Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive-behavioral therapists utilize well established psychological principles to help their clients modify behaviors, thoughts, emotions, or other personal characteristics in directions that their clients deem desirable.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is usually the first line of treatment for anxiety disorders. This is because the scientific evidence supporting cognitive behavioral therapy is overwhelming (1, 2). It works well and it works quickly. In contrast to many other forms of therapy, CBT can often be completed in just a few months.

Therapists at SAS utilize a number of specialized variants such as PE, IE, ERP, ACT, TF-CBT, CPT, SFBT, MBCT, EMDR, and REBT to help clients struggling with a wide range of anxiety disorders and related mental health challenges. We routinely utilize CBT to treat Adjustment Disorders, Specific Phobias, Agoraphobia, Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety, Insomnia, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, GAD, MDD, and OCPD.

Psychoanalytic/dynamic Therapy

Besides our cognitive and behavioral patterns, anxieties can also be rooted in unresolved, and often unconscious, interpersonal and intrapersonal tensions. Because these tensions are buried, therapy must also look beyond conscious thinking patterns and overt behavior. To accomplish this, a contemporary and scientifically vetted version of the psychoanalytic (now often called "psychodynamic") approach is required.

This is an exploratory approach to therapy in which the client's personal history and the complex dynamics of their life are examined in depth. The purpose of this analysis is to develop insight and a deeper understanding of self that can set us free from these tensions.

The psychoanalytic approach to therapy has been refined now for over a century since it was originally developed by Sigmund Freud. The refinement is thanks to the penetrating insights of figures such as Jacques Lacan, Heinz Kohut, and Melanie Klein. Born from methodical and thoughtful observations of human life, their work has transformed psychoanalysis from a starting point in the history of therapy to a widely respected an empirically supported approach to treating a number of mental health issues including anxiety, depression, and trauma symptoms.

Although difficult to study, given the open-ended and exploratory nature of the therapeutic approach, psychoanalytic/psychodynamic therapies have demonstrated their effectiveness in a number of studies (3, 4, 5, 6). 

Existential/Humanistic Therapy

Anxiety can also be bound up with one’s search for meaning, purpose, and identity — crucial dimensions of our experience, without which we are unable to feel at ease in the world or at home in our own lives.

Existential therapy aims to help us clarify and unravel the questions we normally ignore in order to simply “get on with” our lives. Drawing on the work of thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Frantz Fanon, and Simone de Beauvoir, it leverages their insights to help us arrive at insights of our own.

Although difficult to study given the complexity of the conceptual foundations on which it is based, versions of existential therapy have been shown to be effective in a number of clinical studies (7). Some psychologists have even claimed, quite controversially, that "only this type of therapy can replace emptiness with fulfillment and meaning and thus engender authentic, creative solutions to the challenges of this age" (8).