No single method fits everyone. I’m trained across the major schools of therapy and use what actually fits you — often a blend. Sessions are interactive. Here’s the toolbox, in plain language.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
What it is: The most-researched modern therapy. CBT works on the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behavior — noticing the automatic thoughts that drive distress, testing them against reality, and building new patterns. Practical, structured, skills-based.
How I use it: For anxiety, depression, and stuck thinking loops — often with between-session practice, because the work that changes your week happens during your week.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
What it is: A skills-focused therapy built on a balance of acceptance and change. Four skill families: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.
How I use it: For big emotions that arrive fast and leave damage — and it’s especially effective with teens, who are often relieved to learn that regulating a feeling is a skill, not a personality trait.
Psychodynamic / Psychoanalytic Therapy
What it is: The depth work. Present-day patterns — who you’re drawn to, what you avoid, the argument you keep having — usually have roots in earlier relationships and experiences. Psychodynamic therapy surfaces those roots so they stop steering from below.
How I use it: When the same problem keeps arriving in different costumes. Insight into the why is what makes the change durable.
Humanistic / Person-Centered Therapy
What it is: Carl Rogers’ legacy: the client is the expert on their own life, and growth happens inside a relationship of genuine, unconditional acceptance. The therapist’s job isn’t to fix you — it’s to provide the conditions in which you un-stick yourself.
How I use it: This is the floor everything else stands on. Whatever tools we pick up, the relationship stays warm, honest, and judgment-free.
Solution-Focused Therapy
What it is: Brief, future-oriented work. Instead of excavating the whole past, it asks: what does better look like, what’s already working even a little, and what’s the smallest next step?
How I use it: When there is a specific decision, transition, or goal — and for clients who want traction fast.
Grief Therapy
What it is: Support through loss — death, divorce, health, a chapter of life, a version of yourself. Grief is not a problem to solve on a schedule; it’s a weight you learn to carry, and it doesn’t follow anyone’s timeline.
How I use it: Making room for the loss to be spoken, keeping the connection to what was lost, and rebuilding a life that holds both the grief and what comes next.
Reality Therapy
What it is: Built on choice theory: nearly everything we do is a choice aimed at meeting a basic need. Reality therapy stays in the present and asks whether what you’re currently doing is actually getting you what you want — and if not, what would.
How I use it: For accountability without shame. It pairs naturally with clients who like directness and want to focus on what is in their control.
Narrative Therapy
What it is: You are not your problem — you are the author of a story that currently features one. Narrative work separates the person from the problem, examines the story you’ve been telling about your life, and re-authors it with you holding the pen.
How I use it: Powerful for identity, self-worth, and clients who’ve been handed a story about themselves by someone else.
Gottman Method (Couples)
What it is: The research heavyweight of couples work — built on decades of studying what actually predicts whether relationships last. It maps a couple’s conflict patterns, friendship, trust, and repair attempts, then trains the specific skills their pattern needs.
How I use it: As a backbone for couples work — see the Couples Therapy page.
Ready to find the right tools? Call or text (559) 777-SELF (7353) · lisa@ruscatherapy.com · Client Portal