Our therapists offer cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in Woodbridge, VA

My competency and preferred modality is based around cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, and some DBT skills. I like to utilize this combination because it helps clients understand their thoughts and emotions and how they can influence their behavior. I'm trying to understand what they want to see in their life and help them manage their intense feelings and emotional responses.

I teach the following tools with individual therapy:

• Recognizing emotions on the feelings wheel
• Negative ruminations
• The cognitive triangle, hierarchy of needs, and stages of life
• Coping skills and strategies for managing and regulating emotions and stress
• How to recognize, challenge, and reframe cognitive distortions, otherwise known as automatic negative thoughts
• Addressing barriers to change by cultivating awareness and mindfulness
• Communication skills to express what they feel, advocate for their needs with the people in their life, and take appropriate pauses to respond rather than react
• Breathing exercises
• Processing journaling
• The use of calendars and schedules
• Reality-checking fears and anxieties
• Cognitive restructuring

I can tell a client is making meaningful progress in individual therapy when they are able to come back session after session and be able to confidently process things and use skills, strategies, and routines they have been working on in treatment. Also, when they are using terminology they learned and demonstrate increased awareness and ability to utilize regulation skills to manage whatever they are there working on in treatment goals.

I encourage clients to supplement their work in individual therapy with positive, healthy, and effective activities, or what we refer to as pleasant events, in their daily lives and routines that help them make progress towards a life worth living. Also, discussing activities, practices, routines, and habits that provide life satisfaction and help them feel like they are working toward long-term life goals. We will often look at a balanced life wheel that I have been known to share.

I encourage clients to prepare for their first individual session by thinking about the areas of their lives where they hope treatment can address the symptoms they are experiencing, problems they are facing, and future goals in their lives they want to work toward.