Which counseling approach is best?

Counseling is a great way to obtain support for a number of issues. While many people associate counseling with mental health challenges and diagnoses, counseling is also helpful for learning new skills, improving relationships, establishing and reaching goals, and navigating difficult situations like divorce or the loss of a relationship. Counseling is also a research-supported treatment for specific mental health diagnoses from anxiety to posttraumatic stress and beyond.

In counseling, there are multiple approaches to treatment or theoretical approaches and interventions associated with each. Some forms of therapy or therapeutic intervention have more research support than others, but this isn’t an indication that a particular type of therapy doesn’t work – it may be about the length of time the treatment has been available or how much research funded a particular approach has received over time.

Cognitive behavior therapy or CBT is perhaps a more well-known approach to counseling. This method of counseling has research support for treating anxiety, depression, trauma, and more. Put very simply, CBT is an approach that helps you identify negative and unhelpful thought and behavior patterns, challenge them and replace them with behaviors and thoughts that are helpful to you.

Dialectical behavior therapy or DBT is similar to CBT. Still, the focus is on living in the moment, developing healthy ways to cope with stress, improve relationships with others, and regulate emotion. DBT was initially created to treat borderline personality disorder but has shown effectiveness with mood disorders of all types.

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing or EMDR therapy is a form of therapy that has patients identify current areas of struggle or unhelpful feelings or thoughts and then target painful memories and causing current distress. Eye movement or other bilateral (side to side) brain stimulation is used to help fully process memories. This therapy was initially formed to help trauma survivors but has expanded and is used with multiple issues.

There are multiple forms of therapy available, and this space doesn’t allow a full list or description of each. Logotherapy, person-centered, narrative, acceptance and commitment, relational emotive behavior, exposure, interpersonal, mindfulness-based CBT, and psychodynamic therapies are just a few of the others. Most therapists study multiple approaches and integrate into a complementary and selective way interventions and strategies from multiple approaches.

The best counseling method often comes down to your preferences, working with your therapist to see what works best, or on what your particular issue may be. In multiple studies, the therapeutic relationship or therapeutic alliance is the most important factor in successful outcomes. The therapeutic alliance is the relationship you and your therapist form, the “click” between you and the therapist you work with. Finding a counselor that you are comfortable with and able to be open with is the most important factor. As you look for a therapist considering this over their particular approach may be most helpful in a successful outcome in therapy.