Modalities of Therapy

Choosing to start therapy is a big decision. Understanding different treatment methods, or therapy modalities, is an important first step toward finding the best fit for your unique mental health needs. Explore this overview of the most common therapy modalities to help you figure out what method is best for you.

A therapy modality is a specific method used by licensed mental health professionals to treat mental health conditions. Because each modality offers a unique approach, different therapies work better for certain conditions or clients. Choosing the right modality is a highly individualized process that depends on your specific mental health needs, treatment goals, and personal preferences. Understanding the differences between the types of modalities can help you make an informed decision about the best therapeutic approach for you.

Many popular therapy modalities fall into the following categories:

While not exhaustive, this list of the most common modalities used by therapists provides an overview of different approaches, techniques, and the specific issues they are best suited to address.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) uses techniques like cognitive defusion to modify how you react to negative thoughts and emotions. ACT, often characterized as a mindfulness-based approach focused on psychological flexibility and emotional openness, integrates aspects of talk-based and somatic therapies.

Rather than avoiding, denying, or struggling with difficult thoughts and emotions, ACT encourages you to accept these feelings as an appropriate response to certain situations. This acceptance helps you to make the necessary commitment to change your attitudes, emotional responses, and behavior. ACT is effective for treating mental and physical conditions, including anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and eating disorders.

Art therapy and expressive therapies can help individuals deepen self-awareness, process trauma, reduce conflict, and develop coping and healing tools through various forms of creative expression, such as music, drawing, painting, writing, and improvisation. Guided by a licensed therapist, you can gain self-insight by uncovering the hidden associations between your creative work and underlying messages, memories, and emotional responses.

When integrated with psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, this approach may benefit individuals with Alzheimer’s, autism, schizophrenia, and developmental conditions. It is commonly used to address issues like self-esteem problems, emotion and impulse regulation, trauma, grief, and anxiety.

A widely accepted form of talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you identify and change negative thought patterns and behaviors to improve your mental health and quality of life. CBT rests on the assumption that your perception of an event or situation shapes your reaction and behavior. CBT encourages awareness of cognitive distortions and unhelpful thought patterns, and equips you to reframe situations using practical, immediately applicable tools and strategies.

Backed by extensive evidence and considered a first-line approach for many mental health disorders, CBT effectively addresses challenges like anger issues, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and relationship problems.

Dialectical behavior therapy combines CBT approaches with mindfulness principles to help you manage intense emotions, strengthen social relationships, and develop coping strategies. Using individual and group training, DBT helps you to understand the complexity and constantly changing nature of everyday life, requiring you to balance opposing and contradictory feelings and engage in a continuous dialogue between self and others.

This modality focuses on building therapeutic skills that promote mindfulness over thoughts and feelings without judgment, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. DBT is an empirically tested treatment for serious psychological conditions such as borderline personality disorder, self-harm, and suicidal ideation.

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT), a form of short-term method based on attachment theory, helps you process and manage your emotions to deepen self-understanding, restore and strengthen connections with others, and develop secure and positive relationships. EFT develops emotional literacy by examining hidden, ignored, or misunderstood emotional feelings and experiences such as fear, shame, anger, rejection, or loneliness to foster self-acceptance, improve communication, and build coping strategies.

Often used to treat couples in dysfunctional relationships, EFT can also benefit individuals and families experiencing emotional isolation, interpersonal conflict, and social disconnection. These situations may give rise to mental health conditions such as trauma, anger, depression, and anxiety.

Primarily used to treat posttraumatic stress disorder and trauma-induced conditions, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR) can reduce the impact of traumatic memories. During EMDR sessions, a therapist guides you through bilateral stimulation, such as following eye movements or responding to taps, while you recall distressing memories. Based on the adaptive information processing model, EMDR allows the brain to reprocess memories so they no longer trigger stress or interfere with everyday life.

Evidence is mixed on whether EMDR offers a more effective approach compared to other modalities, such as CBT, to treat PTSD and other trauma-related conditions. Nevertheless, the American Psychological Association conditionally recommends EMDR as a second-line treatment option for PTSD.

Humanistic therapy rests on the principle that humans are responsible for creating meaningful lives and reaching their fullest potential. This talk therapy approach encourages you to explore feelings, values, and behavior in a supportive and non-judgmental setting. Humanistic therapy can help you become more self-aware and achieve your personal goals.

The humanistic modality integrates several approaches and techniques, including person-centered, gestalt, narrative, and existential therapeutic practices. Particularly beneficial for individuals with low self-esteem, humanistic therapy can be an effective treatment for depression, anxiety, interpersonal or family conflicts, and other conditions that keep people from reaching their potential.

Interpersonal psychotherapy (IP) treats mood disorders, such as depression or anxiety, by examining interpersonal relationships and social interactions, and by providing strategies to improve interpersonal dynamics. Unlike CBT, which emphasizes how previous experiences impact mental health, IP examines how current — not past — relationships contribute to maladaptive feelings and behavior.

This short-term talk therapy approach provides practical strategies, including communication analysis and role-playing, to change negative relationship patterns. IP has effectively addressed issues related to social isolation, unfulfilling relationships, unresolved grief, challenges caused by life transitions such as divorce or retirement, and interpersonal conflicts between family members, friends, and coworkers.

Based on the ideas of psychologist Carl Rogers, person-centered therapy is a humanistic approach to talk therapy that emphasizes each person’s innate capacity for self-awareness and the ability to make positive life changes. Clients take charge of their own therapy and determine the focus of the sessions, with the therapist acting in a limited capacity as facilitator. The client-therapist relationship encourages clients to develop coping skills tailored to their specific mental health issues.

Person-centered therapy, whether applied alone or integrated with other approaches, benefits individuals dealing with depression, anxiety, or grief, as well as other personal challenges such as abuse, family conflicts, breakups, and career setbacks.

Grounded in psychoanalysis theories pioneered by Sigmund Freud, psychodynamic therapy explores how unconscious thoughts and memories, especially those associated with childhood experiences, shape your present relationships and behaviors. In this form of talk therapy, the therapist serves as a collaborative guide, helping you to uncover and process negative feelings and repressed emotions.

Psychodynamic therapy incorporates techniques like free association to uncover unconscious and repressed thoughts. Often used in the treatment of anxiety, depression, and relationship difficulties, other applications for psychodynamic therapy include social isolation, eating disorders, and family conflict resolution.

Somatic experiencing therapy helps individuals release trapped trauma and stress that negatively impact physical health and emotional well-being. This body-centered modality is based on the premise that trauma can disrupt the body’s natural “fight, flight, or freeze” response, trapping and accumulating excess energy in the nervous system. This “stuck” energy is released through stress and anxiety, causing physical and emotional issues.

Evidence shows that somatic experiencing therapy can be effectively used to treat a variety of trauma-related conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorders, sexual or physical abuse, addiction, and eating disorders.