What is ISTDP?

At Mindful Families Australia we offer a range of different experiential therapies to support individuals and families to connect with themselves, others and the world.

One of our offerings at the practice is Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP). Clinical Psychology Registrars Taylor Sweetnam and Erinn Munro-Lee are specialising in this approach.

What is ISTDP?

Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) is a psychodynamic therapy that aims to get to the root cause of a patient’s difficulties. The therapy is evidence-based, emotion-focused, and experiential.

The developers of ISTDP found that the internal experiences and core emotions patients have are often hidden underneath anxiety and defences that interfere with our quality of life, and cause problems within ourselves and our relationships. Our primary aim in therapy is to help you acknowledge, identify, experience, and fully express these emotions.

Defences:

Defences serve to psychologically protect us from emotional discomfort and pain. While these can serve as useful allies, particularly in our childhood, they can become unhelpful and cause suffering later in our lives. They often present in therapy as self-defeating patterns in our thought processes and behaviour. As we are often unaware of these defences, ISTDP treatment seeks to bring these into awareness, and collaboratively consider their cost to you. This awareness allows us the opportunity to consciously decide if we wish to retain them or let them go in order to move towards our goals.

With defences made clear, we can work toward the uncovering and processing of core emotions that have been hidden to this point, with an additional focus on understanding early attachment experiences that have shaped our current challenges, and our unconscious desire to defend against emotions. This process serves to facilitate deep emotional understanding and healing.

Who is ISTDP Indicated for?

ISTDP is an evidence-based therapy, meaning that there is an abundance of research demonstrating its effectiveness in the treatment of a range of psychological challenges. With a focus on overcoming mental health symptoms, ISTDP is suitable for most psychological challenges. This includes (but is not limited to) anxiety, depression, complex trauma, relationship challenges, grief and loss, low self-esteem, personality disorder, and work stress.

ISTDP is useful for patients seeking long-lasting change within themselves, as the focus on root emotional conflicts fosters a deeper and more profound understanding of self.

How long will I be in therapy for?

This is individual and dependent on a vast multitude of factors that we can't know until we are underway within our work together. It will be conditional on individual needs, the nature of the issue, and the pace at which therapy can progress. Therapy is an investment in your long-term mental health and wellbeing.

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Cultivating Compassion: Supporting Ourselves, Our Families, and the World

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The Power of Forgiveness: Exploring the Foundations of Healing