What is TEAM-CBT?

Testing is a critical component of effective treatment that is unfortunately often left out of most therapy practices. Using brief outcomes measures as well as measuring the therapeutic alliance has been shown in research to significantly boost the effectiveness of therapy sessions. This is why I measure progress in every therapy session. Each person I work with completes a brief mood survey prior to joining each appointment and a post-survey immediately following each appointment. These typically take about 2 minutes at the beginning of the session and 3-5 minutes at the end. There are many ways therapy can be adapted to your unique situation and style and this portion helps me do that!

Empathy is another essential part of effective therapy. This one may not be as unexpected as Testing, since it's often what many people think of when they picture talking with a therapist. The cool thing I and other TEAM therapists do is to ask for your evaluation of our empathy skills. Making sure I'm giving excellent empathy is so important that if you're not feeling completely heard, understood, and respected, we don't even begin to move on to techniques in the Methods section until I get it right.

Agenda Setting is the portion of a therapy session where we come to an agreement about what specific problem we will work on together. It's common for people to feel there are many problems going on, and we can certainly address any of them in therapy. We find the most effective therapy, however, usually involves choosing one problem to start with so we can get you started on using these awesome techniques and really hit the ball out of the park with the problem. This also helps you to feel more confident and hopeful, which will give you energy and momentum to crush the next problem!

Methods are the techniques we use to dismantle your painful thoughts and get you feeling better. There are dozens of techniques that are possible to use for any given pain point, so the good news is when one doesn't work, we just move right on to the next one! To give you an idea of what to expect, some people find relief within just the first 2 or 3 techniques, but most people will need to try about 10 to 15 techniques until the find the ones that really relieve their suffering. 

Examples of techniques include identifying the negative painful thoughts that underlie your painful emotions, identifying the distortions in those thoughts, examining the evidence for and against the painful thoughts, compassion-based techniques, mindfulness-based techniques, acceptance-based techniques, and many, many, many more. You're a unique person, so the techniques we use are customized to you! What really makes me excited is that often when we find a technique that works for you with one painful experience, that technique tends to be effective in other painful experiences as well. These are tools that not only help relieve your pain now, but you can take with you for the rest of your life!