Dr Priya Bunnell

 Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is an action-oriented approach to psychotherapy that stems from traditional behaviour therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy. Clients learn to stop avoiding, denying, and struggling with their inner emotions and, instead, accept that these deeper feelings are appropriate responses to certain situations that should not prevent them from moving forward in their lives. With this understanding, clients begin to accept their hardships and commit to making necessary changes in their behavior, regardless of what is going on in their lives and how they feel about it.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a short-term structured form of psychotherapy based on the idea that the way someone thinks and feels affects the way he or she behaves. CBT aims to help clients resolve present-day challenges like depression or anxiety, relationship problems, anger issues, stress, or other common concerns that negatively affect mental health and quality of life. The goal of treatment is to help clients identify, challenge, and change unhelpful thought patterns in order to change their responses to difficult situations.

Compassion Focused Therapy is a therapeutic approach that aims to help those who struggle with shame and self-criticism, often resulting from early experiences of abuse or neglect. CFT teaches clients to cultivate the skills of self-compassion and other-oriented compassion, which are thought to help regulate mood and lead to feelings of safety, self-acceptance, and comfort. The technique is similar to mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in that it also instructs clients about the science behind the mind-body connection and how to practice mind and body awareness.

EMDR is a unique, powerful therapy that helps people recover from problems triggered by traumatic events in their lives. It stops difficult memories causing so much distress by helping the brain to reprocess them properly, working with memory to heal the legacy of past pain.

EMDR therapy is best known for treating PTSD but can help with a range of mental health conditions in people of all ages including depression and anxiety.

NVR is a new approach, specifically developed for responding effectively to aggressive, violent, self-destructive and controlling behaviour in children and young people. NVR has successfully been used with anxious young people, whose obsessive-compulsive behaviour controls the family, or who isolate themselves socially, have become addicted to the internet, or refuse to go to school. A further area in which the approach is proving very helpful, is working with families in which young adults show ‘entrenched dependency’, and young adults with ongoing serious mental health problems.

Solution Focused Therapy is one of the world's most widely used therapeutic treatments. Unlike traditional forms of therapy that take time to analyse problems, pathology, and past life events, SFT concentrates on finding solutions in the present and exploring one’s hope for the future in order to find a quick and pragmatic resolution of one’s problems. This method takes the approach that you know what you need to do to improve your own life and, with the appropriate coaching and questioning, are capable of finding the best solutions.