Types of Therapy FAQ
What Do These Modalities Mean and How Can They Help?
Not sure what a modality means or which approach might be the right fit? Here’s a plain-language guide to what each therapy type is, how it helps, and what it’s commonly used for.
1. Trauma & Attachment-Focused Therapies
Trauma Therapy
A general approach to processing distressing or overwhelming experiences — including childhood trauma as well as traumatic experiences later in life — so the past stops running your present.
Can help with: flashbacks, feeling “stuck” after a hard experience, emotional numbness, hypervigilance.
Trauma-Informed Therapy
Not a technique on its own, but a lens applied to every session — pacing carefully and prioritizing safety and trust first.
Can help with: feeling easily triggered, difficulty trusting a therapeutic process, wanting a gentler starting point.
Attachment-Based Therapy
Looks at the relationship patterns you learned early in life and how they show up in your connections today.
Can help with: engaging in secure, healthy relationships; fear of abandonment; difficulty trusting partners; people-pleasing.
Integrative Trauma and Attachment Model
Blends trauma and attachment work into one plan, so both what happened to you and how it shaped your relationships are addressed together.
Can help with: complex trauma paired with relationship struggles, repeating unhealthy relationship cycles.
Prolonged Exposure Therapy
Gradually and safely revisits trauma memories in a controlled way, reducing the power those memories hold over time.
Can help with: PTSD, avoidance behaviours, panic tied to specific triggers, phobias.
Cognitive Processing Therapy
Identifies and reshapes unhelpful beliefs that formed after a traumatic experience, restoring a more balanced view of yourself and the world.
Can help with: self-blame, guilt or shame after trauma, feeling unsafe in the world.
Deep Brain Reorientation (DBR)
A newer, body-based approach that works with the nervous system’s earliest response to shock — before it becomes a full emotion.
Can help with: “frozen” trauma responses, shock trauma, trauma that talk therapy alone hasn’t shifted.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing)
Uses guided eye movements to help the brain reprocess traumatic memories so they become less vivid and charged.
Can help with: PTSD, single-incident trauma, disturbing memories that keep resurfacing.
2. Evidence-Based Cognitive & Behavioural Approaches
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
Identifies and reshapes the thought patterns that drive how you feel and act.
Can help with: obsessive thinking, rumination, anxiety, panic attacks, depression.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
Builds practical skills to tolerate intense emotions without acting on them destructively and to communicate more effectively.
Can help with: emotional overwhelm, self-harm urges, unstable relationships, impulsivity.
Brief Solution-Focused Therapy
A short-term, goal-oriented approach that focuses on practical next steps and existing strengths rather than digging into the past.
Can help with: a specific decision or transition, short-term stress, workplace conflict.
Collaborative Problem Solving
Works with you — or your child — to solve challenges together as a team, rather than through control or consequences.
Can help with: parent-child conflict, meltdowns, defiant behaviour, school struggles.
3. Body & Nervous System-Based Therapies
Somatic Therapy
Uses body awareness and sensation to release stress and tension the mind alone can’t access, calming the nervous system.
Can help with: chronic tension, anxiety felt in the body, trauma stored physically, dissociation.
Art & Nature Based Therapy
Uses creative expression and time outdoors to help you access and express feelings that are hard to put into words.
Can help with: children processing big feelings, grief, general stress and overwhelm.
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
Combines tapping on acupressure points with talk therapy to calm the nervous system quickly, in the moment.
Can help with: acute anxiety spikes, phobias, cravings, panic in the moment.
Hypnotherapy
Uses guided relaxation and focused attention to help you access and shift patterns at a deeper level.
Can help with: anxiety, habits like smoking or nail-biting, sleep issues, phobias.
Monagan Method Certified Hypnotherapy Birthing
Hypnotherapy designed specifically for pregnancy and birth, reducing fear and building confidence for the experience ahead.
Can help with: fear of childbirth, birth anxiety, processing a previous difficult birth.
Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP)
Uses the connection between language, thought, and behaviour to interrupt and reframe unhelpful mental habits.
Can help with: negative self-talk, limiting beliefs, motivation blocks.
4. Emotion, Relationship & Insight-Focused Therapies
Emotion Focused Therapy
Helps you access, express, and make sense of emotions instead of avoiding them, building healthier connection with others.
Can help with: couples conflict, emotional shutdown, difficulty identifying feelings.
Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS)
Explores different “parts” of yourself — like an inner critic or protector — to build understanding and compassion instead of being ruled by them.
Can help with: harsh self-criticism, inner conflict, feeling “at war” with yourself.
Gottman Method
A research-based approach for couples that strengthens communication, trust, and connection using specific, evidence-based tools.
Can help with: recurring arguments, disconnection, rebuilding trust after a rupture.
Narrative Therapy
Helps you separate yourself from your problems and re-author the story you tell about your life — “I have anxiety,” not “I am anxious.”
Can help with: feeling defined by a diagnosis or past mistake, identity struggles, low self-worth.
Psychodynamic Therapy
Explores how past experiences and unconscious patterns shape present-day feelings and behaviour, building insight so reactions become choices.
Can help with: repeating patterns in relationships or work, long-standing low mood, not understanding your own reactions.
5. Culturally Responsive & Identity-Affirming Therapies
Culturally Attuned Therapy
Therapy shaped around your cultural background, values, and lived experience, so you don’t have to explain or justify your context.
Can help with: acculturation stress, generational or cultural conflict, identity exploration.
Anti Racist and Anti-Oppression Therapy
Directly names and addresses the impact of racism and systemic oppression on mental health, rather than treating it as a purely personal problem.
Can help with: racial trauma, microaggressions, workplace discrimination.
LGBTQ2S+ and Gender Affirming Therapy
Affirming, identity-informed support in a space that fully affirms who you are.
Can help with: coming out, gender exploration, family rejection, minority stress.
Neurodivergence Affirming Therapy
Strength-based support for ADHD, autism, and other neurodivergent experiences that builds on how your brain works rather than trying to “fix” it.
Can help with: sensory overwhelm, masking fatigue, navigating an ADHD or autism diagnosis.
6. Mindfulness & Grief Support
Mindfulness-Based Therapy
Builds present-moment awareness to quiet the “autopilot” of worry and reactivity.
Can help with: rumination, anxiety, stress, difficulty relaxing or switching off.
Grief & Bereavement
Support for coping with loss at your own pace, learning active grieving and finding ways to carry it forward.
Can help with: death of a loved one, pet loss, loss of a relationship or a life as it used to be.
7. Children, Parenting & Family Support
Child & Play Therapy
Uses play to help children express and work through feelings and experiences they can’t yet put into words.
Can help with: anxiety in kids, behavioural changes, processing a big life event like divorce or a move.
Positive Parenting
Practical, connection-based strategies for building cooperation with your child instead of relying on punishment.
Can help with: power struggles, tantrums, sibling conflict, discipline challenges.
ADHD Coaching
Skills-focused support that turns ADHD understanding into concrete daily systems that actually stick.
Can help with: procrastination, time blindness, disorganization, missed deadlines.
Not sure which approach is right for you? Our Intake Counsellors can help match you with a clinician.
Book a Free Consultation: shantipsychotherapy.janeapp.com
Shanti Psychotherapy | intake.shantipsychotherapy@gmail.com | (437) 747-0692
