Integrative Therapy Counselling

What is Integrative Therapy?

Integrative therapy encompasses several different models of counselling, and uses them to suit the clients individual needs and complexities, which as you can appreciate are vast and varied. Human beings are very complex and as such operate on many levels, emotional, cognitive, behavioural , and thus different therapies are needed to inter act with each level. It aims to improve your quality of life and make you whole again, by integrating feelings, perceptions and unresolved issues. Some examples include

Miss R came to see me with trust and self esteem issues, using psychodynamic therapy we looked at her past together and this helped her to acknowledge her past and why she behaved in certain ways, however it also helped her see that she was behaving irrationally in the here and now, because of her past, looking at this in a rational way allowed my client to see that trust can be rebuilt in relationships and with that an improved self esteem.

Mr B came to see me with several addictions, he needed help with. He had described himself as having an addictive personality, however as we worked through things together we discovered using psychodynamic therapy and object relations, he was just trying to numb the pain of a traumatic childhood , and had relationships with alcohol and drugs to do this. I then used Egan another therapy to help him find solutions and move forward with his life.

Mrs P had been abused as a child for years by her step father, no one had ever believed her, and was put into a mental institution for trying to commit suicide, to escape the lies.
Together using humanistic therapy and CBT we revisited her past but this time she had some one with her who did believe her, we did this at the clients pace, in a safe controlled way, by doing this she was able to see things through adult eyes, with her in control at all times.

Had I been using only one approach I would not have been able to help my clients to the extent I did. I feel integrative therapy allows us as counsellors to use more ‘tools of the trade' as it were, and get a more positive outcome for our clients. Integrative practitioners are theoretically grounded and are primarily concerned with what works best and why it works.