Individual Therapy

Individual Therapy


Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy, often referred to as “talk therapy,” uses a combination of insight, reflection and analysis to understand, and thereby alleviate, the symptoms of psychological distress.  Successful psychotherapy treatment uses the knowledge gained from past experiences to help resolve present day conflicts.

Although psychotherapy is not specifically used to treat ADD and ADHD, it can help treat many of the side effects – depression, anxiety, interpersonal problems – often associated with ADD and ADHD. In his best-selling book on ADD, “Driven to Distraction,” Dr. Hallowell stresses the importance of the ADD patient “being heard.” At The Hallowell Center, we believe that the treatment of ADD should never overlook the fact that “the patient is a person first, and a person with ADD second.”

While The Hallowell Center is best known for treating ADD and other learning conditions, we are a full service center. We treat a wide range of cognitive and emotional problems including anxiety, depression, hyperactivity, OCD, bipolar disorder, developmental and learning disorders, eating disorders and post-traumatic stress disorders. Psychotherapy plays a critical role in helping resolve these types of problems.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a form of treatment that focuses on symptom resolution using cognitive restructuring to instigate behavioral change. Patients are “coached” into reframing thoughts and redirecting behaviors that impede healthy psychological maturation.  Although there is a natural human tendency to attribute problems and feelings to external elements (like people, situation, events), in fact, it’s more often our internal thoughts that determine how we feel and behave. Changing the way we think can bring about a major shift in how we feel and behave, even if the external situations remain the same.

Unlike traditional psychoanalysis, which can be open-ended, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has a fixed timeline for resolution of a patient’s problem. It is a very collaborative process: the patient shares his/her problems and goals with the therapist, who listens and provides specific insights on how to achieve those goals. Therapists who employ a CBT approach actively engage their patients to participate in their own recovery process by implementing the insights learned within a treatment “action plan.”

At The Hallowell Center, we often incorporate cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to treat ADD. We help patients reframe the condition as something that can be managed by using certain specific behaviors to compensate. The CBT approach is also often used to treat other conditions like depression, anxiety, OCD and eating disorders.