How Long is This Gonna Take?
Begin with the end in mind -Unknown Some people want therapy indefinitely and think of it as mental hygiene. Others …
I'm sometimes asked if I offer the latest trendy therapy styles.
Short answer: Probably not.
Longer answer: Research consistently shows that psychotherapy is effective overall, but there isn’t strong evidence that one specific type of therapy is vastly superior to another. This might surprise you, especially if you’ve heard claims like “CBT is evidence-based” or “EMDR is good for trauma.” While these statements are true, the research often compares these therapies to no therapy at all. In such studies, people who receive the branded therapy only fare better than those on a waitlist with no therapy.
Few studies directly compare different therapies, and the results rarely indicate a clear winner. This applies to CBT as well, often dubbed the “gold standard” simply because it has been widely tested and typically performs well against no treatment.
Here’s a common cycle in the therapy marketplace:
- Someone repackages existing ideas into a Branded Therapy.
- It gets hyped as groundbreaking. Clients in pain seek it out, believing in its promised results.
- Therapists train in response to this demand, often paying thousands for certification from the therapy’s creator.
- Researchers, often the therapy’s creators, conduct studies comparing the Branded Therapy to waitlist conditions, finding it effective—just like other therapies.
The catch is in step 3. Expensive certifications can cost thousands, yet they often just repackage well-known techniques. For instance, EMDR largely combines “imaginal exposure” with a standard tri-phasic treatment model (stabilization, reprocessing through exposure, and reintegration). It’s effective, but not necessarily more so than other forms of exposure therapy.
To maintain our licenses, therapists must continuously learn and stay current with the latest research and practices. I stay updated by regularly reading and integrating the latest developments into my practice, without necessarily getting certified in every new Branded Therapy.
For more on my therapy approach, check out What Type of Therapy Do You Do?
