Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is based on the concept that your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and actions are interconnected, and that negative thoughts and feelings can trap you in a vicious cycle. It aims to help you deal with overwhelming problems in a more positive way by breaking them down into smaller parts.

You're shown how to change these negative patterns to improve the way you feel. CBT deals with your current problems, rather than focusing on issues from your past and it looks for practical ways to improve your state of mind on a daily basis.

During the sessions, you'll work with your therapist to break down your problems into their separate parts, such as your thoughts, physical feelings and actions. You and your therapist will analyse these areas to work out if they're unrealistic or unhelpful, and to determine the effect they have on each other and on you. Your therapist will then be able to help you work out how to change unhelpful thoughts and behaviours.

After working out what you can change, your therapist will ask you to practise these changes in your daily life and you'll discuss how you got on during the next session.

The eventual aim of therapy is to teach you to apply the skills you have learnt during treatment to your daily life. This should help you manage your problems and stop them having a negative impact on your life, even after your course of treatment finishes.

Enhanced Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT-E) is an evidence-based therapeutic intervention recommended by NICE and specifically designed to support individuals who have eating disorders to understand and explore how their eating disorders affect their thoughts, feelings and actions.

The model has four stages and focuses around a highly personalised formulation of the eating disorders considering relationship with food, weight and shape, body image, self esteem, perfectionism and relationships. The therapy will then support the individual to implement strategies and skills to adapt and challenge their eating disorder thoughts and behaviours as well as relapse prevention as therapy draws to an end.

The model is transdiagnostic meaning that it is designed to help individuals with Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder as well as individuals who do not meet diagnostic criteria but are struggling with disordered eating.

Sessions are typically 50 minutes long and will often have in-between session tasks. CBT- E typically lasts 20 sessions over 20 weeks, however if significant weight needs to be restored this may be longer.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for ARFID (CBT-AR) has shown promise as an intervention for children, adolescents, and adults with ARFID and is suitable for those aged 10+.

CBT-AR usually consists of four treatment stages across 20-30 sessions between the therapist and client. For younger clients, the treatment will incorporate parent/family involvement and support.

CBT-AR sessions are highly structured with a clear agenda for each and every meeting. Practice between sessions is essential to a successful treatment so “homework” is assigned and then reviewed the following week.

The goal of CBT-AR is for the client to no longer meet criteria for ARFID by treatment end. The expectation is that there will be a considerable expansion of the client’s dietary intake and that any nutritional deficiencies have been corrected. CBT-AR clients should be able to eat several foods in each of the major food group categories by the end of their CBT-AR course. Furthermore, we would expect for the client’s weight to be normalized – for younger people, this means that they are back on their healthy growth trajectory (assuming low weight was a concern).

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an extensively researched, effective psychotherapy method proven to help people recover from trauma and other distressing life experiences.

Our brains have a natural way to recover from traumatic memories and events. This process involves communication between the amygdala (the alarm signal for stressful events), the hippocampus (which assists with learning, including memories about safety and danger), and the prefrontal cortex (which analyzes and controls behavior and emotion). While many times traumatic experiences can be managed and resolved spontaneously, they may not be processed without help.

Stress responses are part of our natural fight, flight, or freeze instincts. When distress from a disturbing event remains, the upsetting images, thoughts, and emotions may create an overwhelming feeling of being back in that moment, or of being “frozen in time.” EMDR therapy helps the brain process these memories, and allows normal healing to resume. The experience is still remembered, but the fight, flight, or freeze response from the original event is resolved.

Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) is based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) but it's specially adapted for people who feel emotions very intensely. 

The aim of DBT is to help you:

understand and accept your difficult feelings

learn skills to manage them

become able to make positive changes in your life.

‘Dialectical’ means trying to understand how two things that seem opposite could both be true. For example, accepting yourself and changing your behaviour might feel contradictory. But DBT teaches that it's possible for you to achieve both these goals together.