How do I know what type of therapy is best for me?

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Accepted Answer

There are over 100 types of therapies, including those that tap into your creativity, retrain your body, or involve being in nature. Even within talk therapy, there are several types that may be a good fit for you. 

The best way to figure out what type of therapy is best for you is to take our free quiz that explores your therapeutic preferences and needs.

Aside from taking our quiz, here are some tips to help you decide what is best for you:

Are you creative or can’t express how you feel in words? Art therapies can be another way to tap into what’s bothering you and get healing and have been found to be especially helpful with young children and senior adults. If you’ve tried talk therapy and feel that you can better express yourself through the arts, consider:
Art Therapy
Music Therapy
Drama Therapy
Play Therapy

Do you have major trauma you often find yourself reliving? Were you a victim or witness of violence or abuse? Do you have memories of an event that replay in your mind? There are types of therapy that can retrain the way your body handles those memories so that they no longer cause such a strong emotional reaction. Consider:
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Prolonged Exposure Therapy
Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy

Do you like structure and linear thinking? Would you consider yourself more of an analytical person? One way to change what you do is to change how you think, and that’s what cognitive and behavioral therapies can help you to do. Consider:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

Do you feel like you need to gain control over your emotions? Or do you feel like you frequently experience intense emotions? Our emotions can give us important information about our inner lives but sometimes we need help in understanding and managing our emotions, especially the difficult emotions such as anger. Consider:
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
Emotion-Focused Therapy
Anger Management Therapy

Looking to improve relationships with your partner and/or family? Whether you’re facing a breakup, having communications issues with your child, parents, or siblings, or are just looking to improve the healthy relationships you enjoy already, there are therapies that specialize in healing and improving relationships. Consider:
Marriage and Family Therapy
Gottman Method
Imago Relationship Therapy

Want to examine your subconscious thoughts to help you understand and solve a long-term problem? Sometimes we get stuck in how we approach a problem or have trouble letting go of something that happened long ago. Therapies that take a psychoanalytic approach help you take a deep dive into your subconscious, your childhood, and your past to explore the core issues and ideas that govern your everyday thoughts and beliefs. Consider:
Psychoanalysis
Psychodynamic therapy
Core Process Psychotherapy (CPP)
Jungian Psychoanalysis

Do you have a problem that you want to solve right now? You may have a specific problem that may not require a deep exploration into your background or your subconscious. You may know that you want to get from A to B and just need some assistance on how to get to where you want to be. There are therapies that don’t look at how your problem was created, but instead look at how you can solve your problem with the strengths and resources you currently have. Consider:
Solution-Focused Therapy
Motivation Enhancement Therapy

Struggling with self-criticism and shame? Overwhelmed with a crippling sense of guilt? Can’t seem to shake a low self-esteem or a feeling of unworthiness? You may need therapies that help you to learn how to cultivate self-love and how to be kind to yourself. Consider:
Compassion-focused therapy
Holistic Psychotherapy

This is just a sampling of the type of therapies that are available. Your therapist may even use integrative or eclectic therapy, meaning they use several different therapeutic approaches to help you.