Archive for July, 2009

Appendix: Common Initials and Abbreviations

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
AA Alcoholics Anonymous, Associate of Arts AAP American Academy of Psychotherapists AAPC American Association of Pastoral Counselors AANP American Association of Nurse Practitioners AATA American Art Therapy Association ABAP American Board for Accreditation in Psychoanalysis ABFP American Board of Forensic Psychology ABPN American Board ...

Chapter 10: Interviewing and Making a Decision

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
You've probably already crossed a few names off your list, so you're getting closer and closer to your best option. You've gotten all the information you can from friends and family, provider directories, and the Internet. ...

Chapter 9: Setting Priorities

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
By now you have some idea of what you're looking for, and you've created a list of potential therapists. In this chapter, you're going to learn how to pull all this together to make an ...

Chapter 8: Sources of Possible Therapists

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Now that you have some idea of what you're looking for, it's time to start considering your choices. There are more therapists practicing than ever before, but they can be tough to find. Most therapists don't ...

Chapter 7: Special Considerations

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
The issues addressed in this chapter don't fit neatly into any other category, but you may consider them the most important of all. They deal with the fit between you and your therapist, which is ...

Chapter 6: Experience of the Therapist

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Nobody wants to go to a doctor's office or a mechanic's garage and hear the phrase, “I've never seen this problem before.” Similarly, when you tell your problems to a therapist, you look for understanding, ...

Chapter 5: Psychotherapy Treatment Approaches

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
A treatment approach, or theoretical orientation as they're sometimes called, is nothing more than a set of ideas about what makes people tick and how they change, and a set of techniques for helping people ...

Chapter 4: Professions That Practice Psychotherapy

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Medicine is practiced by doctors. Law is practiced by lawyers. So who practices therapy? Actually, there are more than a dozen different professions that offer some form of therapy or counseling. Each group offers something a ...

Chapter 3: Settings for Therapy

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Therapy can take place in just about any reasonably soundproof room with enough space for a few chairs, but it's remarkable how much difference the environment can make. If your surroundings make you feel uneasy or ...

Chapter 2: Payment of Therapy

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Let's talk about money. I placed this chapter near the front of the book because I'm a realist. Money can be a very big deal. Most former clients will tell you that their therapy was worth ...

Chapter 1: Kinds of Therapy

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Even if you've never been in therapy before, you probably have some mental image of what it's like based on TV shows or movies: two people sitting in leather chairs, talking quietly in a beautiful ...

Introduction

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Therapy works. It seems like such a simple statement, but it's taken several decades of research to confirm that most people do, in fact, benefit from therapy. Some of this research has also addressed the trickier question ...