Cognitive Analytic Therapy

Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) was developed by an American psychiatrist, Aaron Beck, who noticed that many patients were stuck in negative beliefs.  This led to behaviours that reinforced the thought in a circular way.  An example of this could be, ‘I am a loser’, which belief discourages the person from applying for that better job or entering a competition.  So, the ‘loser’ self-tags remains in place.

What Beck did, was to identify for patients their circular thought behaviour patterns and discuss with them an alternative scenario, what if?  What if…you were a winner?  How would you behave today, tomorrow, next week, if you were a winner, instead?  Of course, the patient played along with Beck’s ‘game’ and found that, on a serious note, it really made a difference to how they perceived themselves.  That there were choices and they weren’t stuck.   With practice, these patients altered these negative core beliefs.

Terms used in Cognitive Analytic Therapy include Traps, Dilemmas and Snags. 

The therapist uses everyday language, to discuss the patient’s current beliefs, behaviours, choices and areas of ‘stuckness’ and in this way, can unlock the vicious circle.

Pam Gully offers CAT to any client who is really hard on themselves, who seems to embrace a really negative set of self-beliefs that make them unhappy and unfulfilled.  Often, by carefully uncovering the core belief and gently suggesting that they, together, turn the belief on its head, this makes a real difference, in just the way it did with Beck’s patients.