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Good therapy is not one-size-fits-all. We draw on a range of evidence-based approaches and select what is most likely to help based on who you are, what you are working through, and what your nervous system can actually meet right now.
You do not need to know which of these applies to you before you get in touch. Part of what we do in the early sessions is understand your situation well enough to know which approach — or which combination — is most likely to help. What follows is an honest explanation of each one.
01
CBT
Changing the patterns that keep you stuck.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is one of the most extensively researched and widely used therapeutic approaches in the world. At its core, it is built on a straightforward but powerful idea: the way we think shapes the way we feel, and the way we feel shapes what we do.
In practice, CBT helps you identify thought patterns that are causing distress, understand where they come from, and learn to respond to situations in ways that serve you better. This is not about thinking positively. It is about thinking more accurately and more helpfully.
CBT is structured and goal-oriented. Many clients notice meaningful shifts within a relatively small number of sessions, which makes it particularly suited to people who prefer a clear, practical framework for their therapeutic work.
Particularly helpful for
Anxiety
Worry
Depression
Panic attacks
Low self-esteem
Perfectionism
OCD
02
EFT
Learning to work with your emotions rather than around them.
Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) starts from the understanding that emotions are not problems to be solved. They are information. They tell us what we need, what we value, and where we have been hurt. The difficulty arises when we have been taught to ignore them, suppress them, or when we feel overwhelmed by them and do not know what to do.
EFT creates space to slow down and actually feel what is there, often for the first time. With a therapist guiding the process, clients begin to make sense of emotional experiences that previously felt confusing or unbearable, and to develop a healthier relationship with their inner world.
This approach is especially meaningful for people who feel emotionally shut down, or who know what they think but struggle to connect with what they actually feel. It is also widely used in relationship counselling to help people understand and communicate their emotional needs more clearly.
Particularly helpful for
Emotional numbness
Grief & Loss
Relationship difficulties
Shame
Burnout
Identity
03
Trauma
Understanding that trauma lives in the body as much as the mind.
Trauma-informed therapy is less a single technique and more a way of approaching every aspect of the therapeutic relationship. It starts from the understanding that many of the things people struggle with, including anxiety, hypervigilance, emotional dysregulation, disconnection and self-protective behaviours, often have roots in past experiences that the nervous system has not yet been able to process and release.
Working in a trauma-informed way means that safety comes first, always. Before any processing of difficult material, we focus on helping you feel grounded, regulated and genuinely safe in the room. The pace is set entirely by you.
You do not need a formal trauma diagnosis to benefit from trauma-informed care. Many people who have experienced adverse childhood experiences, chronic stress, discrimination, or difficult life events find that this approach reaches places that other therapy has not.
Particularly helpful for
PTSD
Childhood experiences
Hypervigilance
Dissociation
Complex trauma
Accident recovery
04
Play
For children, play is not a distraction from the work. It is the work.
Children do not yet have the language to articulate complex emotional experiences the way adults do. Play therapy recognises this and uses play as the primary medium of therapeutic communication. Through creative play, art, sand trays, storytelling and imaginative tools, children are able to express, explore and begin to process experiences that they cannot yet put into words.
Play therapy at Aasra Wellness is initially non-directive, meaning your child leads. They choose what to play and how. This sense of autonomy and control is itself therapeutic, particularly for children who have experienced situations where they had very little of either. In following sessions, depending on your child’s needs and therapy goals, your therapist will introduce play-based activities to help your child process their emotions and experiences, explore mental health concepts and learn new coping skills.
Parents are considered active partners in the process. Your therapist will keep you informed of emerging themes, offer practical guidance for supporting your child at home, and work with you as a team throughout your child’s participation in therapy.
Particularly helpful for
Anxiety in children
Behavioural changes
Grief
Trauma
Family breakdown
School difficulties
fits.
That is part of what the early sessions are for. Together, we understand your situation well enough to choose what is most likely to help — and to adjust as we go. The approach follows you, not the other way around.
Therapeutic Approaches
05
dBT
Practical tools for when emotions feel completely out of reach.
DBT was originally developed for people who experience intense emotional states that feel impossible to manage. Since then, its skills-based components have been shown to help a much wider range of people who simply want to respond to difficult situations with more steadiness and less reactivity.
Rather than a full DBT programme, we draw on DBT skills training as a targeted tool within therapy. This includes techniques drawn from four core areas: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. Each of these gives you concrete, practical skills that translate directly into how you move through day-to-day life.
DBT skills are particularly useful for people who feel like their emotional responses are disproportionate, or who struggle to maintain stability during periods of high stress. The skills are easy to learn and with practice, become genuinely transformative.
Particularly helpful for
Emotional dysregulation
Mood swings
Impulsivity
Relationship instability
Stress tolerance
06
EXPOSURE
Gently facing what you have been avoiding, at a pace that works.
Avoidance is one of the most natural responses to anxiety. When something feels threatening, stepping away from it makes complete sense in the moment. The difficulty is that avoidance tends to make anxiety grow over time, not shrink. The thing avoided becomes larger the longer it goes unmet.
Exposure therapy works by gradually and carefully introducing you to the situations or experiences that trigger anxiety, in a controlled and supported way, until the nervous system learns that they are manageable. This is not about forcing you to face your fears. It is about walking toward them incrementally, with your therapist supporting you, until they begin to lose their power.
At Aasra Wellness, exposure therapy is used specifically for anxiety-driven avoidance behaviours, including driving anxiety after an accident, phobias, social anxiety, and situations linked to past difficult experiences.
Particularly helpful for
Driving anxiety
Phobias
Social anxiety
OCD
Avoidance after trauma
Health anxiety
07
CULTURAL
Your culture is not background noise. It is central to the work.
Culturally responsive care is not a technique applied on top of therapy. It is a lens through which all therapeutic work at Aasra Wellness is conducted. It begins from the understanding that a person’s cultural background, family system, community expectations and lived experience of navigating the world do not just influence their mental health. In many cases, they define it.
For many South Asian and Punjabi-speaking clients, for instance, the experience of balancing family obligation with personal need, of carrying intergenerational expectations, or of managing identity across multiple cultural worlds is not a side issue. It is often the heart of what brings them to therapy.
Culturally responsive care means your therapist does not approach your background as something to overcome or work around. It is treated as essential context, engaged with directly, and used to shape an approach that actually fits your life as you are living it.
Particularly helpful for
South Asian & Punjabi clients
Identity & belonging
Family conflict
Intergenerational dynamics
Cultural guilt
First-generation experience
Questions
If something resonated in what you've read but you're unsure which approach applies to your situation, a free 15-minute call is the clearest next step. We'll help you understand what's most likely to help.
Do I need to choose which approach I want before I book?
Not at all. Choosing the right approach is part of the therapeutic work itself. In the early sessions, your therapist takes time to understand your situation in depth — your history, what you're working through, and how you tend to respond — before deciding what combination of approaches is most likely to help. Many clients find that more than one is used throughout their therapy.
Will you use just one approach, or combine them?
Most clients benefit from a combination. For instance, trauma-informed principles inform how we work regardless of the primary approach used. CBT and EFT are often used together. DBT skills may be introduced to support someone working through trauma. The approaches listed here are not rigid categories — they are tools, and good therapists use more than one.
Is play therapy only for children?
Play therapy at Aasra Wellness is primarily designed for children aged 3 to 12, and can be adapted for teens. Adults typically benefit more from other approaches, though play-based and creative elements are occasionally incorporated into adult work where appropriate. If you are enquiring about your child, a free call is the best starting point.
I've tried CBT before and it didn't help. Does that mean other approaches won't either?
Not at all. CBT is highly effective for many people, but it is not the right fit for everyone or every presenting concern. Some people respond better to more emotion-focused or body-based work. Others need trauma-informed approaches before structured cognitive work is possible. A previous experience with one approach that didn't land is useful information, not a verdict.
What does "culturally responsive" actually mean in practice?
It means your therapist does not treat your cultural background as neutral context that sits outside the therapeutic work. It is engaged with directly. For Punjabi-speaking and South Asian clients in particular, it means the dynamics of family obligation, intergenerational expectation, identity navigation, and community belonging are treated as central — not as complications to work around.
How long does therapy typically take?
This depends significantly on what you're working through and how you respond. CBT and DBT skills training often produce meaningful shifts within 8 to 16 sessions. Trauma-informed work and longer-standing emotional patterns typically require more time. Your therapist will review progress with you regularly, and there is never pressure to continue beyond what feels right for you.
Ready to start?
If you have read about our therapeutic approaches and something resonated, a free 15-minute call is the natural next step. We will help you understand which modality is most likely to help with what you are working through.
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