Therapy

At PEACE, we know that ‘one size fits all’ isn’t going to cut it for our clients. Many people and their families are struggling with powerful negative emotions, impulses and behaviours. With our program, DBT for Me, we will help you learn the skills that are most relevant to you in the way that will work most effectively for you. Depending on your current challenges, your individualized treatment plan will include a combination of our DBT services, including Individual, Family and/or Group Therapy, amongst a variety of ancillary services.

Individual Therapy Options

Option 1: Individual Therapy + DBT Skills Training

For some people, group therapy can be threatening or intimidating. Others might not be able to make the commitment, or simply prefer to do one-on-one therapy. For these reasons, clients who are exclusively interested in individual therapy can also benefit from the skills taught in a typical DBT course. You and your therapist will, after determining your goals and aspirations, focus on learning skills that are most relevant to the current situation. In order to compensate for the need to spend some session time on skills learning, this requires an increased focus on readings and homework in between sessions.

Option 2: Individual therapy as supplement to DBT Therapy Group

Individual therapy sessions can be provided as either a supplement to the DBT Skills Treatment Group, or as the primary mode of therapy. For people who choose the group, individual sessions can be used to create a therapeutic rapport so that problem behaviours and situations can be examined closely, and new behaviours can be learned and practiced. These sessions are also essential for increasing motivation, enhancing capabilities, dealing with intolerable emotions and uncovering thinking problems.

Sometimes clients have challenges that make it difficult for them to come in to the office. This can include an acute episode of depression or anxiety, a refusal to leave the home, or circumstantial challenges. PEACE Psychotherapy recognizes that this can be an obstacle to effective treatment. For this reason, we offer confidential online video services when needed, either to replace individual sessions or in-between session coaching.

Option 3: Individual Therapy without DBT Skills Training

Many people seek therapy to address issues not primarily related to emotional dysregulation such as Anxiety, Depression, Addiction, Eating Disorders, Mood Disorders, Trauma, and Abuse. For these clients, skills training is not a priority. However, even clients in individual therapy can benefit from the flexibility offered at PEACE Psychotherapy. While individual sessions will focus on getting to the root of the problem and working towards achieving personal goals, supplementary services like homework, telephone coaching and family sessions will also be available according to your needs.

Family Therapy

PEACE Psychotherapy views parents as partners in the therapeutic process. This is especially true when there is lots of conflict between the adolescent and other family members, but it is also true when family members are inadvertently reinforcing or “enabling” maladaptive behaviours. Family members often find themselves: a) alternating between extremes in parenting styles b) over or under reacting to adolescent problem behaviours c) struggling with their teens’ transition from a dependant teenager to an independent young adult. In these situations family sessions become critical. The purpose of the family sessions then is to help the family resolve these dilemmas and create a space for healing and growth. At times, it may be important to have home-based sessions in order to develop a more accurate assessment of the problem and to determine appropriate interventions.

Couples Therapy

Couples therapy at PEACE Psychotherapy offers a valuable opportunity for individuals to gain deeper insights into themselves, their partners, and the dynamics of their relationship. Through this process, couples can work towards building a stronger foundation of understanding and connection.

Common stressors:

Finances, household responsibilities, sex, values and future goals around marriage, children, etc.
Blame and shame
Communication of anger effectively, loving anger
Replace hostility, passive aggressive communication, resentment, hostility, blame and shame
Communicating objectives and setting limits
Sometimes outcome – relationship ends

Ancillary Services

Telephone Coaching

When it comes to working towards making real change in our lives, sometimes we need access to supports in-between sessions. Because your therapist knows your specific situation, they are in a unique position to be helpful. Telephone coaching is intended to be a brief intervention with the focus on addressing the issue at hand and it is not a replacement for crisis services. Your therapist will provide you with a packaged list of crisis services such as hotlines, walk-in clinics and emergency services.

Outreach

Sometimes the weight of the problem is so heavy that it’s just too hard to leave the house, especially to talk about the problem. Outreach addresses this by meeting the person where they are at – in the home. A number of sessions can be devoted to assessing motivation, educating about therapy, and attempting to form a therapeutic rapport. However, this is a time limited service, with a goal of eliciting a more significant commitment to therapy.

Individualized E-Content

Creating change in your life requires significant effort and on-going commitment to learning new skills and applying them. PEACE psychotherapy offers e-resources that are designed to help you complete take home exercises, readings, thought and behaviour records.

DBT Coach App

Utilizing day-to-day challenges as opportunities for observation and skillful behaviour use is critical in DBT. The Diary Card is a tool clients use in order to identify and monitor unskillful behaviours, as well as target and replace them with more skillful ones. DBT Coach is an interactive app that PEACE clients can use to record personalized diary cards in the moment as well as access 100s of DBT lessons and activities. Therapists and group facilitators with PEACE Psychotherapy use the DBT Coach App to assign clients with relevant skill practice opportunities. Along with their clients, they are able to review clients’ entries, and track and review progress over time.

Participants of PEACE groups and clients seeking DBT are highly encouraged to utilize assigned homework and practice opportunities between sessions that may include exercises in and outside of the DBT Coach App.

E-Therapy

Sometimes clients have challenges that make it difficult for them to come in to the office. This can include an acute episode of depression or anxiety, a refusal to leave the home, or circumstantial challenges. PEACE Psychotherapy recognizes that this can be an obstacle to effective treatment. For this reason, we offer confidential Skype services when needed, either to replace individual sessions or in-between session coaching.