Diego Raya

Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy (CBT)

This therapy focuses on exploring the patterns of emotions, thoughts and behaviors that maintain maladaptive behaviors as well as different psychological and emotional problems.

Through a collaborative and goal-oriented approach, I will help you learn new functional patterns and achieve positive changes in your life. There is empirical evidence that this therapy is effective in treating a variety of problems, including depression, anxiety, and personality disorders.

We will talk about your thoughts and feelings as well as the things that worry you. As you progress in the therapeutic process, I may ask you to do homework during the week (activities, readings or practices to further develop what you learn during your sessions) and encourage you to apply what you learn in your daily life.

This therapy commonly includes the following steps:

  • To identify problems or disorders. We may spend some time together deciding what problems and goals you want to focus on.
  • To pay attention to your thoughts, emotions and opinions in relation to these problems. To do this, you may need to observe what you tell yourself about an experience (self-talk), your interpretation of the meaning of a situation, and your opinion of yourself, other people, and events. I may suggest that you keep a diary of your thoughts.
  • To identify negative or unhelpful thoughts. To help you rationalise patterns of thoughts and behaviors that may be contributing to your problems, I may ask you to pay attention to your physical, emotional, and behavioral responses in various situations.
  • To rationalise negative or unhelpful thoughts. It will most likely encourage you to question whether your opinion about a situation is based on facts or an inaccurate perception of what is happening. This step can be complicated. You may have ways of thinking about your life and yourself that have been ingrained for a long time. With practice, useful and realistic thinking patterns and behaviors will become a habit and you won’t have to work as hard to achieve them.

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT)

IPT has been scientifically proven to be an effective therapy, especially for depression. The underlying belief of this therapy is that psychological symptoms (such as depression) are often a response to difficulties we have due to difficulties in interaction with others. In turn, these symptoms can then affect the quality of these interactions, causing a vicious cycle. The hypothesis behind this therapy is that once a person is able to interact more effectively and healthy with those around them, psychological symptoms will improve.

Skills and techniques overed:

  • Emotion Identification: For some of us, accurately identifying the emotion we are feeling at any given moment can be difficult. I will help you identify emotions from an unbiased perspective.
  • Expression of emotion: This involves helping you express your emotions in a healthier way.
  • To deal with problems from the past – Sometimes the relationships you had in the past can affect how you interact in the present. Part of the therapy involves looking into your past to see if any
  • unhelpful patterns have formed.
    Analysis of relationship patterns: The way a person interacts with others is examined and dysfunctional relationship patterns that may be contributing to problems are identified.
  • Conflict Resolution: Conflict resolution skills are taught to improve relationships and decrease interpersonal tension.
  • Effective communication techniques: effective communication skills are taught to improve the quality of interpersonal relationships.
  • Role-playing: Role-playing exercises can be used to practice communication and conflict resolution skills in a safe environment.
  • Interpersonal conflicts: Conflicts can appear in a wide variety of environments, including family, social, marital, school, workplace, etc. They normally arise from the different expectations of a certain situation. If these types of conflicts cause significant distress, they are worth exploring.
  • Role transitions: This refers to a change in personal circumstances, for example falling ill, a change of job or being unemployed, a change in marital status or a life event that requires adaptation. These changes can be experienced as losses, leading to depression or anxiety. In therapy I will help you use tools to help you navigate the transition into a new reality in a healthy way.
  • Grief process: When someone close dies, feelings of pain and loss are completely natural. If the pain remains, or is considered to last beyond the «normal» time for grieving, it may be something that can be addressed during therapy. I will help you process grief in a healthy way.
  • Interpersonal deficits: This category includes experiencing long lasting difficulties with forming and maintaining close and quality relationships. IPT can help identify these deficits and offer solutions, such as tools to develop quality friendships or/and set limits on toxic relationships.