Clinical support
5 integrative therapy techniques that blend multiple approaches
Integrative therapy combines multiple techniques, ultimately helping clients address their symptoms with the tools they need.
When it comes to talk therapy, there are many different therapeutic techniques that can help address a client’s symptoms. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy can work well for insomnia, depression, and anxiety, while psychodynamic therapy can help treat relationship concerns.
Combining different therapeutic approaches from various schools of thought is called integrative therapy. Knowing how integrative therapy works, as well as who can benefit from this type of treatment, can help you decide if it’s right for your client.
Read on to learn more about integrative therapy, as well as how to work this approach into your client’s treatment plan.
Key takeaways
- Integrative therapy techniques often incorporate a blend of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), psychodynamic, and humanistic therapy approaches.
- CBT tools help clients understand their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, while psychodynamic and humanistic techniques aim to help clients uncover insights that can cultivate self-understanding and improve their relationships and social support.
- Integrative therapy is best suited for clients seeking a flexible approach to therapy. Research shows that this approach can help treat depression, anxiety, postpartum depression, relationship struggles, and social anxiety. However, integrative therapy may not be suitable for more serious conditions, such as thought disorders or psychosis.
Understanding integrative therapy
With over 400 therapy modalities to choose from, integrative therapists recognize that multiple approaches can make therapy more effective. Therefore, integrative therapists don’t adhere to a one specific methodology. Instead, they adopt a holistic approach that combines techniques from various therapeutic orientations, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness-based practices, psychodynamic therapy, and humanistic therapy.
Integrative therapists prioritize the client-therapist relationship, adopting a collaborative approach to treatment. For example, an integrative therapist often invites their client to share feedback. It’s an approach that reinforces that the client’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions about their experience in therapy are important and matter to the therapist, which can help improve treatment outcomes.
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Who benefits from integrative therapy?
Integrative therapy can benefit individuals of all ages, including adults, couples, and children. With a focus on tailored treatment, integrative therapists consider each client’s unique situation, symptoms, and goals for therapy.
It’s an approach that can treat various mental health symptoms, such as social anxiety, depression, anxiety, substance use disorders, childhood trauma, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and personality disorders.
For example, to help treat a client’s symptoms of social anxiety and PTSD, an integrative therapist may incorporate techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy, eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and mindfulness.
Powerful integrative therapy types that are blended into multiple approaches
1. Cognitive behavioral therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) aims to help clients understand the relationship between their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. More specifically, CBT therapists help clients identify and challenge their “thought distortions” and replace them with more helpful ways of thinking.
In integrative therapy, CBT tools can help clients who want to shift unhelpful thought patterns, such as someone with social anxiety who believes “no one will ever like them.” An integrative therapist would infuse CBT to help their client challenge and reframe this thought trap, so that it becomes something more helpful and realistic, such as, “Not everyone has to like me. I will focus my attention on people who do.”
2. Humanistic therapy
In graduate school, many students watch a depiction of humanistic therapy with psychologist Carl Rogers. In the video, Dr. Rogers talks with a client named “Gloria,” showering her with “unconditional positive regard,” which is acceptance, love, and affirmation towards a person just as they are. It’s the same kind of love that parents aim to show their children. With this unending support, clients can achieve personal growth, a concept Dr. Rogers referred to as “self-actualization.”
Humanistic therapy emphasizes the client’s positive attributes and personal growth. Humanistic therapists focus on the present moment, rather than the past. An integrative therapist may incorporate humanistic approaches to support a client who needs extra empathy and understanding, such as someone who struggles with low self-esteem, social isolation, or body-image concerns. Instead of a cognitive-behavioral approach, which might gently challenge the client’s thoughts and feelings, humanistic therapists affirm them. For example, with a client who has low self-worth, a humanistic therapist would say, “I hear that you feel down on yourself, and I hear how difficult that must be. I am here for you. We can explore this together.”
3. Interpersonal therapy
Relationship concerns are one of the main reasons people seek therapy. Whether it’s a break-up, family strife, or the death of a loved one. Interpersonal therapy (IPT) helps clients understand their relationships, which helps them take active steps towards change. Whereas cognitive behavioral therapists ask clients about their thought patterns, IPT therapists invite their clients to discuss their interpersonal worlds, including their relationships with parents or caregivers, friends, and other significant individuals. From an IPT lens, mental health symptoms are often fueled by unfulfilling relationships or maladaptive interpersonal patterns.
For example, an integrative therapist may draw from IPT to help a grieving client find better social support or to help a client who shies away from conflict assert themselves. First, the therapist explores what feels unfulfilling in the client’s relationships. Then, the therapist helps the client examine these patterns and take active steps towards change. Change can include behavioral activation steps, such as joining a support group or taking a class.
4. Existential therapy
Existential therapy focuses on the pursuit of meaning, free will, and personal empowerment. An insight-oriented therapy, existential therapy aims to increase self-awareness, responsibility-taking, and self-understanding. Existential therapists ask self-reflective questions and help clients address existential concerns, such as illness, empty-nest syndrome, death, or other life transitions.
An integrative therapist may incorporate existential therapy to help a widow find meaning after the loss of a loved one or to help a lonely client make meaningful choices to reduce social isolation. Similar to humanistic therapy, existential therapists adopt a supportive and empathetic stance, aiming to understand the client’s pain and help them find greater fulfillment in their lives.
5. Psychoanalytic therapy
One of the oldest forms of psychotherapy, psychoanalytic therapy aims to make unconscious thoughts and feelings conscious, so that the client can examine any buried emotions or maladaptive relationship patterns. In summary, psychoanalysts help clients discover thoughts, feelings, and desires that are not within conscious awareness.
For example, a client who is continually late for work may unknowingly be dissatisfied with their job. A psychoanalytic therapist helps the client make this connection by offering up interpretations about their behavior. In this case, the therapist may say, “Could it be that you’re late for work because your job is dissatisfying?” Any conflicts rooted in the past that persist in the present can be addressed through a psychoanalytic approach. In another example, an integrative therapist may draw from psychoanalysis to help a divorced client understand why it’s challenging for them to begin dating, or to help a survivor of childhood trauma explore their difficulties with trust.
Working integrative therapy techniques into your treatment plan
It’s recommended that providers seek training if they’re planning to incorporate new interventions or approaches into their work and treatment plans.
Thought records
Thought-distortions, such as “all-or-nothing” thinking or “catastrophizing,” are called thought distortions, and they’re often symptoms of social anxiety, depression, and anxiety. To help clients reframe these thoughts, integrative therapists can use thought records.
Thought records are a cognitive behavioral therapy tool aimed to help clients understand the relationship between their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Thought records can be worksheets or journal prompts. The goal is to help clients build awareness of their thoughts, enabling them to take active steps towards change.
Thought record worksheets often ask the client to track and write down the “situation” (e.g., the setting in which the troublesome thought arose), as well as their “thoughts,” “emotions,” and “behaviors.” Clients are also asked to write down “alternate thoughts,” which helps them reframe their original thought.
Sleep diaries
When using a sleep diary, the client tracks their sleep for one to two weeks to establish a baseline of their current sleep. Then, insights gleaned from the diary can be used to help inform their treatment.
Sleep diaries are a part of the CBT-I, or cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, treatment protocol. CBT-I seeks to improve sleep patterns for clients suffering from a variety of sleep challenges. For more information about sleep diaries, check out Headway’s sleep diary guide.
Problem-solving techniques
Problem-solving techniques are tools that may help clients change their behavior. Problem-solving in CBT is five-step process used to manage daily life challenges by breaking them down into manageable steps:
- Clearly define the problem
- Generate potential solutions without judgment
- Evaluate the pros and cons of each solution
- Choose the most feasible option
- Implement the solution and evaluate if it worked
Following each of the five steps helps clients develop practical skills to cope with stressors, such as making a difficult decision, resolving a relationship conflict, or adjusting to a new job.
Interpersonal inventories
An interpersonal inventory is a key tenet of IPT therapy. Unlike a thought record or goal-setting, this inventory is not homework or a worksheet. Rather, the therapist invites the client to discuss their relationships and any conflicts they have within those relationships. It’s a conversation that takes place during the session.
The goal is to uncover any patterns that contribute to the client’s symptoms or interpersonal struggles. For example, let’s say a client feels very dissatisfied with their friendships. During the interpersonal inventory, the therapist learns that this client never expresses their needs to anyone, including their friends. In this example, an inability to express one’s needs may be a key contributor to the client’s dissatisfaction with their relationships.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness helps clients connect in the present moment. With an affirmative stance towards acceptance and self-compassion, mindfulness can help alleviate stress, mitigate symptoms of depression, and foster hope.
Meditation apps can help clients practice mindfulness. Learning to take mindful breaths is also a starting point. Therapists can choose from a variety of techniques, including box breathing, 4-7-8 breathing, and pursed-lip breathing.
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This content is for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute clinical, legal, financial, or professional advice. All decisions should be made at the discretion of the individual or organization, in consultation with qualified clinical, legal, or other appropriate professionals.
© 2025 Therapymatch, Inc. dba Headway. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.
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