather than genuinely responsive. These articles explore CBT for depression, self-criticism, exposure therapy applications, and critiques of the approach. Learn from David Burns, Judith Beck, and others.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) transforms relationships by accessing the underlying attachment needs beneath intense emotion. Whether you're working with couples struggling to reconnect or individuals healing trauma wounds, EFT can help clients move from defensive cycles into genuine emotional engagement. By choreographing key moments where partners can reach for each other vulnerably, we can facilitate profound shifts in relationship dynamics that create lasting change. These articles explore EFT for couples and individuals as well as its place in grief work, trauma healing, and more. Learn from Sue Johnson, George Faller, and other experts about harnessing emotion's transformative power.
Existentialism
Existentialism asks us to ponder often confounding life issues, from meaning and mortality to freedom and responsibility. In an era of collective anxiety and fractured certainty, existential approaches in treatment can help clients confront these fundamental realities of human existence rather than avoid them. By exploring how we create meaning, face death, and live authentically despite life's inherent uncertainty, therapists help clients move from despair toward engaged, purposeful living even amid unavoidable suffering. These articles offer insights and reflections on existentialism's relevance today, what it means to live our "best lives," confronting existential dread, and more. Learn from Irvin Yalom, Sara Kuburic, and others.
Expressive Arts Therapies
When clients struggle to access their emotional experiences, creative expression can offer new outlets for healing. Art, music, drama, dance, and improvisation can bypass cognitive defenses, helping clients express feelings and memories that remain locked out of reach verbally. From using hip-hop to connect with youth to creating art as a means of processing trauma, these articles feature insights and reflections from therapists who have used expressive modalities to tap creative capacities that foster resilience and self-discovery. Learn more about the ways in which creative arts can deepen therapeutic work.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR harnesses the brain's natural healing capacity to reprocess traumatic memories stuck in maladaptive neural networks. It allows therapists to help clients metabolize overwhelming experiences without prolonged exposure or detailed recounting. EMDR offers versatile tools for addressing PTSD, childhood wounds, and traumatized relationships across diverse client populations. These articles explore why EMDR works, relational EMDR, and honest reflections on trauma processing with children and veterans. Discover what on-the-ground therapists have learned about how this evidence-based approach can facilitate rapid healing.
Family Therapy
Family therapy allows us to view clients within the relational systems that originally crafted many of the patterns and identities they've continued to carry through their lives. By convening the family unit, therapists can observe and interrupt dysfunctional cycles, realign hierarchies, and strengthen connections that individual work alone can't address. Family therapy has evolved dramatically from its structural roots, raising questions about what's been lost and gained as the field has shifted toward individual and couples work. These articles explore family therapy's evolution through insights from Esther Perel, Salvador Minuchin, Jay Haley, and more.
Hypnosis & Energy Psychology
Both hypnosis and energy psychology attempt to use the mind-body connection to bypass conscious resistance and access deeper healing. From trance-based interventions to meridian tapping, these approaches offer alternative pathways for clients who feel stuck in traditional talk therapy. While sometimes controversial, practitioners report remarkable results addressing trauma, anxiety, and entrenched patterns. These articles explore incorporating energy psychology, hypnotic suggestion, and "flow state" into practice. Discover how these approaches can complement more traditional forms of therapeutic practice.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy
Working with clients' protective parts, wounded inner children, and critical voices requires understanding how these parts have organized themselves around trauma and survival. IFS therapy can be a powerful tool for addressing everything from harsh self-criticism to anxiety to trauma responses by helping clients access self-compassion. The approach invites curiosity about what various parts are trying to protect and which burdens clients continue to carry from their pasts. These articles explore IFS applications for addiction, depression, trauma, and more. Learn from Richard Schwartz, Frank Anderson, and others about healing wounded parts and becoming compassionate witnesses to ourselves.
Play Therapy
Play is children's natural language for processing experiences too overwhelming or complex for words. Through symbolic play, kids externalize conflicts, master fears, and rehearse solutions in safe, controlled environments. Effective play therapy requires therapists to follow children's lead, understand metaphorical communication, and resist rushing to interpret. By honoring play's intrinsic healing power, therapists help children work through anxiety, trauma, and relational wounds without direct confrontation. These articles explore play therapy fundamentals, working with anxious children, bypassing defense systems, and taking play seriously as a therapeutic modality for healing.
Polyvagal Theory
Polyvagal theory revolutionizes our understanding of the autonomic nervous system, revealing how safety, threat, and connection live in our bodies. By mapping and consciously recognizing nervous system responses for what they are, we can cultivate intentional regulation in ourselves and our clients. This framework has far-reaching potential for transforming trauma treatment, relationship work, and stress management by grounding interventions in neurobiology. These articles explore polyvagal applications for clinical work to help clients feel safe. Learn from Stephen Porges, Deb Dana, and others about nervous system-informed practice.
Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy
Psychedelic-assisted therapy is experiencing a moment in the spotlight as substances like MDMA, ketamine, and psilocybin continue to show remarkable promise for otherwise treatment-resistant conditions. They've been shown to facilitate altered states that can catalyze profound healing, particularly for trauma, depression, and end-of-life anxiety. As legalization expands, it's critical that we continue to broaden our understanding of how to best help clients integrate transformative experiences while also navigating ethical complexities around access and safety. These articles explore MDMA therapy, ketamine treatment, microdosing, racial trauma applications, and ayahuasca experiences. Explore perspectives from Gabor Maté, Bessel van der Kolk, Monnica Williams, and Michael Mithoeffler. Discover how psychedelics are transforming therapeutic practice and what practitioners need to know.
Psychopharmacology
Medication is playing an increasingly prominent role in mental health treatment. Yet debates continue to arise around efficacy, overprescription, and other far-reaching impacts. We're often asked to navigate complex decisions about when to recommend medication, how to support clients as they taper off of prescriptions, and how to best collaborate with prescribers. Understanding psychopharmacology's benefits and limitations, from SSRIs to antipsychotics, can help us advocate for our clients while maintaining realistic expectations. These articles explore medication controversies, tapering challenges, the opioid epidemic, common myths around SSRIs, and more.
Walk-and-Talk & Nature Therapy
Taking therapy outdoors can transform clinical work in profound ways. Walking side-by-side with a client shifts power dynamics, eases self-consciousness, and activates the body while the mind processes experiences. Nature too becomes a therapeutic tool, offering metaphors, perspective, and restorative effects. From forest bathing to birding to outdoor sessions, getting outside can help clients access new forms of healing. These articles explore the benefits of walk-and-talk therapy and insightful reflections and practical guidance for demystifying outdoor practice. Discover how to incorporate nature's soothing presence into your practice.
Energy psychology—especially Emotional Freedom Techniques, or tapping—is gaining traction as a fast-acting, evidence-backed, somatic therapy that reduces... Read more
Of all the David-and-Goliath matchups in psychotherapy, few have had as many twists and turns as the one unfolding between energy psychology and the APA’s... Read more
IFS becomes more accessible when we translate psychological jargon into universal experiences of need and care. Read more
As our field shifts away from depth psychotherapy to imparting knowledge, what are we losing in the process? Read more
IFS offers a novel way of working with addiction, one that links the inner focus of trauma treatment with the behavioral focus of addiction treatment. Read more
Steven Hayes, the cofounder of ACT, and Steve Shapiro, a senior ISTDP trainer, explore how they'd work with a client who's tried everything. Read more
Talk therapy can help couples understand their negative patterns cognitively. Adding psychedelics to the work can help them feel it. Read more
What if you and your clients could play back their everyday interactions outside of therapy, moment by moment, to uncover blind spots and reimagine family... Read more
A millennial therapist believes that for clients to find true freedom and meaning in the midst of crisis, we need to help them face inescapable questions about... Read more
The mindful practice of birding can help us find balance in challenging times. Read more
Are your perceptions of the risks and rewards of walk and talk therapy accurate? Read more
Watch our interview with relationship expert Tammy Nelson on how ketamine is supercharging couples work. Read more
Alicia Muñoz and Carmen Jimenez-Pride, LCSW, explore what it means to develop a healthier, friendlier relationship with our parts. Read more
Psychedelics can show clients an alternative to their suffering—but so can many softer, gentler, more gradual approaches clinicians have been perfecting... Read more
More and more people are ingesting small amounts of psilocybin on a daily basis in the hope of curing everything from mild irritability to major depression... Read more
Bessel van der Kolk and Monnica Williams, two prominent trauma researchers, weigh in on what the field should be talking about now that psychedelic-assisted... Read more
Trying on different personas can help clients step outside of their comfort zones and challenge their assumptions about themselves, others, and the world. Read more
Sara Kuburic, the Millennial Therapist, invites new clients to take a deep look at age-old existential concerns. Read more
Sara Kuburic, the Millennial Therapist, explains the effects of self-loss and why it's important to find yourself again. Read more
Sue Johnson, developer of EFT, argues that because we’re socially bonded beings, trauma is always about relationships—and relationships are key to healing... Read more
Clinical hypnosis has a rich history, broad applications, and sound research behind it—so why aren’t more therapists using it? Read more
Dr. Mithoefer chats about MDMA and psychedelic therapy, their accessibility challenges, as well as what you can expect from his new online course with... Read more
For people who want to taper off psychotropic drugs, nutritional therapies and integrative methods may provide a promising alternative. Read more
Join Christine Mark-Griffin, EMDRIA-certified therapist, and author of EMDR Workbook for Kids, along with Networker’s Clinical Director, Anna Lock, as they... Read more
After this experience, I knew I needed to share what I’d learned with my clients, and soon afterward decided to get training to become a ketamine-assisted... Read more
Networker sits down with Sue Johnson to discuss her shift from couples to Emotionally-Focused Individual Therapy. Read more
With roots in the EMDR protocol, the Flash Technique claims to offer a pleasurable path to processing trauma. Read more
Join Dr. Sue Johnson, developer of Emotionally Focused-Individual Therapy (EFIT), along with Networker’s Anna Lock as they discuss everything EFIT. Read more
Five ways to talk to your clients about the pros and cons of meds—even if you’re not a psychiatrist. Read more
Join Networker’s Anna Lock and Jennifer Payne, Ph.D, LCSW, author, research scientist, and clinician as they discuss how Dr. Payne works to culturally tailor... Read more
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