All About Pluralistic Therapy and How This Approach is Highly Client Focused

What is Pluralistic Therapy?

Pluralistic therapy is a type of mental health counselling in which you and your therapist work to find which particular approach works best for you and your problems.

In this sense, pluralistic therapy is less fixed than other approaches which seek to use a single model to assist you in overcoming your emotional difficulties.

Because everybody experiences their own lives and problems uniquely, therapy should be as flexible as possible when it comes to providing relief.

As a result, pluralistic therapy actively involves you in deciding which elements of therapy work besy for you.

Therefore, therapy sessions may include elements drawn from a number of different schools of thought which can be used as and when you and your therapist feel those approaches are most appropriate.

Joan is our pluralistic therapist here at Lee Psychology.

Therapeutic Equivalence

There is plenty of evidence which suggests that most different types of psychotherapy are largely equivalent in terms of effectiveness.

This research also argues that the relationship between you and your therapist plays a more important role in achieving a good outcome than the type of therapy used.

Pluralistic therapy recognises that a good quality relationship in which you and therapist decide how the therapy ‘plays-out’ is likely to be more effective than the rigid application of a single approach.

What this means is that a pluralistic therapy approach might involve elements drawn from:

• Psychodynamic therapy.
• Cognitive therapy.
• Behavioural therapy.
• Clinical Hypnosis.
• Solutions-focused therapy.
• Person-centred therapy.
• and so on.

This ability to move between different ideas and approaches means that pluralistic therapy can be highly flexible if one approach is not providing you with sufficient relief.

How Long Will it Last?

As with any course of psychotherapy, each person’s needs are going to be different and the length of therapy will vary according to the complexity of your problems and what you want to achieve.

Although it is impossible to be prescriptive about the number of sessions that any client is likely to need, you should can reasonably expect somewhere in the region of 15 to 20 sessions (NICE guidelines tend to advocate for around 20 sessions).

Some clients may gain a sufficient amount of relief after only 7 or 8 sessions whilst others may find more than 20 is needed to feel more resolved.

The key determinant of therapy length in pluralistic therapy is probably gauged by how YOU feel as therapy progresses.

You are, afterall, experts in your own feelings!

The Behaviour Change Framework

All of our pluralistic therapy sessions and programmes use the Behaviour Change Framework (BCF).

This scientifically proven protocol defines the stages of behaviour change that you need to go through in order to achieve long lasting and sustainable change.

The framework provides a roadmap that indicates if more change is required before entering the next phase of mental health therapy.

In this way, we are able to ensure that you get the best possible level of support in overcoming your mental health problems as well preventing early termination of therapy.

You can read more about the Science of Change here.

Arrange a FREE initial consultation

If you’d like to find out more about overcoming mental health problems using pluralistic therapy then why not arrange a free initial consultation with us.

During this consultation we will discuss your particular problems and the potential solutions in a safe and confidential environment without you having to commit to any therapy or counselling going forward.

The consultation lasts around 50 minutes and is a great opportunity to meet our therapists and decide if you would like to proceed with any support.