Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT)

Mapping Your Patterns

Cognitive Analytic Therapy - CAT - is a distinctive British therapy that blends cognitive and psychodynamic ideas. It’s designed to help you recognise and change the repeating patterns that cause difficulties in your life and relationships.

The CAT Approach

CAT is built on the idea that many of our difficulties stem from patterns learned early in life that continue to shape how we think, feel, and relate to others. These patterns made sense in the context where they developed, but they can become traps when applied rigidly in different circumstances.

What makes CAT distinctive is its collaborative approach to identifying these patterns. You and your therapist work together to create written and diagrammatic “maps” of your patterns - seeing clearly how you tend to think, feel, and act, and how these patterns keep repeating.

Key Concepts in CAT

Reciprocal roles: CAT pays attention to the roles we play in relationships and how they connect to roles others played with us. If you were frequently criticised growing up, you might either take on a self-critical role (doing to yourself what was done to you) or become critical of others. These reciprocal roles shape your relationships.

Traps, dilemmas, and snags: CAT identifies common patterns that keep people stuck:

• Traps: Vicious circles where what you do to cope actually makes things worse
• Dilemmas: False either/or choices that limit your options
• Snags: Self-sabotage when you’re approaching change or success

Reformulation: Early in therapy, you’ll receive a “reformulation letter” - a compassionate narrative account of how your patterns developed and how they’re affecting you now. This becomes a shared reference point for the work.

Mapping: Together you’ll create diagrams showing your patterns visually - making it easier to notice when you’re falling into them.

What to Expect in CAT

CAT is time-limited, typically 16-24 sessions. This boundary is considered important - it provides focus and mirrors real-life endings, which can be worked with therapeutically.

The therapy unfolds in phases:

Reformulation (early sessions): Building a shared understanding of your patterns, culminating in the reformulation letter and diagram.

Recognition and revision (middle sessions): Learning to notice patterns as they happen and experimenting with different responses.

Ending (final sessions): Preparing for the end of therapy, exchanging “goodbye letters” that acknowledge what’s been learned and what remains to work on.

Between sessions, you’ll be encouraged to notice your patterns in daily life, using the tools you’ve developed to recognise and name them.

Who Benefits from CAT

CAT is particularly helpful for:

• Repeating patterns in relationships that you can’t seem to break
• Feeling “stuck” in ways you don’t fully understand
• Long-standing emotional difficulties
• Self-defeating behaviours
• Those who want to understand themselves more deeply
• People who’ve found previous therapy helpful but haven’t achieved lasting change

Seeing Yourself Clearly

There’s something powerful about having your patterns clearly mapped and reflected back to you. Many people find the reformulation process itself therapeutic - finally having words and images for experiences that have felt confusing or shameful.

Get in touch to discuss whether CAT might help you.