Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis, which focuses on unearthing unconscious thoughts and feelings that may be fueling unhealthy behaviors. This can require deep exploration and is often a long-term commitment for patients.

Behavioral therapy aims to improve behaviors by teaching people how to overcome triggers. It uses concepts like classical conditioning, which involves associating an undesirable stimulus with something unpleasant, to help change behavior.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a short-term treatment approach that focuses on changing your unhelpful thought patterns. It’s based on the idea that your thoughts, emotions and behaviors are connected. CBT therapists help you notice and recognize negative or unhelpful patterns, and then teach you how to change them.

In this type of therapy, a therapist can identify specific types of ‘thinking errors’ that contribute to feelings like anxiety or depression. By correcting these faulty beliefs, your therapist can interrupt the self-defeating cycle of thinking, emotion and behavior.

While a variety of therapists can provide cognitive behavioral therapy, it’s best to find someone who specializes in treating your emotional or mental health challenges. Ask for a referral from your physician or contact the mental health association in your state to locate a therapist who specializes in your disorder.

Rational Emotive Therapy (RET)

Developed before positive psychology appeared on the scene, this therapy uses techniques similar to those of CBT. It focuses on identifying and challenging irrational thoughts, helping patients learn healthier coping strategies.

According to Albert Ellis, human beings are affected by irrational beliefs that produce emotional distress. He observed that current therapies didn’t focus on the role that thinking plays in a person’s behavior and emotions.

Therapists use a variety of tools and exercises to help clients identify self-defeating thoughts and feelings, challenge their nature and replace them with more productive beliefs. The therapist may also give them homework to do between sessions. Disputing is a technique used to counter negative thought patterns by providing evidence that the irrational belief is false. This helps people learn to manage their emotions and create more fulfilling lives.

Exposure Therapy

Exposure therapy is a technique that helps you confront your fears and learn to manage them. It is a common treatment for anxiety and fear-based conditions such as specific phobias, OCD, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

This type of therapy involves the therapist supporting you to confront your fear or anxiety trigger in a safe, controlled environment. This may involve real life (in vivo) exposure or vividly imagining the fearful object or situation.

The therapist uses techniques such as systematic desensitization to decrease your avoidance of the fear trigger, and gradual or graded exposure to the fearful object or situation. This is also known as the “exposure fear hierarchy.” Other techniques include flooding, which involves intensely exposing you to the trigger and then stopping once your anxiety diminishes.

EMDR

EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) is an effective treatment for trauma and anxiety. During EMDR sessions, your therapist guides you to think about a specific traumatic memory while performing side-to-side eye movements. This is called bilateral stimulation and mimics the REM sleep phase during which you dream.

This process allows the brain to properly process traumatic memories and emotions. It also helps to replace negative beliefs about the traumatic event with healthier ones. For example, a woman who was raped might develop the belief that she was to blame for the attack, even though she knows intellectually that she was not.

Research supports EMDR's effectiveness in treating PTSD. It has also been shown to reduce delusions and improve self-esteem. It can also help with anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions.

Behaviorism

Behavior therapy focuses on changing maladaptive cognitions that can make emotional distress and unhealthy behaviors worse. It's often used to treat anxiety disorders and addictions.

Behavioral therapy techniques like aversion therapy (pairing a pleasant stimulus with something unpleasant) help people overcome addictions. It also helps to improve social skills by teaching them healthier self-talk.

Earlier behavior therapies emphasized Skinnerian or Pavlovian conditioning paradigms. They disdained explanatory references to inner mental or information processing processes, believing that mental life reduces to external environmental contingencies. More recent versions of behavior therapy relax those strictures. However, advocates still refuse to invoke neuroscience in the place of environmental contingencies. This makes them controversial with cognitive scientists who develop intricate internal information processing models of cognition. They're also unpopular with neuroscientists who insist that direct study of brain structures must precede reference to psychological explanations.