Therapy Terms
Therapy has its own vocabulary, and a lot of it shows up in workbooks, intake forms, and sessions without much explanation. This category decodes the techniques and modalities, so you know what a clinician means when they name the approach they're using. It covers what each approach actually is, what it looks like in practice, and what the evidence says it helps. Knowing the language makes therapy easier to follow and easier to ask good questions about. The right approach often depends on the condition, so these entries point you toward when each one tends to be used.
24 terms
Download the Therapy Terms cheat sheet (PDF)All therapy terms terms
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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, is a type of talk therapy that teaches people to accept difficult thoughts and feelings while committing to actions that match their values.
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Behavioral Activation
Behavioral activation is a therapy approach that helps people gradually add rewarding and meaningful activities back into their lives to counter the withdrawal and inactivity that come with depression.
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CBT
CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy. It's a structured, evidence-based form of psychotherapy that helps people identify and change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors that maintain distress.
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Cognitive Restructuring
Cognitive restructuring is a core CBT skill for spotting distorted or unhelpful thoughts and reshaping them into more balanced, realistic ones.
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Couples Therapy
Couples therapy is counseling for two partners working on their relationship together. It helps them understand recurring conflicts, communicate better, and decide how they want to move forward.
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DBT
DBT stands for dialectical behavior therapy. It's a structured talk therapy that teaches skills for managing intense emotions, tolerating distress, staying present, and improving relationships.
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Distress tolerance
Distress tolerance is a set of DBT skills for getting through intense emotional pain without making things worse. It's about surviving a crisis, not solving it in the moment.
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EMDR
EMDR, short for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a trauma-focused therapy that uses guided eye movements or other rhythmic cues while a person recalls distressing memories.
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Exposure and Response Prevention
Exposure and Response Prevention, or ERP, is the gold-standard therapy for OCD. People face what triggers their anxiety while resisting the compulsion they'd normally do to feel relief.
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Exposure Therapy
Exposure therapy is a structured form of cognitive behavioral therapy where a person gradually and repeatedly faces feared situations, objects, or thoughts so the fear response can fade over time.
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Family Therapy
Family therapy is a form of counseling that treats relationships and patterns within a family rather than one person alone. It helps families communicate better and support a member who's struggling.
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Grounding techniques
Grounding techniques are simple coping skills that use the senses and the present moment to pull you out of overwhelming anxiety, dissociation, or flashbacks and back into the here and now.
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Group Therapy
Group therapy is treatment delivered to several people at once with a trained therapist. Members work on shared goals while learning from each other's experiences.
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Internal Family Systems
Internal Family Systems is a therapy approach that treats the mind as made up of distinct inner parts, each with its own role. It helps a person relate to those parts from a calm, compassionate core self.
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Interpersonal Therapy
Interpersonal therapy (IPT) is a structured, time-limited talk therapy. It focuses on relationships and life changes, and it has strong evidence for treating depression.
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Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) blends ideas from CBT with mindfulness practice. It has good evidence for helping prevent depression from coming back in people who've had repeated episodes.
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Motivational Interviewing
Motivational interviewing is a collaborative counseling style that helps a person find and strengthen their own reasons for change. It's widely used in substance use treatment and other areas where ambivalence gets in the way.
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Psychodynamic Therapy
Psychodynamic therapy is an insight-oriented talk therapy. It explores how past relationships and out-of-awareness feelings shape current patterns, with the goal of understanding yourself more deeply.
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Psychoeducation
Psychoeducation is teaching people and their families about a mental health condition and its treatment. It's a standard part of care that helps people understand what they're dealing with and how to manage it.
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Radical acceptance
Radical acceptance is a DBT skill for fully accepting reality as it is, including painful situations you can't change, so you stop adding suffering to pain. Accepting isn't approving.
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Schema Therapy
Schema therapy is a longer-term approach that targets deep, self-defeating life patterns formed early in life. It blends cognitive, emotional, and relationship-based techniques to change those patterns.
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Supportive Therapy
Supportive therapy is a practical, encouraging form of talk therapy that helps a person cope with stress and stay steady. It focuses on strengthening what already works rather than digging into the past.
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Therapeutic Alliance
The therapeutic alliance is the trusting, collaborative bond between a person and their therapist. It's one of the strongest predictors of whether therapy helps.
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Transference
Transference is when a person in therapy unconsciously redirects feelings, expectations, or patterns from an important past relationship onto their therapist. It's a normal part of treatment that can become useful material to explore.
Explore another category
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Symptoms
41 termsWhat people feel, notice, or experience that brings them to care.
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Conditions
55 termsDiagnoses, syndromes, and recognized clinical conditions.
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Medications
72 termsDrug classes and specific medications used in psychiatric care.
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Psychiatry Terms
30 termsClinical terms used in psychiatric practice.
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Psychology Terms
28 termsConcepts from psychological science.
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Brain and Body Terms
23 termsNeuroscience, physiology, and the body's role in mental health.
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Everyday Language
29 termsWords people use casually that have specific clinical meanings.
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Research Terms
12 termsWords you'll see in psychiatric research and evidence reviews.
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