Getting Unstuck:
How Different Therapy Styles Help You Move Forward
Have you ever left therapy feeling more uncertain—not just about your problems, but about yourself? If so, it may not be because you’re doing something wrong. It may have more to do with the kind of therapy you’re receiving.
Therapists work from different perspectives. Some use what we might call interpretive or perspective-based therapies. These focus on exploring your identity, beliefs, and experiences from multiple angles. They treat truth as personal—something shaped by culture, language, and emotion. This approach can be freeing, especially for clients who feel stuck in rigid beliefs or want space to reinterpret their story.
Other therapists use evidence-based therapies, which aim to find what holds up under observation, reflection and feedback. These approaches focus on patterns, cause-and-effect relationships, and clear strategies for change. They can be especially helpful when life feels confusing and you need clarity, direction, or confidence in your thinking.
Below, we will discuss how different therapy styles can help you move forward.
How Different Therapeutic Approaches Affect Your Progress
In perspective-based therapy, sessions often center around open-ended questions and deep reflection. Your therapist may guide you to challenge assumptions, deconstruct long-held roles, or view yourself through various cultural and emotional lenses. If you’ve felt boxed in by labels or past roles, this kind of therapy can help you imagine new ways of being.
But if you’re already overwhelmed or struggling with indecision, this approach might feel like there’s no solid ground. You might find yourself questioning everything without a clear way to move forward.
In evidence-based therapy, your therapist works with you to sort helpful thoughts from unhelpful ones. They ask: Does this belief stand up to the facts? Is it helping you live the life you want? These approaches are structured and goal-focused, helping clients build tools to navigate emotions, relationships, and choices with more clarity.
Best Practices
The key is for your therapist to know what you need right now, and to apply best practices.
How Different Therapy Styles Can Help You Move Forward
Clients struggling with rigid beliefs about themselves or their relationships may benefit from the openness of perspective-based therapy. It offers room to reconsider assumptions and redefine identity. But those who feel emotionally overwhelmed, stuck in cycles of self-doubt, or unsure what to trust may find more relief in a therapy style that offers structure, clarity, and grounded thinking.
Both approaches offer something different, and what you need is a therapy style that helps you move forward. The key is for your therapist to know what you need right now, and to apply the therapy style that will help you move forward.
When Therapists Lean Too Far in One Direction
Therapists who lean too heavily on one approach can unintentionally limit the progress a client makes. When therapy becomes all interpretation and exploration, clients may leave sessions feeling seen, but unsure of what to do next. If there's no direction, therapy can feel abstract or emotionally heavy without enough relief or action.
On the other hand, when therapy focuses only on structure and solutions, clients may miss the chance to process deeper emotional or relational issues. They might feel like they’re being “fixed” without being fully understood, or pushed to change before they feel safe enough to explore why they feel stuck in the first place.
Both clarity and reflection are important—and ideally, a good therapist knows when to offer each.
Effective Therapists Can Blend Both Approaches
The key is for your therapist to know what you need right now, and to apply the best practice.
Therapist Flexibility: A Key to Lasting Change
The most effective therapists are often those who can blend both approaches, depending on what their client needs. A skilled therapist knows when to help you explore deeper emotional meanings—and when to help you focus, test ideas, and build practical tools.
In my own work as an Emotionally Focused Therapist (EFT), I draw from a model that draws upon both. EFT is best described as a relational, emotion-focused, and evidence-based therapy. It is grounded in attachment theory, a well-researched model of how humans form emotional bonds. EFT helps clients explore emotional meaning in relationships (an interpretive strength), while also guiding them through structured interventions proven to improve relationship quality and emotional regulation.
EFT offers the emotional depth and insight of perspective-based work, with the clarity and direction of an evidence-supported model. The result is a therapy that helps people feel understood, while also helping them make lasting changes in their life.
Which Approach Supports Your Current Goals?
If your therapist works from a perspective-based model, you may feel deeply heard and supported in seeing yourself in a new light. These approaches often focus on story, identity, power, and interpretation. They’re well suited to people who are rethinking old roles or exploring how external factors have shaped them.
If your therapist works from an evidence-based model, you’re likely to experience structure, clarity, and focus. These therapists are interested in what helps, what works, and what holds up under pressure. They’ll support you in building a more stable, functional view of yourself that helps you take meaningful action.
And if your therapist blends both, you may experience both clarity and depth. You’ll explore emotions and patterns while also learning how to make sense of them and take action in a practical, structured way.
What to Ask Yourself as a Client
- Do I feel more grounded and clear after therapy—or more uncertain?
- Is my therapist helping me build a stronger, more workable understanding of myself, or mainly encouraging reflection?
- Am I becoming more confident in my ability to make sense of my thoughts, or more dependent on interpretation?
- Does my therapist seem open to shifting their approach based on what’s helping me most, while also helping me make lasting changes in my life?
1. Notice whether your therapist is flexible. Do they stay locked into one approach, or do they adjust based on your needs and goals?
2. Ask your therapist about their guiding perspective. Do they focus more on exploration and interpretation, or on evidence-based strategies and structure?
3. Reflect on what you need. Are you looking for space to reframe your identity, or do you need clarity and support in making decisions?
Take good care,
Derrick
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Derrick McEachern is a Registered Counselling Therapist (RCT) in Nova Scotia, and a Canadian Certified Counsellor. He specializes in providing mindfulness-based and emotionally focused therapy. He offers workshops and webinars and consults with businesses on ways to improve employee wellbeing and mental health.
Derrick McEachern, M.Ed., RCT, CCC
Counselling Therapist, Owner
Five Star Wellbeing Counselling and Mental Health
tel: 902 698 1194
derrick@fivestarwellbeing.com
https://fivestarwellbeing.com
