While ‘traditional’ CBT also emphasizes the importance of Testing or gathering data to assess clients’ difficulties before treatment starts, as well as to evaluate progress, TEAM-CBT goes the extra length by ensuring that every therapy session that you attend is beneficial to you by briefly assessing your emotional state, before and after each appointment. This helps to promptly identify ways to personalize your therapy course so that it adequately meets your needs.

The after session survey will also allow you to assess me as your therapist according to different important criteria such as how warm, trustworthy, caring, respectful I was, and whether I did a good job of listening and understanding how you felt inside. While this may feel nerve-racking at first (I’ve been there when I had to evaluate my own therapist), your honest feedback is invaluable since your perceptions and feelings are what truly determine whether I am successfully creating a safe space for you.  Moreover, I will check in with you during our sessions as well, to ask about your level of comfort, and whether you are feeling heard, seen and understood. I will also strive to help you feel as comfortable as possible to discuss any score which is less than perfect (as you deserve to feel perfectly safe), so I may course-correct as needed. 

We will also start the therapy process with an informal assessment which will consist of gathering information about your current struggles, your personal history, your identities, relationships and goals, in a supportive environment and give us the solid foundation we need for the rest of our work together. 

As illustrated in the ‘testing’ section, TEAM-CBT places necessary emphasis on Empathy as an essential ingredient to recovery; TEAM-CBT recognizes that helping you effectively starts with having a thorough and genuine understanding of what it’s like to be in your shoes, in order to create an environment that always feels entirely safe and to make therapy a personalized experience that will get you to your goals rapidly (although we can slow down the process if you wish).  

The ‘A’ part of TEAM-CBT, Assessment of motivation, deepens this understanding of what it’s been like to walk in your shoes – by helping to identify the factors that have been contributing to and maintaining your challenges – and increases your motivation to take the steps that will get you to your goals.

In the Methods part of TEAM-CBT, I will choose from over 100 evidence-based methods, to find the one(s) that will be most effective in helping you overcome your challenges. Unlike ‘traditional’ CBT, TEAM-CBT is not limited to the use of CBT techniques but can involve drawing from methods from every existing modality; this helps to ensure that therapy is truly taylored to you.

I personally include techniques from the following modalities as I am trained in them: CBT, ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), PE (Prolonged Exposure therapy), ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention), Mindfulness, Solution-focused therapy, and elements of Somatic work & Psychodynamic therapy. CBT, PE, ERP and Mindfulness, are some of the very few treatment modalities that have strong research support, according to the American Psychological Association. Moreover, I use a version of TEAM-CBT that is Islamically centred for clients who want this type of approach. You may learn more about the latter on my Islamic Psychology page. 

In TEAM-CBT, the philosophy when selecting tools and techniques is ‘failing as fast as we can’; it is the idea that as we take a few minutes to test a method that does not end up working for you, we are getting closer to the one(s) that will get you to that aha-moment. Finding the right method – or combination of methods – for you may take a single to a few sessions, within the ‘M’ phase of therapy.