Mental Health Treatment in Nashville, TN Rooted in Connection

The basic premise of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is that most of the feelings you have that lead you to a state of emotional disturbance are derived primarily from underlying irrational beliefs, rather than the external event you are experiencing. Therefore, REBT is an excellent form of therapy for perfectionistic individuals whose unrealistic self-expectations cause them to experience depression, for individuals with anxiety disorders who engage in catastrophic thinking about everything occurring in their lives, and for individuals who are unable to maintain healthy relationships due to their rigid beliefs regarding how things in life should be.

Through REBT, patients learn both philosophical and practical tools for living what REBT founder Albert Ellis termed “rationally”—understanding how flexible you can be in accepting yourself and others, and developing increased tolerance for frustration. The skills you learn through REBT become resources that you can rely on for maintaining your emotional health long after you complete treatment.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a significant shift in focus from treating mental illness by seeking to eliminate or control internal emotional experiences perceived as negative, to changing how you view—and the relationship you have—with your negative internal experiences. Rather than treating negative emotional experiences as issues that need to be solved, ACT teaches that discomfort is a normal part of the human experience. Further, trying to eliminate or control discomfort often creates even more psychological suffering than the discomfort itself generates.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps you understand the relationship between your situation and the thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and behaviors that are related to your psychological distress. CBT includes examining with your therapist the evidence that supports and contradicts your negative thoughts, creating options for alternate interpretations, and trying out alternate behaviors through behavioral experiments. Different types of CBT techniques are used to address the unique characteristics of an individual’s condition, such as behavioral activation for depression, constructing hierarchies of exposure for anxiety and phobias, thought records for challenging negative thoughts, and developing problem-solving skills in relation to difficulties with daily life. CBT offers a structured treatment protocol that can result in measurable progress using evidence-based techniques and allows you to learn to apply the techniques independently.

Experiential therapy is different than cognitive therapy because it provides opportunities for emotional awareness and increased personal growth through hands-on activities. At Epiphany Wellness in Tennessee, our experiential methods include our unique equine therapy program that uses horses to help you gain awareness of your emotions, build trust in others, and provide you with honest feedback regarding where you are emotionally.

We have a number of tools available to engage you emotionally, including art therapy, drum circles, and many other hands-on activities that utilize the mind, body, and emotions simultaneously. For those who are very analytical or spend most of their time “in their heads,” for the survivors of trauma who have become disconnected from their bodies and emotions, and for people who find that traditional talk therapy does not meet their needs, experiential modalities can produce some of the most profound moments of insight and emotional release and can assist in stimulating inner change when talk therapy alone would not.

Through psychoeducation (building knowledge) and the resulting empowerment it brings, individuals can successfully recover from the effects of mental health conditions. Psychoeducation provides education to help eliminate feelings of shame regarding your symptoms and help you normalize your experience and understand the processes that are taking place in your life. Psychoeducation helps you realize that your symptoms are not a result of a personal weakness or character flaw, but rather that mental health conditions are legitimate medical conditions. Psychoeducation also provides the individual with tools to identify the unique characteristics of the symptoms and triggers of their own symptoms, develop tailored plans to prevent relapse, successfully manage the effects of lifestyle factors such as poor sleeping patterns, poor nutrition, and lack of exercise on their mental health, and develop and maintain a daily lifestyle structure and routine that will continue to support them while they recover.

EMDR involves identifying target memories, activating them through focused attention while simultaneously engaging in bilateral stimulation through guided eye movements, and allowing your brain’s natural information processing system to integrate the memories more adaptively. This approach can rapidly reduce symptoms like intrusive memories, nightmares, emotional reactivity, and avoidance behaviors associated with trauma. EMDR proves effective not only for PTSD from major traumas but also for processing more minor traumas and adverse experiences that contribute to current mental health symptoms. If unprocessed traumatic memories contribute to your depression, anxiety, or other psychiatric symptoms, EMDR may provide breakthrough relief.

Psychodrama is an experiential method of using the action or enactment of a script (or story) to assist individuals in exploring their feelings, emotions, relationships, and inner conflicts through action rather than words alone. At Epiphany Wellness in Tennessee, psychodrama allows the client to recreate and act out their significant life experiences, explore multiple ways of reacting to challenging situations, express emotion through their body to create a powerful moving experience, and to allow for insight into issues and situations that have been recurring in their life. Psychodrama is highly active and highly experiential and often involves accessing emotional states and insight that would never be possible through traditional verbal therapies alone. The dramatic enactments often create deep emotional involvement and long-term insights that facilitate psychological change and integration.

Family therapy sessions provide a safe and supportive environment to work through and discuss topics that may be difficult to express, to address past hurts, and to initiate the repair of the relationships you are trying to rebuild. Our therapists will work with family members to help them understand how they can support your mental and emotional recovery without enabling problematic behaviors, and to empower them to meet their own needs as well. Our therapists acknowledge the fact that the quality of a family’s relationships can greatly affect the mental and emotional recovery and growth of every family member, which is why we incorporate supportive family members into your treatment to help increase the likelihood of positive treatment outcomes.