Dr. Lovette is a cognitive-behavioral psychologist whose focus is on brief psychotherapy. His pragmatic, solution-focused approach uses proven psychological and behavioral modification technologies to help you feel better as fast as possible. 

 

Solution-Focused, Brief Therapy

Solution-focused brief therapy focuses on what clients want to achieve through therapy, rather than on the problem that made them seek help.

 

The solution-focused approach does not focus on the past; instead it focuses on the present and future. Dr. Lovette uses curiosity to invite the client to envision their preferred future and then he and client start working towards it in small incremental steps.

 

To support this, questions are asked about the client’s story, strengths and resources, and about exceptions to the problem. Scaling is also used as a tool to measure progress.

Solution focused therapists believe that if a person has the capacity to describe something as a problem that person also has the capacity to describe what better means in his/her everyday life and that since they are able to describe that they also have the resources needed to make it happen.

One assumption in solution-focused therapy is that you bring a lot of personal strengths to coping in your life. The goal of solution-focused therapy is to increase and build on these strengths and to create workable solutions for the challenges you face.

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Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is an action-oriented form of psychosocial therapy that assumes that maladaptive, or faulty, thinking patterns cause maladaptive behavior and "negative" emotions. The treatment focuses on changing an individual's thoughts (cognitive patterns) in order to change his or her behavior and emotional state.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a collaborative, action-oriented therapy effort. As such, it empowers the patient by giving him an active role in the therapy process and discourages any overdependence on the therapist that may occur in other therapeutic relationships.

Treatment is relatively short in comparison to some other forms of psychotherapy, usually lasting no longer than 16 weeks. Many insurance plans provide reimbursement for cognitive-behavioral therapy services. Because coverage is dependent on the disorder or illness the therapy is treating, patients should check with their individual plans.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy combines the individual goals of cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy.

Pioneered by psychologists Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis in the 1960s, cognitive therapy assumes that maladaptive behaviors and disturbed mood or emotions are the result of inappropriate or irrational thinking patterns, called automatic thoughts. Instead of reacting to the reality of a situation, an individual reacts to his or her own distorted viewpoint of the situation. For example, a person may conclude that he is "worthless" simply because he failed an exam or didn't get a date. Cognitive therapists attempt to make their patients aware of these distorted thinking patterns, or cognitive distortions, and change them (a process termed cognitive restructuring).

Behavioral therapy, or behavior modification, trains individuals to replace undesirable behaviors with healthier behavioral patterns. Unlike psychodynamic therapies, it does not focus on uncovering or understanding the unconscious motivations that may be behind the maladaptive behavior. In other words, strictly behavioral therapists don't try to find out why their patients behave the way they do, they just teach them to change the behavior.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy integrates the cognitive restructuring approach of cognitive therapy with the behavioral modification techniques of behavioral therapy. The therapist works with the patient to identify both the thoughts and the behaviors that are causing distress, and to change those thoughts in order to readjust the behavior.

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Techniques of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

In some cases, the patient may have certain fundamental core beliefs, called schemas, which are flawed and require modification. A number of different techniques may be used in cognitive-behavioral therapy to help patients uncover and examine their thoughts and change their behaviors. They include:

  Behavioral homework assignments. Cognitive-behavioral therapists frequently request that their patients complete homework assignments between therapy sessions. These may consist of real-life "behavioral experiments" where patients are encouraged to try out new responses to situations discussed in therapy sessions.

  Cognitive rehearsal. The patient imagines a difficult situation and the therapist guides him through the step-by-step process of facing and successfully dealing with it. The patient then works on practicing, or rehearsing, these steps mentally. Ideally, when the situation arises in real life, the patient will draw on the rehearsed behavior to address it.

  Journal. Patients are sometimes asked to keep a detailed diary recounting their thoughts, feelings, and actions when specific situations arise. The journal helps to make the patient aware of his or her maladaptive thoughts and to show their consequences on behavior. In later stages of therapy, it may serve to demonstrate and reinforce positive behaviors.

  Modeling. The therapist and patient engage in role-playing exercises in which the therapist acts out appropriate behaviors or responses to situations.

  Conditioning. The therapist uses reinforcement to encourage a particular behavior. For example, a child with ADHD gets a gold star every time he stays focused on tasks and accomplishes certain daily chores. The gold star reinforces and increases the desired behavior by identifying it with something positive. Reinforcement can also be used to extinguish unwanted behaviors by imposing negative consequences.

  Systematic desensitization. Patients imagine a situation they fear, while the therapist employs techniques to help the patient relax, helping the person cope with their fear reaction and eventually eliminate the anxiety altogether. For example, a patient in treatment for agoraphobia, or fear of open or public places, will relax and then picture herself on the sidewalk outside of her house. In her next session, she may relax herself and then imagine a visit to a crowded shopping mall. The imagery of the anxiety-producing situations gets progressively more intense until, eventually, the therapist and patient approach the anxiety-causing situation in real-life (a "graded exposure"), perhaps by visiting a mall. Exposure may be increased to the point of "flooding," providing maximum exposure to the real situation. By repeatedly pairing a desired response (relaxation) with a fear-producing situation (open, public spaces), the patient gradually becomes desensitized to the old response of fear and learns to react with feelings of relaxation.

  Validity testing. Patients are asked to test the validity of the automatic thoughts and schemas they encounter. The therapist may ask the patient to defend or produce evidence that a schema is true. If the patient is unable to meet the challenge, the faulty nature of the schema is exposed.

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Uses for Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive-behavioral therapy can be used in any situation in which there is a pattern of unwanted behavior accompanied by distress and impairment.

 

Based on scientific research, cognitive-behavioral therapy is a recommended treatment option for a number of mental disorders, including depression, personality disorders, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), eating disorders, substance abuse, anxiety or panic disorder, agoraphobia, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

 

It is also frequently used as a tool to deal with chronic pain for patients with illnesses such as rheumatoid arthritis, back problems, and cancer. Patients with sleep disorders may also find cognitive-behavioral therapy a useful treatment for insomnia.

 

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NOTE: Information on this page was taken from HealthAtoZ.com:

http://www.healthatoz.com/healthatoz/Atoz/ency/cognitive-behavioral_therapy.jsp