In today’s fast-paced environment, where many individuals are pressured to take on multiple responsibilities, they often find themselves stressed, overwhelmed, and exhausted.

If you are one of them who experiences distress and does not know how to move forward, individual therapy can transform despair into hope.

What is Individual Therapy?

Individual therapy, a term that is more commonly known as counselling, psychotherapy, or simply talk therapy, is a personalised intervention used by mental health professionals to address the unique needs of individuals through setting and achieving goals, managing or reducing symptoms, and teaching coping mechanisms in a one-on-one setting.

It is an approach that helps individuals understand their thoughts, emotions, and behaviours by unravelling the past, staying in the present moment, and preparing for future actions using various therapeutic modalities.

Individual Therapy at Liberty Home

Liberty Home offers a wide range of therapeutic modalities to help individuals break free from addiction and other mental health issues, including individual therapy, which is incorporated into our various programmes.

Liberty Home Clinic

As aforementioned, the short-term effects can have immediate effects, such as high levels of anxiety and coordination problems. Users generally seem calm and relaxed, with a tendency to fall asleep or difficulty staying awake. They may show signs of memory loss, dizziness, and poor reflexes and balance.

Liberty Home Secondary

We also provide a more specialised intervention in our Liberty Home Secondary in Kortrijk, Belgium. Here, we offer two programmes, namely, Reintegration Care and Mindfulness. In Reintegration Care, individuals are trained to equip themselves with coping skills to deal with the stressors of the outside community. Once those skills are achieved, the individual can enter our Mindfulness Programme, where a safe environment promotes recovery, personal growth, and sober habits.

How Does Individual Therapy Work in Treating Addictions and Mental Health Conditions?

Individual therapy is a treatment modality that can be applied to a wide range of conditions. At Liberty Home, we provide individual therapies to help manage the symptoms of the following:

Substance Addictions

Individual therapy is considered an effective treatment for helping individuals with substance addiction. It works by identifying the causes of addiction, what maintains it, and how to prevent relapse by equipping individuals with healthy coping mechanisms. It also provides a nurturing environment where problems can be safely processed.

Mental Health Disorders

One of the gold-standard treatments for various mental health disorders is individual therapy. The primary goal of the therapist is to reduce and manage the symptoms of the individual and improve their daily functioning. This can be done by understanding the individual’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviours and how they affect the present symptoms and distress.

Process Addictions

Individual therapy is also highly effective in managing the symptoms of various process addictions. It works similarly to substance abuse but with a strong emphasis on behavioural modifications and lifestyle changes.

What are the Types of Individual Therapy?

Here at Liberty Home Clinic, our mental health professionals are utilising contemporary psychotherapy or counselling approaches with a long history of high success rates in treating substance and behavioural addictions as well as various mental health conditions.

Narrative Therapy

Each of us has experienced different events and situations in life, and we give meaning to them. In turn, these influence how we see ourselves and perceive the world. Narrative Therapy is one therapeutic approach that focuses on the stories we develop and carry through our lives.

Narrative therapy separates individuals from their problems. This allows them to get some distance from their difficulties so they can deal with them more effectively.

Furthermore, narrative therapy recognises that individuals are experts in their own lives and have innate skills that can help them change. It does not seek to transform the individual; instead, it aims to transform the effects of a problem.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

The way we think influences how we feel and what we do. Hence, therapists often attempt to change the negative thought patterns that cause and maintain the problem. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), a type of individual talk therapy, works exactly like that.

CBT is a form of therapy that is considered a goal-driven approach that explores the connection among our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. The primary goal of the therapist is to identify irrational thoughts and challenge them so the individual can modify or replace them with a healthier one.

As a highly structured intervention, CBT therapists may use various tools, such as psychoeducation, thought recording or journaling, cognitive restructuring, exposure therapy, stress inoculation training, and behavioural techniques, including experiments, activity scheduling, and relaxation.

Here at Liberty Home Clinic, CBT is used to treat individuals with substance use disorders (SUD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and other severe mental illnesses.

Dialectical Behavioural Therapy

Dialectic Behavioural Therapy (DBT) is a variant of CBT that integrates mindfulness principles. These principles empower individuals to be aware of their thoughts, emotions, behaviours, and sensations. DBT strongly emphasises the individual’s capacity to hold onto seemingly contradictory truths about the need for both acceptance and change.

Many therapists prefer DBT because of its strong educational components, which are designed to teach individuals various skills in managing intense emotions, improving interpersonal relationships, and coping with destructive and impulsive behaviours. These skills can be learned through DBT’s four core modules: mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness.

While DBT was specifically designed for individuals who are struggling with BPD, it can also be used to treat conditions such as SUD, self-harm and suicidal behaviours, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), eating disorders, depression, and anxiety.

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing

Another evidence-based individual therapy approach specifically designed to treat individuals with stress- and trauma-related conditions is Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. The main procedure of this intervention focuses on assisting the individual in recalling traumatic memories. EMDR therapists do not remove the memory but attempt to change how it is stored using bilateral stimulations such as eye movements, auditory cues, and taps. This process allows both hemispheres of the brain to communicate with each other and facilitates the reprocessing of distressing or traumatic memories.

Typically, an EMDR session lasts about 60 to 90 minutes and follows eight phases, namely, history taking, preparation, assessment, desensitisation, installation, body scan, closure, and re-evaluation.

Aside from stress- and trauma-related disorders, this therapy may also be beneficial for individuals with symptoms of anxiety, depression, OCD, chronic pain, SUD, and other distressing life experiences.

Person-Centred Therapy

A specific style of Person-Centered Therapy that we use is Motivational Interviewing (MI). It is an approach that helps individuals commit to the difficult process of change. MI helps them to resolve ambivalent feelings towards change and enhance internal motivation for change.

In addition, MI provides an empathic and supportive atmosphere where individuals can safely talk about their motivation to change and their commitment to it. Typically, individuals who undergo MI follow stages from having no intention of changing (pre-contemplation) up to making the actual changes (action) and preventing relapses (maintenance). Here at Liberty Home Clinic, our professionals utilise this approach specifically for individuals with SUD and process addictions.

What are the Benefits of Individual Therapy Sessions?

Individual therapy comes with many benefits for individuals with substance and process addictions as well as mental health conditions. Some of them include:

Personalised Treatment Plan: In a one-on-one therapy session, the therapist can focus entirely on the individual’s unique needs and preferences.
Confidentiality: Since the sessions are private, individual therapy allows the individual to share openly without fear or discomfort. This could also build more trust between the individual and the therapist.
Convenience: As compared to having a large group of participants in a therapy session, individual therapy may offer a more flexible schedule without needing to consider the availability of other participants.
More Insights and
Self-Awareness: Individual therapy can help individuals focus on gaining a deeper understanding of themselves, their behaviours, and their emotions. This increased self-awareness leads to more insights and personal growth.

Find a Therapist

Knowing what individual therapy is, its modalities, and how it works is essential to accelerating treatment outcomes and improving overall commitment to therapy sessions.

If you are ready to take the first step and begin your individual therapy journey, do not hesitate to message us. Our dedicated therapists are more than willing to provide quality care to help you regain your wellness.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Individual Therapy a Type of Psychotherapy?

Yes, individual therapy is a type of therapy where a trained professional helps a single individual identify problems and set goals to be achieved throughout the therapeutic process.

What's the Difference Between Group Therapy and Individual Therapy?

Individual psychotherapy is an intervention provided on a one-on-one basis. On the other hand, Group Therapy involves a group of individuals who are all treated at the same time by one or multiple therapists.

Are Liberty Home Staff Qualified Mental Health Therapists?

All our Mental Health Therapists are certified and qualified to provide psychotherapies. They also underwent a series of training sessions to keep them abreast of the current trends in the field.