Here at White Horse Psychology, we offer a variety of evidence-based psychological approaches which are tailored to your needs to help with a range of different difficulties. It is not unusual to work with more than one therapy model at the same time in order to deliver a more tailored, individual approach.
White Horse Psychology is not a diagnostic service which means that your assessment will not result in you being given a ‘label’ or diagnosed with a ‘disorder’. Instead, we subscribe to a “formulation driven” approach. A psychological formulation is a way to make sense of the how and why a person has come to experience distress and the things that might keep them feeling stuck in the here and now. Each formulation is unique and is co-created by the client and therapist.
A formulation is not fixed or static and changes as our understanding of your experiences and the things that do and do not help develops over the course of therapy. The formulation acts a bit like a map for the therapy and helps us to think about which psychological approaches might be most suitable based on what you hope to get from therapy.
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an evidence-based psychotherapy designed to help people recover from problems triggered by traumatic events. EMDR is most well-known for treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) but can also help with a range of mental health conditions. EMDR aims to help process or ‘digest’ stuck traumatic experiences which may be caused by a one-off trauma or an accumulation of many difficult experiences across the lifespan. EMDR is recognised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a family of talking therapies, all based on the idea that thoughts, emotions, behaviour and how our bodies feel, are all connected. If we make changes to one of these areas, we can alter all the others. CBT works to help us notice and change problematic thinking styles or behaviour patterns. CBT is a collaborative therapy – it’s not something that is done to someone, it’s a way of working together on mutually agreed goals. CBT is an evidence-based treatment recommended by The National Institute of Clinical Excellent (NICE) for many difficulties.
Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) is a type of psychological therapy which integrates techniques from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with concepts from Evolutionary Psychology, Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Buddhist Psychology, and Neuroscience. CFT can be especially helpful for people who experience high levels of shame and self-criticism. CFT helps people to build or strengthen the part of their emotional regulation system that evolved to help us to soothe ourselves and thus develop a more compassionate relationship with ourselves.
Narrative therapy is a respectful, non-blaming approach, which centres people as the experts in their own lives. Narrative therapy separates people from their problems and assumes people have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments, and abilities that will assist them to reduce the influence of problems in their lives. Narrative therapy does not seek to transform the person in therapy, instead, it aims to transform the effects of a problem. Its goal is to make space between a person and their issue to make it more possible to see how a certain concern is serving a person, rather than harming them.
We also integrate a variety of trauma and attachment focused interventions within our work including Internal Family Systems (IFS), Ego State Therapy and other somatic and body orientated approaches.
Generally, the therapy journey begins with an initial appointment (assessment) where your therapist will ask you a series of questions about your life (present and past) to gain a better understanding of you as a person in your life context. This information will help us to develop a ‘formulation’ which is a way of making sense of what is going on for you now and to plan suitable interventions to help you to move forward.
Part of this process will involve identifying a goal / focus for psychological therapy so that you and your therapist can agree on what aspects of your life you would like support with and begin to explore how change might be possible. Your therapist will explain different options and therapy approaches they may be able to adopt and you will make a joint decision about how to best proceed.
Following the first appointment, your therapist will agree with you on an approximate number of sessions they may be able to offer before setting a review point. At this stage, the therapy will either continue if you can identify a need for further sessions, or you may decide that the work completed is sufficient and agree on a plan for ending the therapy journey.
6A London Road,
Marlborough,
Wiltshire,
SN8 1PH
