How to Choose the Right Psychotherapy or Counselling for You?
Before therapy begins, you will have an introductory meeting with your counsellor/therapist. During this session, you will be able to speak to her about the issues that have brought you into therapy. Together, you and she will discuss your needs and the kind of therapy that will be best suited to you. If, at the end of this session you want to go ahead, you will be able to book an appointment, usually for the following week.
Individual Therapy: Cognitive Analytic Psychotherapy (CAT)
Cognitive Analytic Therapy or 'CAT' is a time limited model of therapy, usually 16-24 weeks, that focuses upon patterns of behaviour that are constantly repeated by a person to their detriment.
These patterns are usually developed in childhood as a way of coping with emotional difficulties and deprivations and to protect the individual from emotional hurt. Often they were helpful in the past but are now ineffective and serve to hinder healthy emotional development.
The aim of CAT is for the therapist and patient to collaborate in recognising these maladaptive patterns, the thoughts behind them, the emotions and motivations and then to revise and change them. It is designed to enable patients to gain an understanding of how the difficulties they experience may be made worse by their habitual coping mechanisms and mobilise their own strengths and resources to bring about change.
The origins of these patterns are also explored, looking at early relationships in order for both the therapist and the patient to gain an insight into the reasons for the development of the behavioural patterns.
In addition to identifying repeated patterns, CAT also looks at reciprocal roles. These identify problems as occuring between people and not within the patient and are again often set up in early life. (CAT is therefore particularly helpful in aiding patients recognise repeating patterns within relationships).
For example, a person whose childhood experience is perceived as one of neglect or abandonment may be vulnerable to feelings of abandonment as an adult, or even behave in an abandoning way themselves.
Simply speaking, CAT brings together and applies the pragmatic, step-by-step based approach of the cognitive therapies with the more in depth emotional exploration of the analytic therapies.
See also:
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Short Term Focused Therapy
Stress Counselling
Couples Counselling
For couples counselling and adult family counselling see our separate pages
On the left are listed some of the issues with which our psychotherapist / counsellors regularly work.
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