Therapeutic Approaches

CBT is one of the most well-researched talking therapies in the world. It is based on the straightforward idea that the way we think about situations affects how we feel and what we do - and that by examining and shifting unhelpful thought patterns and behaviours, we can bring about meaningful change in how we feel. Sessions are collaborative and practical, with a focus on developing skills that can be used in everyday life. CBT has a strong evidence base for depression, anxiety, OCD, health anxiety, PTSD, and many other difficulties.

ACT is built around the idea that struggling to push away or suppress difficult thoughts and feelings often makes things worse, not better. Rather than trying to eliminate painful inner experiences, ACT helps people develop a different relationship with them - one where thoughts and feelings have less power to dictate behaviour. The focus is on clarifying what genuinely matters to a person and finding ways to move in that direction, even when things are hard. ACT is effective across a wide range of difficulties including anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and significant life stressors.

Most of us are familiar with the experience of worrying, or of going over and over a difficult event in our minds. MCT, developed by Professor Adrian Wells, focuses specifically on the habits of thinking that keep these patterns going - for example, the belief that worrying is a useful or necessary thing to do, or the sense that once you start ruminating you cannot stop. By working at this level, MCT helps people step back from these mental habits rather than getting caught up in their content. It is particularly effective for anxiety, worry, OCD, and depression where repetitive thinking plays a central role.

MBCT combines mindfulness meditation practice with cognitive therapy. It teaches people to notice what is happening in their minds and bodies in the present moment, without immediately reacting or getting drawn into unhelpful thought spirals. This kind of awareness is particularly valuable for people who experience recurring episodes of depression, as it helps them recognise early warning signs and respond more skilfully before things deteriorate. MBCT also has growing evidence for anxiety and stress-related difficulties.

Change is rarely straightforward. Most people, at some point, feel genuinely torn - they can see that something needs to change, but also have real reasons for staying where they are. MI is a respectful, non-pressuring approach that explores this ambivalence with curiosity rather than judgment. Through careful listening and thoughtful conversation, MI helps people find and strengthen their own reasons for change, at their own pace. It is widely used in work involving substance use, health behaviour, and any situation where mixed feelings about change are part of the picture.

Our relationships and our mental health are closely connected. IPT is a structured, focused therapy that looks at how difficulties in relationships - conflict with others, significant life transitions, loss, or a sense of isolation - are contributing to how a person is feeling. By working through these interpersonal difficulties, IPT helps to relieve distress and improve the quality of a person's connections with others. It has a strong evidence base for depression and is particularly useful when a person's difficulties are clearly tied to what is happening in their relationships or life circumstances.

Sometimes distress is closely tied to real, concrete problems in a person's life - financial pressure, work difficulties, relationship conflicts, health challenges, or a sense of being overwhelmed by competing demands. Problem Solving Therapy, developed by Thomas D'Zurilla and Arthur Nezu, is a structured approach that helps people become more effective and confident in managing these kinds of difficulties. It works by breaking down an overwhelming situation into manageable steps, generating and evaluating possible responses, and putting a clear plan into action.

A central insight of PST is that it is not always the problem itself that causes the most distress, but the way a person relates to it - for instance, feeling helpless in the face of difficulty, avoiding thinking about it, or becoming so anxious that clear thinking becomes hard. PST addresses both the practical and the emotional dimensions of problem solving, building a sense of agency and competence that tends to have benefits well beyond the specific problems worked on in therapy. It has a solid evidence base for depression, anxiety, and adjustment to significant life stressors.

Schema Therapy was developed by Jeffrey Young as an approach for people whose difficulties run deeper than the kinds of problems that shorter-term therapies readily address - particularly those whose struggles have roots in early life experiences and long-standing patterns of thinking, feeling, and relating to others. A schema is a deeply held belief or theme about oneself and the world, formed in childhood and adolescence in response to unmet emotional needs. Schemas such as feeling fundamentally defective, unlovable, abandoned, or controlled can operate largely outside awareness while shaping a person's relationships, choices, and emotional responses throughout adult life.

Schema Therapy combines cognitive, behavioural, and experiential techniques - including imagery work and an explicit focus on the therapeutic relationship itself - to identify these deep patterns, understand where they came from, and gradually loosen their hold. It is particularly effective for personality difficulties, chronic depression and anxiety, relationship problems, and presentations where previous therapy has not produced lasting change. Dr Norris has studied Schema Therapy under Professor Jeffrey Young, the approach's founder, and draws on it with clients for whom early experience and entrenched patterns are central to their current difficulties.

Grief is one of the most profound and personal of human experiences, and it does not follow a fixed timetable or a set of predictable stages. Drawing on the work of Robert Neimeyer, a leading contemporary researcher in bereavement, Dr Norris approaches grief as fundamentally a process of meaning-making. When we lose someone central to our lives, we often lose not just that person but a whole sense of who we are and how the world works. Grief work, from this perspective, involves finding ways to rebuild a coherent sense of self and of the future - while also maintaining a continuing bond with the person who has died, rather than simply "moving on."

This approach is particularly relevant for people experiencing what is sometimes called complicated or prolonged grief - where loss feels unresolvable, where a person feels stuck, or where the death occurred under traumatic or sudden circumstances. Therapy may involve exploring the story of the loss, giving voice to what has not yet been said, and gradually reconstructing a life that can hold both the reality of the loss and a renewed sense of meaning and purpose.

Not everything that brings a person to therapy is best understood as a disorder or a symptom to be eliminated. Some of the most profound sources of human distress arise from struggles that are universal - the awareness of our own mortality, the search for meaning and purpose, the experience of freedom and the weight of responsibility that comes with it, and the fundamental aloneness that each person carries even within close relationships. Existential therapy, associated with thinkers and clinicians such as Irvin Yalom, takes these realities seriously rather than explaining them away.

Yalom identified four core concerns at the heart of human existence - death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness - and argued that many of the difficulties people bring to therapy are, at their core, expressions of anxiety about one or more of these. Rather than treating such experiences purely as symptoms of a diagnosable condition, existential therapy invites a person to engage with these questions honestly and courageously, and to find ways of living that are more authentic and more fully their own.

This work connects closely with the growing field of death anxiety research and therapy, where the contributions of Rachel and Ross Menzies have been particularly significant. Their work demonstrates that fear of death underlies a far wider range of human difficulties than is commonly recognised - including health anxiety, OCD, depression, and a pervasive sense that life lacks meaning - and that addressing this fear directly and openly can produce profound and lasting change. Dr Norris has worked closely with Professor Ross Menzies for over twenty years - meeting regularly to discuss cases, therapeutic approaches, research, and the broader challenges that human beings face. This ongoing collaboration has deeply informed the way he thinks about and practises within this domain.

One of the important contributions of the existential perspective is that it helps to remove the artificial barriers that rigid diagnostic labels can create. When a person is told they have a disorder, it can imply that their distress is a malfunction - something alien to normal human experience that needs to be fixed or removed. The existential view holds instead that much of what we struggle with is a natural response to the genuine difficulties of being human. This does not mean that suffering cannot be relieved - it can, and that is the work of therapy - but it means approaching that work with honesty, respect, and a recognition that the person in the room is grappling with questions that every human being faces, not merely a collection of symptoms.

Dr Norris is available to conduct sessions entirely in Spanish. While English is his first language, he speaks fluent Spanish and has previously held qualifications as an interpreter. For Spanish-speaking clients, this means there is no need to navigate the additional challenge of expressing deeply personal thoughts and feelings in a second language - something that can significantly limit the depth and ease of the therapeutic process. Being able to speak freely, in the language that feels most natural, can make a meaningful difference to the quality and comfort of the work.

Para los clientes de habla hispana: las sesiones pueden realizarse completamente en español. Si prefiere comunicarse en español, no dude en ponerse en contacto para consultar sobre disponibilidad y derivaciones.