Types of Emotion-Focused & Regulation Therapy
Point 3 of 10 · Through a feeling
Enters at the feelings corner
Through a feeling
These therapies treat emotions as weather you can learn to sail in — not enemies to suppress and not commands to obey. They build concrete skills: riding out a wave, soothing a nervous system, letting a feeling finish its sentence instead of cutting it off. Not sure what you’re feeling? Try our interactive feelings wheel.
This point might fit if your emotions arrive at full volume, if numbness is the problem, or if you’re hard on yourself in ways you’d never be with a friend.
View the full map →Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)
A skills-heavy therapy built for intense emotions: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness, originally developed for chronic suicidality and borderline personality disorder.
DBT for adolescents (DBT-A)
DBT adapted for teens and their families, adding a family skills component and a “walking the middle path” module for parent–teen extremes.
Radically open DBT (RO-DBT)
For overcontrol rather than undercontrol — perfectionism, rigidity, emotional inhibition — it targets openness, flexibility, and social connectedness.
Emotion-focused therapy (Greenberg)
An individual therapy in which emotions are the route to change, not the obstacle: you access the feeling under the feeling and let it complete its message. (Distinct from the couples therapy of the same initials.)
Emotion regulation therapy
Integrates mindfulness and CBT specifically for chronic worry and rumination in generalized anxiety and depression.
Compassion-focused therapy
Built for people whose inner voice is a critic: it trains the capacity for self-directed warmth using imagery, breath, and an evolutionary account of why shame runs so deep.
Mindful self-compassion
A structured program teaching you to treat yourself the way you’d treat a struggling friend — with measurable effects on shame, anxiety, and wellbeing.
Unified protocol (Barlow)
One transdiagnostic treatment for the whole anxiety-depression family, targeting the shared engine underneath: avoidance of strong emotion.
Affect regulation training
A skills sequence — muscle relaxation, breathing, nonjudgmental awareness, self-support — for anyone whose emotions arrive faster than their coping.
Start at the map
The Triangle Therapist Guide to Types of Therapy
See where this family sits among all ten points — two hundred therapies, one map. Find your place in the Triangle.
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