treatment options
treatment is tailored to your needs. we recommend the treatments that best suit your symptoms, treatment goals, and the realities of your life.
you don’t have to worry too much about which one is best - that’s the therapist’s job - but if you’d like to read more about the treatments offered at river & stone, the summaries below should get you started.
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy [ACT]
ACT is a cognitive-behavioral therapy, meaning it aims to work on changing behaviors and way of thinking about the situations causing your problems. ACT is a broadly-helpful treatment if you are experiencing almost any difficulty: anxiety, depression, panic, binge eating, and more. ACT helps you change your relationship to your thoughts, make space for emotions to be processed safely, and encourages you to pursue your personally-held values. The point of ACT is to get challenging thoughts and emotions out of the way so you can have a more fulfilling life - whatever that means to you. ACT can include mindfulness if that’s helpful, but it’s not required.
Exposure & Response Prevention [ERP]
ERP is the most evidence-based treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). In ERP, we develop a plan to systematically face your fears and give your brain a chance to learn new information about scary situations through exposure therapy. We work on strategies to notice OCD as just thoughts, unhook yourself from them, and resist the urge to engage in the rituals that keep OCD alive. ERP also includes processing the emotions around OCD, which can sometimes come with shame, guilt, disgust, anger, and more.
Cognitive Processing Therapy [CPT]
CPT is one of two evidence-based treatments for PTSD. CPT is helpful when your PTSD symptoms include significant shifts in your thoughts, how you see yourself, and how your beliefs might get in the way. It includes exploring your beliefs about why the traumatic event happened, and how that event shaped your view of yourself, other people, and the world around you. In CPT, we identify those beliefs, called “stuck points,” and put them on trial. We get curious about these narratives that maintain your trauma, and also explore common areas of disruption in PTSD, such as trust, intimacy, safety, control, and self-esteem.
Prolonged Exposure [PE]
PE is the other evidence-based treatment for PTSD offered at River & Stone. PE is helpful when your world has gotten smaller after a traumatic event due to avoidance and fear. PE includes a retelling of your trauma (in a systematic way, in a safe space, with a therapist as a guide and support). Retelling the story of what happened to you allows your body to adjust to fear in a safe context, and gives you a chance to develop new perspectives on the event. PE also includes gradually reducing avoidance of your triggers, so you can feel free to go on a walk, be in relationships, or whatever else your trauma took from you.
Behavioral Activation [BA]
BA is a treatment for depression that focuses on connecting you with the things in your life that can make you feel alive again. When we get depressed, we often withdraw from everything good in our life - people, places, activities that once gave us sparks of life are no longer in the picture. BA is a strategy to reverse that pattern, get you moving one small activity at a time, and rebuild your days to make you feel like you.