Psychological treatment from the transdiagnostic approach

The transdiagnostic approach is a psychological treatment designed to learn to regulate emotions and behaviors in a flexible and adaptive way. It is mainly carried out through individual programmed exercises.

This treatment focuses on the main cognitive, emotional and behavioral mechanisms present in a large number of very frequent psychological problems in the population.

It is called transdiagnostic approach basically for two fundamental reasons: on the one hand, it focuses on basic and common psychological processes in the origin and maintenance of different psychological problems and on the other hand, it is applied to a wide range of emotional disorders and clinical diagnoses.

Transdiagnostic treatment focuses on the common elements or factors that participate in the origin, maintenance or increase the probability of developing psychological disorders.

Beyond the particularities of the different proposals, emphasis is placed on the common elements or factors that participate in the origin, maintenance or increase the probability of developing psychological disorders. Consequently, by modifying these common elements, which include, among others, processes of attention, memory, thoughts, expectations and some personality dimensions, possible psychological disorders common in the general population can be prevented.

At the therapeutic level, it involves focusing on these common nuclear aspects or dimensions of personal functioning that may be altered (e.g. excessive attention to certain sensations or situations, hypervigilance, negative or distorted memories, automatic thoughts, maladjusted expectations, perfectionism, etc.), which in combination with more specific aspects in each individual case, increase therapeutic efficacy and efficiency, by affecting underlying comorbid symptomatologies, contributing to reduce the probability of developing other psychological problems.

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For example, a person who suffers from anxiety and attends this type of treatment will learn to identify the situations, thoughts or physical reactions that trigger their anxiety reactions and what they do as a result, their habitual thinking tendencies, such as worrying, overthinking everything, anticipating serious consequences if what they fear occurs. From this process of recognition of his own emotional experience, he will be able to develop new ways of interpreting situations and his possibilities of coping with the situation, increasing his ability to tolerate and overcome situations of discomfort or discomfort. As a consequence, their perception of control over situations will improve, decreasing feelings of sadness and helplessness. This would prevent the development of depressive symptoms, improving aspects of their self-concept and, therefore, their self-esteem in adverse situations.