WHAT IS HUMAN GIVENS PSYCHOTHERAPY?
"... three out of four clients achieve significant improvement or cure, usually in between one and six sessions" (1)
Human Givens Psychotherapy is a brief, solution-focused approach, which helps clients feel better and move on in their lives as quickly as possible. At its heart is the understanding that, when a human being’s essential emotional needs are met and their innate mental resources are being used correctly, they will be emotionally and mentally healthy.
When our emotional needs are not being adequately met, or are being met in unhealthy ways; or when innate resources are damaged for any reason, or are unintentionally misused, we are at risk of developing undesirable mental states such as anxiety, anger, depression, addiction and psychosis.
What makes the human givens approach different from other therapy approaches is that therapists look to see what is missing, or being misused, in clients’ lives, with the aim of helping them find ways to better meet their needs.
To do this – and to help with any other presenting problem – human givens therapists draw from a variety of tried and tested therapeutic methods (such as cognitive therapy, behavioural therapy, interpersonal therapy, solution focused approaches, motivational interviewing, reflective listening and hypnotherapy) as well as the latest neuroscientific findings and new insights derived from the HG approach which increase our knowledge of what it means to be human and our understanding of what people need to maintain emotional wellbeing.
It is a practical, forward-focused approach, which concentrates on mastery of skills and understandings that people can use in the future to move on in their lives, rather than concentrating on, and being stuck in, what went wrong in the past. This is the case even if people have suffered horrific traumatising events and are suffering from flashbacks and/or PTSD – all human givens therapists are taught a safe and reliably effective, evidence-based method for detraumatising people, which in most cases works in one session.
Instead of being reliant on one ‘model’ of therapy, the human givens approach is fluid and flexible, making use of whatever techniques and approaches will best suit the particular client being worked with, and all within the guiding framework of helping clients meet missing emotional needs and use innate mental resources in the healthiest ways possible.
The success of this fluidity of approach is evidenced by research findings that show it helps an unprecedented three out of four clients achieve significant improvement or cure, usually in between one and six sessions.
Clients also leave therapy with greater resilience against future setbacks, as they have increased understanding of what they need to maintain their emotional health and practical ways in which to do so.
Excerpt taken from https://www.hgi.org.uk/
1. Andrews, W P, Wislocki, A P, Short, F, Chow, D and Minami, T (2013). A 5-year evaluation of human givens therapy using a practice research network. Mental Health Review Journal, 18, 3, 165–76.