You want a life that’s meaningful and rewarding.

You also want to be able to actually enjoy it.

TEAM-CBT Therapist in Atlanta

Hi, my name is Cheryl Delaney.

I’m a Level 3 Certified TEAM-CBT therapist in Atlanta, Georgia. I am passionate about my work. I think about therapy-related concepts while I go about my day, talk about them to anyone who will listen, and spend at least 4 hours each week in training. The training I get most often involves case consultation and deliberate practice to improve my skills. I’m dedicated to delivering the best possible outcomes for my clients.

Why I’m a TEAM-CBT Therapist

I stumbled across this obscure form of therapy six years ago, and I’ve been eagerly studying and practicing it ever since. I was looking for ways to become a better therapist and thought it would mean reading a book or two and possibly going to a training workshop. Ha! My TEAM education has been way more involved than that, and it has been rewarding in equal measure.

How It Started

Several years ago, I was sitting with a client in my office and feeling horrible. I was fresh out of grad school and feeling helpless. I knew my client was miserable, and I desperately wanted to help, but I had no idea how. My client shared what felt like a terrible secret: “I’ve made a terrible mistake. I thought I wanted to be a mother, but now I’m miserable all the time, and I’m completely trapped.”

In truth, many mothers feel this way. They are given one image of what parenthood is like and feel defective when their experience doesn’t match. My client was stuck, and I was out of my depth. My profession was my passion, and I had a particular heart for postpartum women, but I had no idea how to help.

I knew she was suffering. I knew that talk therapy could help, but I didn’t know how to make it work.

It might surprise you to hear this, but most therapists don’t learn how to do therapy when they’re in school. In graduate school, I learned about theories, ideas, and trends. I learned about diagnoses and research. I knew almost nothing about how to use therapy to help someone.

It must have been painful for my clients to see a therapist who felt as stuck as I did then! It was painful for me too. I knew their suffering was deep and severe. I also knew that I didn’t have what it took to do anything more than listen with compassion.

Finding TEAM-CBT

About six months out of graduate school, I had a life-altering experience. In a meeting with a colleague about a workshop we were planning, she mentioned a technique I’d never heard of. I nodded along, pretending I understood, hiding my incompetence. As soon as she left, I googled.

That search led me to Dr. David Burns, renowned psychiatrist, and creator of TEAM-CBT. It also led to profound changes in every part of my life.

CBT Though? Really?

Before finding TEAM, I was a CBT-skeptic. My vague understanding was that it was mechanical, distant, and cold. My professors had criticized it as limited, pro-capitalist, and superficial. They also implied it was ignorant of the true depths of the human psyche.

I never thought I would be interested in CBT. When I learned about TEAM-CBT though, its lessons resonated with me. I started to feel excited and hopeful about my work again.

Now for the training montage: I listened to every episode of the Feeling Good podcast. I bought the therapist’s guidebook and did all the exercises. I attended two week-long workshops and enrolled in ongoing case consultation. I joined the Feeling Good Institute and started attending weekly meetings to extend and deepen my understanding.

After years of study, reading, practicing, failing, and trying again, I am a skilled TEAM-CBT therapist who’s still studying, practicing, and training. It turns out that’s how actual training works: it keeps going, long after the montage is over!

Photo of Cheryl Delaney, licensed professional counselor. Cheryl is a Level 3 TEAM-CBT Therapist.

With warm connection and powerful tools, I'll help you learn to shift your thinking so you can feel confident and joyful.

What’s so great about TEAM-CBT?

TEAM is a cutting-edge approach to therapy that combines a huge emphasis on warmth and connection with powerful tools for healing.

TEAM is less a “school of therapy” than a systematic set of improvements that could apply to any way of doing therapy. It’s a framework that supports therapists and clients and creates incredible results. Here are some highlights:

  • TEAM acknowledges that everyone feels attached to our status quo. We have excellent reasons for being who and how we are right now!

  • TEAM therapists believe that therapy can do more than give you a sense of warmth and connection. It can improve the way you experience your life at every moment. We have a library of methods to help us achieve that.

  • We measure our work to make sure that therapy is working and get back on track if we’re stuck.

  • We understand that the above is only possible on a foundation of warmth and caring. We hold ourselves accountable for providing that, and we adjust if we’re not getting it right.

Components of TEAM-CBT

(click the letters below for more info)

 

Reaping the Rewards

TEAM has transformed my professional life and my personal life for the better. I have become a better parent and partner. I am calmer and more confident. I enjoy my life more and have better relationships because of the work I’ve done using these methods. I feel better than I have at any other point and love my job more than ever.

How TEAM-CBT Works

How would I help my client with postpartum depression if I could talk to her now? From the first time we spoke, I would be communicating that I knew how to help.

Testing

I wouldn’t just assume I knew how she felt or whether she trusted me and felt safe. I’d have feedback from my client (testing) to let me know her feelings and if anything was off track. She’d give that feedback in writing, making it safe for her to criticize me and be honest about her hesitations. We’d compare mood scores from week to week to see any improvements or catch potential problems before they get bigger.

Empathy and Assessment of Resistance

I would help my client recognize the beauty and value in her negative thoughts and feelings. As painful as her hopelessness is, it probably comes from her feelings of compassion! She feels frustrated and desperate because she loves her son, and she’s telling herself she’s a bad mother if she doesn’t enjoy every tedious moment of parenthood.

Her anxiety might show that she cares about enjoying her life. It also motivates her to work hard to change her situation.

Methods

After seeing all the things that are great about her thoughts and feelings as they are, she might want to keep them (assessment of resistance). If she did want to change them, we could do that. We wouldn’t just hope that insight would get the job done. We would use techniques like Externalization of Voices, Double Standard, and other methods.

Finally, we would both know that the changes had happened because the feedback would show it. Sometimes this happens in a single moment of a specific session. Being there for the shift is the most rewarding part of this job.

Are You Willing to Practice?

An important piece of our work together will be the practice you do on your own between sessions. Our therapy is, at its core, about learning new skills and making them a part of your everyday life. It’s vague, abstract, and impossible to say "Start thinking differently!" The concrete way to get from here to there is practice.

  • Practicing on your own is part of becoming your own therapist so you don't need to keep me around forever.

  • Practicing on your own helps us achieve your goals more quickly.

  • Practice is the antidote to perfectionism! You will do some things badly and that, oddly enough, is part of the cure.

  • The type of practice you do will depend on what we're working on together but might include exposure exercises, structured written work, listening to podcasts, reading books, or teaching someone else what you've learned.

  • It is a demanding form of therapy! Besides the time you spend in session, you would be committing to 10-20 minutes a day of work on your own. On top of that, you’d have to spend time filling out the forms before and after every session so we can track our progress and adjust.

    If you want to work on depression, getting yourself to do homework might be a huge challenge - motivation is usually tough to come by. If you can set the time aside and make the commitment, we can find work that will be important and relevant for you to do between sessions.

    If you want to work on anxiety, you’d have to be willing to confront your biggest fears. Understandably, many people are not up for that! Treating anxiety is complex, and exposure won’t be the only method, but we’ll be likely to include some form of exposure.

  • 50-minute sessions are $175.

    If you opt for an intensive session (read on for why you might consider that), rates are a straightforward multiple of the single-hour rate. For example, if you were to book a 1.5 hour session, the fee would be 1.5 x $175 = $262.50.

  • Right now, I’m working online only. I miss my in-person office, and this setup makes the most sense for my family right now. There are occasional glitches, and I sometimes wish I could teleport and be in the same room as my clients. That said, I have seen fantastic results working with clients over video. Most TEAM clinicians live in other places, and I’ve formed deep relationships with colleagues entirely online, so I know genuine connections are possible over video. I love working with folks throughout the state of Georgia and avoiding the traffic on I-285.

  • You can use your phone, a desktop, or a laptop computer for our video sessions. We will be doing some writing together! Given that, it’s essential to set things up so both of us can write and see each other throughout the session. There are a couple of different setups that work.

    In each one, we will work best if you are in a private room at a desk or table.

    Phone:

    If you plan to use your phone, find a place to prop your phone so that you can use your hands to write. If you hold the phone in your hands, your hands will get tired, the view will move around quite a bit, and it will be more difficult for both of us to focus. It will help to have a notebook or binder for storing your work and a pen for writing. You can print the materials you need if you can access a printer at home, work, or a library. If you cannot print materials, I can mail you copies.

    Desktop or laptop:

    With a desktop or laptop, you will probably be able to work electronically rather than on paper. If you prefer that, it’s helpful to have either a second monitor or one monitor with a large screen. That way, you can open an additional window and still see our video feed.

  • You have some flexibility here. We will need to meet at least weekly. If we didn’t meet that often, I wouldn’t expect great results. We will be setting specific goals and working on one goal at a time until we see changes. If too much time passes between sessions, progress can stop altogether.

    Click here for more information about treatment options.

Let’s talk.

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