New Directions Psychology is committed to providing high quality, best practice psychological services.
Our aim is to work with you to develop an individually tailored treatment program to help you achieve your goals for therapy.
Standard session fees are payable for this service, please see our Fees and Rebates page for more information.
What we do
Our role is to help you to gain a better understanding of yourself and your situation so that you can cope with your emotions and life more effectively. We teach strategies to help challenge unhelpful thinking, to cope with stress, to regulate their emotions, to overcome fears and to increase confidence and self-esteem.
We aim to provide a non-judgemental, supportive environment with plenty of practical suggestions. We provide a safe and confidential space to be able to work through painful or difficult issues using therapies that are proven to be effective.
See below for more information on our most popular and established therapeutic approaches.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
Who benefits from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)?
CBT is effective for a wide range of people, including children, adolescents, adults and older adults. CBT has been shown to be an extremely effective treatment approach for conditions such as depression & anxiety. It has also been found to be a beneficial treatment for many other mental health conditions.
CBT may also help if you are experiencing difficulties with other non-clinical issues including but not limited to anger, guilt, shame, stress and adjustment, low self-esteem, or physical health problems, including chronic health issues and pain.
What is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)?
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is a treatment approach that is based on the concept that the way we think effects how we respond emotionally and behaviourally. People can interpret the same life event very differently, leading to many & varied emotional & behavioural consequences. Some of these consequences can be helpful & some not so helpful in our day to day lives. As such CBT is also assumes then that people are disturbed not only by events in their lives but predominantly by their beliefs about those events.
CBT is a logical and practical approach. CBT is not just about ‘looking on the brighter side’; it is about applying newly learnt strategies to help you identify, and change unhelpful thought patterns to more realistic and constructive thought patterns that facilitate more adaptive emotional and behavioural responses to the situation.
In addition to changing unhelpful thinking patterns, CBT can also involve conjunctive skill building and behavioural strategies such as relaxation and breathing skills training, activity scheduling, problem solving, and goal setting, social skills training and graded exposure to feared situations.
Through the usages of CBT you can learn to think about life situations in a more helpful and constructive manner and respond more effectively to given circumstances, thereby enhancing your capacity to cope with the challenges you may face
Where can I Find out more about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)?
Australian Association of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (AACBT) www.aacbt.org/
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Who benefits from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) encourages people to become more accepting of difficult thoughts, feelings and life experiences such that they learn not to overreact to them and not avoid difficult situations. ACT encourages you to be present with what life brings and to behave in more valued and meaningful ways.
ACT has proven effective with a diverse range of clinical conditions including depression, anxiety, trauma and PTSD, workplace stress, chronic pain and other illnesses, the stress of terminal cancer, anorexia, substance abuse, and even schizophrenia.
What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a mindfulness-based, third generation cognitive-behavioural therapy. The ACT model applies to all human beings and is a radically different way of looking at emotional pain. ACT focuses on the premise that uncomfortable inner experiences (thoughts feelings etc.) are not the source of human suffering. Rather, it is the attempt to control, limit or push away these inner experiences that cause you to suffer. This suffering results in your life constricting and becoming disconnected from what really matters to you.
Instead of focusing on eradicating pain, ACT is about accepting what is out of your personal control and creating a willingness to come into contact with painful inner experiences. This enables you to commit to action that improves and enriches your life. ACT achieves this by teaching you to deal compassionately with your painful thoughts and feelings, in such a way that they have much less impact and influence over you. ACT also encourages you to think about what is really important to you in your life, in order to take active steps towards connecting with your goals and values.
ACT is a very active therapy during which you will learn effective and practical new skills. The application of these skills and therapeutic concepts will help you to stop struggling with your pain, to step back from unhelpful patterns of thinking, and engage with the present moment in order to connect with your values and to act on them every day.
Where can I find out more about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)?
Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT)
Who benefits from Interpersonal Psychotherapy?
Interpersonal Psychotherapy may be helpful if you are experiencing issues related to grief and relationship problems.
IPT ‘s primary aim is to improve your interpersonal relationships or change your expectations about them. In addition, therapy may also aim to improve social support networks so that you can better manage your current interpersonal distress.
However, IPT is likely to be applicable to anyone who is experiencing a wide range of problems, as almost all illnesses involve interpersonal problems.
What is IPT?
Interpersonal Psychotherapy is a time-limited, interpersonally focused, semi-structured therapy aimed at symptom relief and improving interpersonal functioning. IPT is concerned with the ‘interpersonal context’ as the means of change and focuses on the relational aspects of your behaviour and experience.
IPT is an integrated approach, incorporating concepts and skills from other therapy models, particularly CBT, Self Psychology and Attachment theory. IPT techniques include basic micro-counselling and psychotherapy skills. Some specific techniques that are central to the success of IPT, include nondirective and directive exploration, clarification, encouragement of affect, communication analysis, role play, problem solving (or decision analysis), and the therapeutic relationship itself.
The three key tasks in IPT are:
To create a supportive and collaborative therapeutic and rapport
To identify and become more aware of unhelpful patterns of relational attachment and communication
To use existing supports better and to build a more effective social support network
Through development of these you may be better able to manage difficult life experiences and your distress at these times.
Where can I find out more about IPT?
https://iptinstitute.com/about-ipt/
Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT)
Who benefits from Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT)?
CFT can help people learn to feel more safeness, kindness and warmth in their interactions with others and themselves.
The approach was originally developed for those with high-levels of self-criticism and shame and who have difficulty in feeling warmth toward and being kind to themselves or others.
Additionally, CFT has a growing evidence-base for a variety of clinical disorders and presentations.
What is Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT)?
Compassion-focused therapy (CFT) is an integrative psychotherapy model that focuses on the development and application of compassion for both self and others as a way to relieve intrusive feelings and self-criticism. CFT is based on the premise that we have evolved with at least three types of emotion regulation systems:
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The threat system (protection),
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The drive system (resource seeking) and,
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The soothing system.
CFT is based on the relationship and interactions between these systems. The central therapeutic technique of CFT is compassionate mind training, which teaches the skills and attributes of compassion to transform problematic patterns of cognition and emotion. This, in combination with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) strategies, teaches us to manage each system more effectively and respond more appropriately to difficult life situations.
We are all born with each system but our surroundings and experiences can implicate whether we utilize and sustain the non-survival-based systems (drive and soothing). CFT works to enrich the compassion-based soothing system, while withdrawing from the threat-focused system. In turn, this increases the ability to activate the drive system and allows us to be better able to work towards valued life goals.
Where can I find out more about CFT?
https://www.compassionatemind.org.au
https://compassionatemind.co.uk/
