Our Therapeutic Modalities

Our methods are a careful curation of evidence-based practices from the rich research base of contextual behavioral therapeutic traditions. We tailor these methodologies to the individual, while staying within a consistent theoretical framework, in order to offer you a powerful therapy experience.

We use these modalities to help you to…

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    Manage, understand, and experience your emotions

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    Be more present

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    Disentangle yourself from fruitless thinking, worrying, and ruminating

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    Cultivate your sense of self, and your self-respect

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    Clarify what is most important to you and what you want out of your life

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    Break free from self-defeating habits and build constructive ones

A Contextually-focused approach to DBT

Chronic Distress

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Mindfulness

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Managing Distress

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Emotion Management

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Developing Meaning & a Sense of Agency

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Chronic Distress 〰️ Mindfulness 〰️ Managing Distress 〰️ Emotion Management 〰️ Developing Meaning & a Sense of Agency 〰️

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is an evidenced-based treatment which was developed by Marsha Linehan in the early nineties.  It was originally created to help individuals struggling with suicidal and/or para-suicidal behaviors.  Since then, research has shown DBT to be a promising treatment for a variety of presenting issues. However, in the 30 years since its development, certain limitations and inconsistencies have been identified, and much of the research science that DBT was based on has continued to evolve. C-DBT stands for Contextually-Focused DBT, which is an approach to DBT that seeks to resolve some of its pitfalls, by updating and informing it by other contextual behavioral therapies and the research of contemporary luminary scientists, such as Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s theory of constructed emotions, and Dr. Bruce Perry’s neurosequential model. C-DBT is being developed by Dr. Paul Holmes, PsyD, a tenured professor of the University of Chicago, and owner of The Emotion Management Program of Chicago, after his career-long experience as a DBT therapist, Linehan-trained trainer, professor, and program consultant.

In traditional DBT, we work on increasing behavioral skills in the following areas: Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance. In C-DBT, our focus is on increasing our sense of meaning and agency, and expanding our behavioral repertoires in the face of challenging thoughts and emotions. C-DBT process training groups involve learning in the following areas: Chronic Distress, Mindfulness/Living in the Present Moment, Distress Management, Emotion Management, and Values: Developing Meaning & a Sense of Agency.

While there are many fundamental similarities between C-DBT and traditional DBT, C-DBT treatment will include an emphasis on acceptance, present moment awareness, emotional experiencing, building a life around our values, and being accountable to the commitments that we make. In sessions, this plays out as a highly experiential, engaging, and connecting therapeutic experience. A process-based, rather than protocol-based treatment ensures that your DBT therapy is tailored to you. You are not a box to be checked - we believe your treatment should reflect that.

Our Contextually-focused approach to DBT is an integration of DBT, ACT, RFT, and FAP, which are all evidence-based practices for a wide variety of presenting issues and populations, all drawn from the same scientific philosophy of functional contextualism. You can read more about each of these modalities below. Simply put, we practice in a way that integrates the most effective features of multiple, evidence-based, and complimentary therapies into a cohesive and curated treatment plan.

✺ Other Contextual Behavioral Modalities ✺

  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or  ACT (pronounced as the word “act”) is a mindfulness-based behavioral therapy that focuses on engendering  psychological flexibility. Buried inside of any and all pathology is misdirected healthy energy. The work of ACT is to harness that energy and redirect it towards a life that is worth living. Are you ready to liberate your mind? Would you like to get better at pivoting towards what really matters to you? ACT is a widely evidence-based treatment, which has been demonstrated as effective with most of the same clinical populations at DBT.

  • It is widely recognized that the therapeutic relationship itself, rather than any specific modality, is the most crucial factor in determining the effectiveness of therapy. FAP places a strong emphasis on fostering "intense and curative therapeutic relationships" (Kohlenberg & Tsai, 1991). Used most effectively as an augmentation to other therapeutic modalities, we utilize FAP to harness our therapeutic relationship to help you reach your goals.

    FAP as an adjunctive treatment has been found to show ”dramatic and pervasive improvements that far exceeded the goals of treatment” by leading “the therapist into a caring, genuine, sensitive, involving, and emotional relationship with the client while at the same time capitalizing on the clarity, logic, and precise definitions of radical behaviorism” (Kohlenberg, Tsai, Parker, Bolling & Kanter, 1999). As a standalone treatment, FAP a growing body of research and is correlated with an increased sense of social connectedness.

  • Relational Frame Theory is a research-based theory of how human language functions, and which set the stage for the development of ACT. As human beings, language creates our experience of reality: “Language orients us to what we should be aware of, and as soon as we are aware, we begin to describe, evaluate, and analyze. Our direct experience of emotions, thoughts, memories, learning experiences, and bodily sensations become quickly interwoven with reasons and narratives that influence us as much as the experiences themselves” (Villate, Villate & Hayes, 2016).

    What we call and experience as ‘the mind’ is an outcome of these highly sophisticated language processes. Therefore, psychological pathology can be understood as an outcome of language processes ‘gone wrong’. As its own clinical repertoire, RFT looks at how to harness language processes to help persons get un-stuck and establish a more flexible way of relating to difficult experiences.

  • SPACE​ ​(Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions) is designed to help children and adolescents struggling with anxiety, OCD, and related issues. ​T​his approach is designed specifically for parents of children who are struggling, and focuses on empowering parents to adjust their own behaviors, rather than forcing changes in their child. By reducing an ‘accommodating’ approach to a child’s anxiety, parents are able to engage in a manner that ultimately enhances the child’s ability to cope with anxious thoughts and feelings. Developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center, SPACE has been rigorously tested and proven effective in clinical trials. Another behavioral approach that carefully considers the context of the family, SPACE coheres with our contextually-focused behavioral approach.