The current trend for psychologists Sydney is an additional 2 years Masters degree. Many psychologists these days also have doctorates in psychology. Specialist degrees also exist, along with specialist registration. That is, according to the registration body AHPRA you can be specialised in a number of fields such as clinical psychology, neuropsychology, organisational psychology etc. There are many different types of therapies available.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a relatively short term therapy for the treatment of many types of emotional problems and disorders. It helps individuals to identify unhelpful thoughts and behaviours and learn more helpful skills and ways of addressing issues through addressing the core thoughts underlying these issues. This type of therapy has been researched extensively and has excellent scientific validity. In Sydney and in fact across Australia, another newer therapy is making huge headways in the field of psychology. This therapy is called ACT therapy, and stands for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. It gets its name from one of its core underpinnings: accept what is out of your personal control, and commit to action that improves and enriches your life. The aim of ACT is to maximise human potential for a rich, full and meaningful life. It teaches patients psychological skills to deal with painful thoughts and feelings in such a way that they less impact and influence.
It relies heavily upon mindfulness skills. It helps people clarify what is truly important and meaningful and then use that knowledge to guide, inspire and motivate change in one's life. Psychologists Sydney are tending to use ACT therapy for patients who have difficulties with the processes behind CBT and struggle to either identify their unhelpful thought processes or dispute these thoughts effectively. Many patients get so stuck up in their thoughts they stop living their lives. ACT therapy differs in that rather than analysing thought it simply lets the thoughts be. That is, it has us accept and acknowledge our thoughts, but not 'buy into them' or necessarily believe them to be true. The metaphor often given is that we should imagine that we are driving a bus heading in the direction of the life we want to live. Along the route we pick up various passengers.
Passengers represent our thoughts and emotions. Some of the passengers are very pleasant. It's great to have them along. Many are pretty neutral. But some passengers make us feel terrible, they call out horrible things to us and scream out many negative messages. Normally when we listen to our thoughts and dwell on them we stop our bus and stop heading towards our goals. The aim in ACT therapy is to learn how to keep on driving the bus and 'tune out' the passengers so that we are still headed towards our goals and living a meaningful life. We won't be able to shut out the negative voices completely, but we can recognise that we don't need to listen to them or buy into their stories. Note: Much of this information was taken from the Sydney Cognitive Development Centre Website: www.scdcentre.com.au.
Author Resource:
Frank George is an experienced content writer. He has written several articles on ADHD assessment and Child psychologist .
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