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Early Childhood
Parent-Child Interaction Therapy
Parent-Child Interaction Therapy is a play-based therapy designed to address challenging behaviors and emotions in children between the ages of 2-7 years old. Its unique live-coaching model allows for the provider to see exactly what families see at home and provide feedback and support in the moment. There are several adaptations of PCIT to support various presentations in early childhood, including anxiety, selective mutism, mood-related concerns, and emotion guidance. The GUIDE Group is ready to support families with these concerns and more.
Children this age are still learning about themselves and the world around them. In order for treatment to be most effective for them and your family, caregivers engagement in treatment is essential, whether in family therapy, such as PCIT and its adaptations or in caregiver coaching only.
Caregiver Coaching with Family Therapy
Middle Childhood
Caregiver Coaching
Children do not learn about their emotions and how to manage them on their own. Caregiver involvement is essential to the success of treatment outcome for this age group. Caregivers learn to notice their own emotions, how they react and respond to their child's emotions, and how to regulate effectively in order to support their child's use of their own skills through modeling and emotion guidance. Caregiver's support assists in showing children that they are not a "problem to be fixed" and that you are working as a team to learn new and useful ways to interact and engage together in a way that feels right and meaningful to your family. Visit Caregiver Guidance and Support for more information.
In addition to learning skills to learn about how to identify and understand their emotions, children in this age group may benefit from additional skills to manage stickier emotions and thoughts. ACT for children can be useful for children who get really stuck in their difficult thoughts and emotions and for whom changing the way they think about their thoughts through restructuring and reframing may be less effective or helpful. ACT works to help children learn about what is important to them in order to identify small, manageable, and behavioral steps towards who they are and want to be. ACT introduces new ways to experience and relate to thoughts, feelings, and the situations in which they occur that feels compassionate and validating.
ACT for Children
DBT-Informed Treatment for Children
DBT-informed treatment for children may benefit children who are more sensitive to their physical feelings and related emotions that can result in big behaviors that are hard for them to feel in control of. DBT-informed treatment for children can build skills to learn to be present-minded, build skills to tolerate big and uncomfortable emotions, while effectively regulating their emotions in order to feel more connected to themselves and others.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps children to build awareness of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as well as how they are interrelated. As children become more aware of their internal experiences and how they relate to their behaviors, the more they are able to identify thoughts and actions that are unhelpful and helpful. CBT teaches children specific skills to restructure and reframe thoughts, problem solve more effectively, and engage in more behaviors that build their sense of self-efficacy to independently manage challenging experiences.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Children
Unified Protocol for Children
The Unified Protocol for Children is intended to support children between the ages of 8-12 to learn about their own emotions and begin to build an awareness around what those emotions are telling them and how to effectively respond to and manage them. Middle childhood is a time of several developmental changes in social-emotional learning and experiences, so it can be a challenging time to navigate the thoughts and feelings related to those experiences. This protocol incorporates strategies from various evidence-based treatments to help children in this age group improve their ability to notice their thoughts and feelings and engage in helpful actions towards who they are and who they want to be.
Adolescents & Adults
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an evidence-based treatment to increase meaningful engagement in one's life through increasing openness, curiosity, and discovery. In ACT, you will learn more about what is important to you, where you are getting stuck or repeating unhelpful patterns of behavior, and identify ways to become more present and active in your own life. Through experiential practices and increasing awareness of how to reconnect with the present, you will learn to notice when you are moving away from the life you want to live and make the choice to give yourself space to move forward.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on building strategies to identify and understand thoughts and feelings that lead to unhelpful behaviors. Learning about how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are interrelated is a key aspect of CBT. CBT builds awareness of the common pitfalls we all engage in so that you are able to learn to notice emotions and thoughts in the moment in order to effectively manage them in the moment. CBT includes specific skills to restructure and reframe thoughts in order to engage in more helpful behaviors that lead to more pleasant experiences and connections with yourself, others, and your world.
Dialectical Behavior-Informed Therapy (DBT-Informed) is intended to increase adolescents' and adults' ability to become mindfully aware of their emotions, connect how their emotions and the situation makes sense, and engage in values-consistent actions. This includes learning skills for mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal relationships.
Dialectical Behavior-Informed Therapy
Additional Services
Exposure and Response Prevention
Exposure and Response Prevention (ExRP) is the primary recommendation to increase approach to anxiety-provoking stimuli and/or situations. The GUIDE Group works with the individual to meet them "where they're at" and support continued and gradual moves towards stimuli and situations that evoke strong emotional experiences. Exposures work best from a "team" approach between the provider and an individual who is willing and able to engage fully in the practices. ExRP is often used in conjunction with other services to increase connection to a values-consistent and meaningful life.
Habit Reversal Training (HRT) is a treatment approach for tics, hair pulling, and skin picking. It is geared towards increasing awareness of the identified, unhelpful urges and actions in order to make the choice to actively and purposefully engage in a more helpful and preferred response.
Habit Reversal Training
School Consultation
Emotions and behaviors don't just occur at home or with the family. It can be stressful and challenging when your child is having difficulty at school, with peers, and/or with teachers. A big part of your child or teen's success may be through consultation with their school to introduce and support teachers and staff in identifying emotions in order to implement useful skills to support effective regulation in the moment. In addition to direct consultation with teachers and staff, The GUIDE Group also supports children and their families in Individualized Education Program meetings to ensure your child's needs are represented.
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