LM Psychology uses a combination of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), Schema-based therapy and Mindfulness techniques in our treatment approach. The approach taken will be tailored to your particular needs.

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT)

The core message of ACT is to accept what is out of your personal control and commit to action that improves and enriches your life. Through ACT you can learn psychological skills and strategies that enable you to deal with painful thoughts and feelings effectively. You will receive help to clarify what is important to you (i.e. your values) so that you can use that knowledge to guide and motivate you to change your life for the better.

Schema Therapy

Schemas, or “life-traps”, are longstanding, enduring self-defeating patterns of thinking and feeling. Some common examples of schemas include “I’m unlovable”, “I don’t fit in”, “I’m a failure”, and “Its not good enough!”. Schemas generally develop early in our development from some unmet core emotional need and are expressed behaviourally through the coping styles of schema maintenance, schema avoidance and schema compensation. Schemas are often very tenacious, can act as barriers to our achieving our goals and cause havoc in our relationships.

In Schema therapy you will be helped to identify your schemas, recognise your coping styles, learn how to stand up to your schema and develop healthier alternatives to replace them.

Mindfulness

How often are you in “auto pilot”, those times when our mind is miles away from where you are, for example, worrying about that meeting with your boss while watching TV, or fantasising about an upcoming holiday while sitting on the bus? At those times we lose contact with the present moment, the here and now. While it can be enjoyable and harmless to take little “mind trips” while doing routine or familiar tasks, at other times we can become so preoccupied with negative thoughts of the past, the future and our emotions that we experience unnecessary suffering.

Mindfulness means intentionally paying attention to our internal and external experiences in the present moment, calmly acknowledging and accepting our thoughts, feelings and physical sensations in a nonjudgmental manner. Mindfulness is a process of awareness, of being open, with curiosity and flexibility, to what is happening in the here and now.

Research on Mindfulness has identified the following benefits: