What is Cognitive Analytic Therapy?

Cognitive Analytic therapy (CAT) involves a therapist and client working together to look at current problems and what has got in the way of change. Looking for patterns in past difficulties helps to understand how to change things for the better.  CAT can help to answer questions like ‘why do I always end up doing this?’ or ‘why do I feel like this about myself’.

CAT is an evidence based therapy with a strong commitment to research.  It takes ideas from Psychoanalysis, Cognitive Behavioural approaches (CBT), Personal Construct Theory and Developmental and Cognitive Psychology.

Who is it for?

CAT is user friendly. It can be used with a variety of problems such as depression, anxiety, personal and relationship problems.

Why now?

People often wish they could change things to make life more manageable, but don’t know where to start.  Unhappiness, depression or anxiety can make them feel less capable of finding a way out of their difficulties. Therapy can help to make things feel easier.

How does it work?

CAT focuses its attention on discovering how problems have evolved and how the ways in which people learned to cope in the past might not be working anymore.  It is designed to help clients to gain an understanding of how the difficulties they experience may be made worse by the way they have learned to respond to them.  Problems are understood in the light of clients’ personal histories and life experiences.  The focus is on learning how these coping patterns developed and how they can be adapted and improved.  Then, using the clients’ own strengths and resources, plans are developed to work towards change.

The work is active and shared.  Diagrams and written letters are worked out together to help recognise, check out and change old patterns that do not work well.  These diagrams and letters become tools for use within, outside and beyond therapy.  In this way, clients gain skills to help them manage their lives more successfully and to continue to change once therapy ends.

Time

Cognitive Analytic Therapy is time-limited, usually 16 sessions, although in some cases it can be offered in blocks of 4, 8, 12 or 24 sessions.  This is usually agreed between therapist and client during the first assessment appointment.

Further information

Much of the content of this leaflet is taken from information available on the website of the Association of Cognitive Analytic Therapy (ACAT).  

This can be found at http://www.acat.org.uk.