Joanna Szczeskiewicz

I opened Village Centre CBT in 2019 to focus on provision of structured conceptualization-based cognitive behaviour therapy. After over 20 years of hospital based work, I wanted to create a laid back setting that gives me enough time between appointments so that clients are not rushed out of the office when a few more minutes can make significant difference. Typically the first appointment (assessment) is focused on getting as much information as possible about your difficulties and on creating a working model that can help us understand how your various experiences interact to keep you in distress. CBT has been researched extensively leading to development of many disorder specific treatment protocols. CBT for depression can look very different from CBT for panic disorder. This research also uncovered many common factors that maintain our pain, such as overthinking, avoidance, hypervigilance, selective attention and unhelpful thinking habits. Modern CBT always looks at the interaction between triggers, attention, thoughts, emotions and behaviours. It acknowledges the person's life history. In fact, CBT is now an umbrella term that encompasses classic cognitive therapy, exposure based interventions, behaviour modification, acceptance and commitment therapy as well as dialectical behavioural therapy with a sprinkle of mindfulness based intervention to help us build patience and sustain attention. Conceptualization based CBT demands that the interventions that we use match the difficulties that we need to tackle (borrowing from disorder specific protocols) and that these interventions are delivered in a sequence that makes sense (as identified in our working model or conceptualization). That means that we have to pay close attention to your progress and be willing to modify our working model when necessary. Sometimes clients withhold information. For example a person dealing with panic attacks in crowded spaces might leave out their relationship troubles while someone who wants help with depression withholds their painful body image issues. This has negative impact on treatment outcomes. We can proceed slowly, but we need to forge an honest understanding of all of the variables that affect your life. Therapy is difficult no matter how you go about it, so let's do it with full transparency. To that end, you can request a free 15-minute-long video or phone consultation to test if I am a good match to help you with your difficulties.