Glossary of Terms
Therapies on Offer at The Brixton Practice
Art Psychotherapy
Art Psychotherapy combines traditional psychotherapy approaches with the creative process - using art to help clients explore, express and manage their emotions, trauma and psychological distress. Art Therapists provide a safe and non-judgemental space for clients to communicate through visual art, when words are challenging. The therapeutic relationship with the art therapist is important, where the artwork serves as a third element to explore, understand and transform difficult feelings. It helps improve self-esteem, emotional regulation, and is effective for people struggling with trauma and mental health challenges.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a goal-oriented psychotherapeutic approach that addresses the intricate relationship between thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. By identifying and challenging negative thought patterns, CBT aims to alleviate emotional distress and foster positive behavioural changes. It is widely utilised in treating conditions like anxiety and depression, offering practical skills for managing any challenges. Grounded in the collaboration between you and your therapist, CBT provides a structured framework for personal growth and lasting wellbeing.
Clinical Psychology
Clinical Psychology is a field of psychology which focuses on understanding, diagnosing, and treating emotional and behavioural difficulties. Combining scientific research with therapeutic practice, Clinical Psychologists use psychotherapy, psychological assessment and behaviour modification, to address a range of psychological issues. The focus is to help individuals improve their overall wellbeing and cope with their psychological and emotional distress.
Clinical Psychologists are trained to doctorate level. They are trained in approaches such as CBT, EMDR, and family therapy. Clinical Psychologists treat clients, but also provide clinical psychological supervision to nurses in healthcare settings, including the NHS. They offer a variety of interventions for a wide range of mental health problems, including treating conditions such as depression to severe schizophrenia.
Existential Therapy
Existential Therapy is a form of psychotherapy that helps you to explore life’s deeper questions about meaning and purpose. It focuses on understanding your personal choices and values rather than treating the symptoms. The therapist encourages you to take responsibility for your life and make decisions that feel authentic to you. This approach aims to encourage self-awareness, personal growth, and a sense of meaning in difficult circumstances.
Existential Therapy acknowledges that there is no inherent meaning in our lives, but meaning is created by taking responsibility for one’s direction in life. According to Irvin Yalom, it is based on the notion that there are four existential givens in life. These are death, freedom and responsibility, existential isolation, and meaninglessness. And how we deal with these four existential givens govern whether we lead a meaningful life.
There is death/mortality, whereby accepting this truth can lead to a more meaningful existence. There is freedom and responsibility - if we accept we are the authors of our own choices and actions, this brings tremendous responsibility and therefore anxiety. However, if we recognise that freedom is an opportunity to make responsible choices, we can transform anxiety into angst (the profound realisation of possibility). There is isolation - the realisation that we are born alone and die alone, and no-one can ever fully know our subjective experience despite our intimate human relationships. And there is meaninglessness - we are meaning-making creatures thrown into a world that has no inherent meaning. Yalom suggests that meaning is not something to be found, but something we must actively create through our engagement with the world.
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) is a psychotherapy approach designed to help people recover from traumatic experiences. It involves guiding you to recall events, whilst engaging bilateral stimulation, such as side-to-side eye movements, sounds or taps. This process helps the brain to reprocess traumatic memories, reducing their emotional impact. EMDR is used to treat a range of psychological challenges, including PTSD, complex PTSD, as well as anxiety and phobias.
Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt Therapy is a type of counselling that focuses on being present in the moment, exploring how you feel, think, and behave right now. Instead of just talking about past events, it encourages you to pay attention to what's happening in the present moment. By doing this, you can gain insight into yourself and your relationships, helping you to understand and address any challenges you may be facing.
Gestalt Psychotherapy is about improving your awareness of the experience of your body, thoughts, feelings, being in the room with the therapist, and improving your ability to observe your internal and interpersonal experiences. It uses techniques such as the ‘empty-chair’ technique. This is a Gestalt therapy method where the client engages in dialogue with an imagined person or part of themselves placed in an empty chair. It is used to process emotions and unresolved experiences, to gain insight into internal struggles. Clients can improve self-awareness and release emotions in a safe environment.
Humanistic Therapy
Humanistic Therapy is a type of counselling that focuses on your personal growth and self-development. It emphasises your unique strengths, values, and potential, aiming to help you become the best version of yourself. Through a supportive and non-judgemental environment, Humanistic Therapists encourage self-discovery, empowerment, and a deeper understanding of your feelings and experiences. Humanistic Therapy tends to encompass person-centred therapy, psychodynamic therapy and cognitive approaches. It’s a supportive therapy approach for people struggling with anxiety, relational trauma, challenges with self-worth, and many other emotional and mental health challenges.
Integrative Therapy
Integrative Therapy is a type of counselling that combines different therapeutic approaches to best meet your needs - including psychodynamic, person-centred, cognitive and existential approaches. Your therapist may draw from various techniques and theories in order to meet you where you are at. An integrative therapist adapt their interventions depending on what the client needs - an organic process. By integrating different methods, this approach offers a flexible and holistic way to address your concerns and work towards your goals in therapy. Integrative Therapy aims to help the individual integrate the different parts of the self into a more healthy whole. It is used to support clients struggling with a variety of challenges, such as anxiety and depression, addiction, relationship issues, grief, and many other emotional and mental health difficulties.
Mentalisation-Based Therapy (MBT)
Mentalisation-Based Therapy is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on helping you to understand your own thoughts and feelings, as well as those of other people. It helps you improve your ability to ‘mentalise’ - reflect on what might be going on in your mind and the mind of others.
MBT is often used to help with emotional instability and relationship difficulties. By strengthening mentalisation skills, you can develop healthier ways of managing emotions, and building more trusting relationships. Mentalisation-Based Therapy is a helpful intervention for anyone, but it is particularly recommended for people with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD).
Person-Centred Therapy
Person-Centred Therapy, also known as Client-Centred Therapy, is a type of counselling where you are the focus of the sessions. Your therapist provides a safe, empathic, and non-judgemental space for you to explore your thoughts, feelings, and experiences at your own pace. The goal is to help you gain insight into yourself, make positive changes, and work towards your personal growth and wellbeing.
A key intervention in Person-Centred Therapy is where the therapist will mirror back your own exploration and ideas - so that you increasingly feel more fully seen by yourself - helping you to better understand yourself and grow. It is considered a one-and-a-half person psychology, whereby on the most part the therapist doesn’t bring their own subjectivity into the sessions.
Psychoanalytic Therapy
Psychoanalytic Therapy is a type of counselling that explores how your past experiences, particularly those from childhood, influence your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours today. Through conversations with your therapist, you'll delve into your unconscious mind to uncover underlying conflicts and patterns that may be affecting your life. By gaining insight into these deeper layers of your psyche, Psychoanalytic Therapy aims to help you better understand yourself and make positive changes for personal growth and healing.
Traditional Psychoanalytic Therapy is a one-person psychology, where the analyst will not engage with the relationship, but encourage the client to free associate and report dreams - which the analyst uses to interpret the client’s unresolved, unconscious material. Traditional psychoanalysis is based on drive theory. Developed by Sigmund Freud, psychoanalytic drive theory proposes that human behaviour is motivated by innate, biological and unconscious drives or instincts that seek to reduce internal tension. These drives are centred on sexuality and aggression, which lie at the bedrock of our psychological development and require psychic work to manage.
Relational Psychoanalytic Therapy bridges traditional with more contemporary, relational approaches to therapy. Relational Psychoanalysts are particularly interested in noticing and reflecting on enactments that occur between the patient and therapist in the service of understanding the patient’s psychodynamics better. Relational Psychoanalytic Therapy proposes that our unconscious drives and the need for intimacy with others sit at the bedrock of our psyche.
Psychodynamic Therapy
Psychodynamic Therapy is a form of talk therapy, looking at how unconscious thoughts, early relationships and past experiences influence current emotions and behaviours. It aims to bring hidden feelings and internal conflicts to the surface, to be explored and resolved. The therapist helps you gain insight into repeated patterns of thoughts and relationships. Psychodynamic Therapy helps you to develop greater self-awareness, emotional understanding, and healthier ways of relating to others in the world.
Psychodynamic theory is based on object-seeking - seeking relationships to others. Psychodynamic Therapy helps us to understand our internal working models of self, others, and the world - and from there, we are able to update those models in the service of healthier relating.
Radically-Relational Psychotherapy
Radically-Relational Psychotherapy is an approach to therapy that uses the therapeutic relationship to understand how the client relates in the world. Typically, the client will talk about anything they wish to address in the session - relationships, work, psychosomatic symptoms etc. The therapeutic relationship between the client and therapist is always held in awareness by the therapist, which allows conversations in therapy to unfold in a way that is helpful and healing. The therapist holds in mind how the therapeutic relationship informs the client’s experience of being in the world. And when the client brings their experience of being in the world into therapy, how this affects the therapeutic relationship.
At The Brixton Practice, this means your therapist is both professionally trained and genuinely human - offering curiosity and care. Therapy is a collaborative process, where there is mutual engagement between you and the therapist. This approach is empathic and organic. It is about allowing what needs to unfold, unfold. Radically-Relational Psychotherapy is a two-person psychology. The therapist is an active participant, whilst maintaining a professional neutrality and ethic. Whilst the therapist observes and engages in the interaction, they have professional boundaries. Radically-Relational Psychotherapy is the fundamental approach that Nathan Claxton - the founder of The Brixton Practice - promotes, both as a therapy approach and the organisation’s premise.
In Radically-Relational Psychotherapy, the client will discuss their key relationships. In order for therapy to be successful, the robustness and depth of the therapeutic relationship is the foundation from which these other relationships can be successfully worked on. If some work needs to be done with the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist, that is part of the process.
Relational Therapy
Relational Therapy is about understanding and transforming how you relate to others and yourself, through an emotionally attuned and meaningful therapeutic relationship. It is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on how relationships shape our sense of self, emotional life, and patterns of behaviour. It is based on the idea that we are fundamentally shaped by our interactions with others, and psychological difficulties arise in relationships - therefore, can be healed through relationships.
Relational Therapy is all about building trust, understanding, and collaboration between you and your therapist. Through the therapeutic connection, you are able to explore your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, developing tools to relate in new ways in the world. The therapeutic relationship is real, mutual (within professional boundaries), and asymmetrical - the attention focuses on the client’s world, challenges and emotions. It is a place where patterns show up and can be explored safely.
Our relationships mirror our internal working models, and vice versa. If you work on your outward relationships and have a healthy relationship with your therapist, that will update your internal working models. What we know about how you relate in the world, tells us about your internal working models - and these inform how you relate in the world. Our internal working models originate from our earliest experiences of being in relationship, and develop as we experience other relationships. Relational Psychotherapy offers a new model of relating to others, which you can then use in your relationships outside of the therapeutic relationship. Relational Therapy is a reparative process.
Transactional Analysis
Transactional Analysis (TA) is a form of therapy that looks at how people relate and communicate to one another. It is based on the idea that each person operates from three ego states - parent, adult, and child - influencing their thoughts, feelings and behaviours. TA helps you to understand these transactions, to improve communication and resolve conflicts. TA is used to promote personal growth, strengthen relationships, and encourage more authentic ways of relating to others. Transactional Analysis is a form of individual therapy, informs couples therapy, as well as informing systemic therapies.
Transpersonal Therapy
Transpersonal Therapy is a holistic form of psychotherapy, integrating spiritual and transcendent aspects of the human experience. It focuses on self-awareness, personal growth, and the realisation of a deeper sense of meaning and connection beyond the self. This approach involves mindfulness, meditation, and spiritual practices alongside psychotherapy to support healing. Transpersonal Therapy helps you to achieve a greater sense of connection and wholeness to something beyond oneself. It is a supportive therapy approach for individuals struggling to navigate transitions in life - relationships, career paths, life stages, and grief.
Other Psychotherapy and Counselling Terms
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) integrates mindfulness and behavioural techniques to promote acceptance of thoughts and emotions. ACT emphasises the importance of clarifying and committing to your own personal values. Instead of attempting to change or eliminate negative thoughts, ACT encourages psychological flexibility to embrace them and decrease emotional distress. By clarifying your deeply held values and aligning these with your actions, the aim is to foster a more meaningful and purposeful life - whilst navigating challenges outside of your control. ACT is widely used to support conditions such as anxiety, depression, and help manage chronic pain. Compassion sits at the bedrock of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy (CBH)
Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy (CBH) is an integrative approach that combines elements of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) with hypnosis techniques to address psychological issues and promote change. It focuses on modifying negative thought patterns and behaviours while utilising hypnosis to access the unconscious mind and enhance outcomes. CBH aims to help individuals achieve their therapeutic goals by harnessing the power of suggestion and imagery to facilitate cognitive restructuring and behaviour modification. It requires collaborative efforts between therapist and client to empower individuals to overcome challenges, and improve their mental and emotional wellbeing. This can help with many things, including addictions and phobias.
Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT)
Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) encourages cultivating compassion towards oneself and others to alleviate suffering and promote emotional wellbeing. It integrates techniques from cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) and mindfulness practices to develop a kinder and more understanding relationship with oneself. CFT can address issues such as self-criticism, shame, and low self-esteem by fostering a sense of warmth, acceptance, and compassion towards oneself and others. Through guided exercises and interventions, individuals learn to soothe their inner critic and build a compassionate mindset, leading to greater emotional resilience and contentment to effectively navigate life’s challenges.
Narrative Therapy
Narrative Therapy is a form of talking therapy that views individuals as separate from their problems. It helps one reframe their experiences by externalising issues and focuses on understanding how personal narratives shape one's experience, as well as their identity and behaviours. Narrative Therapy empowers individuals to rewrite their life stories in ways that promote their strengths and values. By exploring alternative narratives, clients can gain new perspectives, build resilience, and create positive change in their lives.