When a person experiences an unpleasant or unhelpful emotion, it is often preceded by unhelpful thoughts. Often there is a pattern to such thoughts – we call these unhelpful thinking errors or cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are not unique to people with eating disorders, in fact everyone will use cognitive distortions to a greater or…
Schemas (sometimes called ‘early maladaptive schemas’) are enduring patterns of thoughts and feelings that develop during childhood or adolescence and persist throughout our lives. They consist of beliefs, feelings and memories about the self, others and the environment, which we accept without question. We all have schema, but the extent to which they affect our…
Schemas can trigger distressing thoughts and painful emotions. In order to avoid these, we typically develop certain ‘coping styles’. These often form quite early in life, and quickly become established. However, what might be a helpful way of coping when we are young can often become less helpful as time goes by. In fact, these…
In schema therapy you may also look at your modes. These are a temporary mindset, which includes both how you are feeling and how you are dealing with it. We typically experience a mode shift when our schemas are activated, or someone “pushes our buttons”. In other words, a mode is a combination of the…
Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO-DBT) is a new evidence-based therapy for people who are overcontrolled. It stems from the idea that it is possible to have too much self-control. This is something we see a lot in people with anorexia, and can also be seen in chronic depression or autistic spectrum disorders. What is…
There has been a growing recognition that we have a tendency to live our lives on autopilot. We may find that we have driven to work without remembering every turn we have made, or we may engage in daily activities, such as cleaning our teeth, whilst thinking about what we have to do that day….
One of the skills training modules in DBT is “Interpersonal Effectiveness”. The focus of this module is to help you build and maintain healthier relationships with others, with a lot of focus on communication skills. These skills are useful for anyone, but are particularly important for people who have experienced trauma or struggle with an…
Compassionate questionning refers to questions that you can ask yourself to try to access a more compassionate view of yourself or a situation. Most people are able to be considerably more compassionate towards others than they are to themselves. It is this ability to be compassionate to others that you can try to access and…
Shame is a self-conscious emotion – in other words it is an emotion about the self. To experience shame we have to have an ability to think about ourselves through the minds of others; to think about how others might see us. Shame is not a single emotion – it is made up of various…
Compassion focused therapy (CFT) aims to help people to develop compassionate skills and to learn to apply these to themselves. By developing compassionate skills, you should find that you are able to enhance the soothing system, and to ensure that this is more in balance with the threat system and the drive system. The expectation…
Cognitive Analytic Therapy is an accredited structured psychological therapy that is usually offered an an individual therapy, but can be done as a couple or in a group. CAT is a time limited therapy and the number of sessions (16, 24 or 32) will usually be agreed at the start of treatment. Following regular therapy…
People often find that they frequently use certain ways of thinking and acting that do not achieve what they want, but yet are hard to change. Tony Ryle, who originally developed CAT as a psychological therapy, noticed three main patterns of unhelpful thinking and acting – he termed these Traps, Dilemmas and Snags. A key…
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