Our counselors provide therapy in Westborough, MA

Stephanie: My go-to approach for helping people in individual therapy is to start where they are. I generally focus on cognitive behavioral therapy as well as mindfulness because they tend to benefit the most people because we tend to overly focus on our pain points and not what is really happening right now.

Michelle: My go-to approaches are positive psychology and ACT. I work with CBT without the true aspect of assigning homework. I prefer to work on the therapeutic alliance in the first one to three sessions in an effort to gain trust with the client and have them feel safe.

Stephanie: I teach the following tools in individual therapy:

• Mindfulness: Being here right now, not in the future where fear resides, and not in the past where depression ferments.
• Discover which cognitive distortions you use most: Cognitive distortions are patterns of thoughts that all of us use that can get us in trouble, such as black-and-white thinking, which is when we focus on thoughts like “It always happens...” or “It will never...” when things are much more complicated than that.
• How to notice your automatic negative thoughts and combat them.

Michelle: I definitely take a psychoeducational approach, sharing my screen to show the clients sites that might help and then sending them the links (e.g. Kristen Neff/self-compassion, Angela Duckworth/grit-resilience, the go-to relationship sites of Gottman, love languages, Esther Perel and Best Self Co.). Teaching clients about reframing negative cognitions and sharing information about cognitive distortions is important.

Stephanie: I know when a client is making meaningful progress in individual therapy when they are closer to the goal we set, feeling more positive more often, and catching their own cognitive distortions.

Michelle: When our sessions become more conversational in nature, it is apparent they are feeling better and have increased their personal toolbox of coping skills and strategies.

Stephanie: Clients can supplement their time in individual therapy by being proactive with tracking their progress toward where they want to be, as well as practicing the skills they've learned.

Michelle: By taking a psychoeducational approach, clients are able to do work in between sessions, which empowers them to make progress in their therapeutic journey.

Stephanie: To prepare for your first individual therapy session, you can think not only about what you want to change, but where you want to be once the changes happen.

Michelle: They should have a small amount of willingness to open their minds to try something different. If they are even remotely willing to try, we are pretty successful on the journey.