03Approaches
Method matters, but a list of acronyms is not the same as a method
Directories often present therapeutic approaches as a menu to choose from. In practice, what shapes a course of work is the training a particular clinician actually holds and how they use it with you.
Why no list of acronyms
We name a therapeutic approach only where the clinician offering it has completed the training that entitles them to say so.
There is a habit in this field of listing every recognised approach on a practice website, because each name is something people search for. It gives an impression of breadth that a real team rarely has, and it tells you nothing about who you would actually be sitting with.
So the approaches published here follow the clinicians, not the other way round. Where a professional's qualifications, supervision and continuing training support a named modality, it appears on their profile with that qualification stated. Where they do not, it is absent, including from search-oriented pages.
This also means we do not describe work as evidence-based, trauma-informed or specialised as a general claim. Those phrases have specific meanings tied to specific training, and using them loosely makes them useless to you as a way of comparing practitioners.
Common ground
What holds across the different ways clinicians here work
- i
- The work is agreed, not administered
- What you are working on, roughly how long it may take and how progress will be reviewed are discussed with you rather than decided for you. You can ask to change direction.
- ii
- Understanding before technique
- Early sessions are used to understand the situation and its context. Techniques, exercises or between-session work are introduced only where a clinician judges them useful and explains why.
- iii
- Confidentiality with stated limits
- What is said in a session stays there, with the narrow exceptions a clinician is professionally or legally required to act on. Those exceptions are explained at the start, not later.
- iv
- An honest view of fit
- If the work is not helping, or another kind of professional would be more appropriate, saying so is part of the job, not a failure of the process.
Questions worth asking
- 01What training do you hold, and with which body are you registered?
- 02How would you describe the way you work, in plain language?
- 03What does a typical course of work with you look like, and how often would we review it?
- 04What happens if I do not feel this is helping?
- 05What are the limits of confidentiality in your practice?
A clinician who cannot answer these questions clearly, or who declines to tell you where they are registered, is telling you something useful. You are entitled to ask them of us, and of anyone else you consider.
How to check registration