Is therapy right for me?

Therapy is for people who want to work with a professional who will offer help to understand themselves better and make the positive changes they decide to make, with the aim of living a better life.

We will meet to discuss what you want and what might be the most helpful way forward. Therapy can be offered when someone experiences illness, stress and/or distress, but also when someone has positive well-being, and wants to make effective changes to further enhance their well-being. You need to have a suitably experienced and skilled therapist who offers help in a way that suits you. We know from research that successful therapy involves you and your therapist building an effective collaborative, confidential, and trusting relationship; the effectiveness of this relationship is a strong predictor of the outcome of therapy. CAT offers guidance to help both of us collaborate in the joint endeavour of developing a successful working relationship.

For therapy to be helpful for you it is important that you want to (and are ready to) work on developing a joint psychological understanding of what’s going on for you and to use this understanding to guide you to decide to make positive changes. Therapy involves commitment and for therapy to be effective you need to prioritise time for therapy sessions and the work that comes from the sessions. For example, you need to be motivated to make time to work on tasks (that you and your therapist agree are useful for you) both in the sessions and between the therapy sessions.
We know that meeting regularly with someone who listens and is kind is not enough to make effective positive changes that last. Therapy involves much more than this and to be as effective as possible you need to commit to the therapy process. It is important for you to choose the right time for therapy with this commitment in mind.

Sometimes people think that seeing a therapist involves the therapist doing something to make the changes happen for them (as if the therapist does something to you and then things are sorted). However, therapy is an active process and involves making the changes yourself that you decide to make, guided by the joint understanding developed with the therapist and supported by the therapist.

It is common that someone can be unhappy and want things to be different, but for many reasons, it isn’t the right time for them to work on changing anything. Often people are nervous about making changes. However, CAT is designed to support you with these steps, so that change is as effective and straightforward as possible. Only you can decide if you are ready to work on change.