Coherence Therapy (previously known as Depth Oriented Brief Therapy) was founded by Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley in the 1990s.

 

This type of therapy is non-pathologizing, and views symptoms as both causing suffering and as being protective or serving important functions. Symptoms were adaptively formed out of previous experiences and can become activated in the present, even if they no longer serve us.

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In Coherence Therapy, we seek to bring into awareness and empathize with emotional truths or beliefs we feel hold us back. The process of integrating these truths or beliefs allows us to examine them so we have more freedom to respond to them in ways that support us, rather than respond on autopilot. The process of integrating these emotional truths or beliefs also allows us more space to attend to experiences that disconfirm them, and opens us up to new information that supports us in our healing.

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This approach has the therapist guide clients to use all their ways of knowing and remembering in order to achieve growth or transformation. Our ways of knowing include our emotions, sensations, thoughts, beliefs, and memories. Coherence Therapy is an experiential approach in that sensations and emotions are given just as much value as thoughts or beliefs. 

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