Christine Padesky and Kathleen Mooney’s Strengths-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

CHRISTINE A. PADESKY (b. 1953)

The main idea of SB-CBT is that active incorporation of client strengths encourages clients to engage more fully in therapy and often provides avenues for change that otherwise would be missed.

Basic Principles of Strengths-Based CBT

 

Like cognitive therapy, SB-CBT is empirically based. This means that

(1) therapists should be knowledgeable about evidence-based approaches pertaining to client issues discussed in therapy

(2) clients are asked to make observations and describe  the details of their life experiences so what is developed in therapy is based in the real data of clients’ lives

(3) therapists and clients collaborate in testing beliefs and  experimenting with new behaviors to see if they help achieve desired goals.

SB-CBT therapists

help clients develop and construct new positive ways of interacting in the world. The SB-CBT model for building and strengthening personal resilience can be used on its own or integrated with another evidenced-based CBT treatment for a diagnostic disorder.

“NEW Paradigm,”

SB-CBT therapists help clients co-create a  which is their vision of how they would like to be and how they would like the difficult area of their life to be.

The Client–Therapist Relationship

 

SB-CBT therapists are collaborative, active, here and-now focused, and client-centered. SB-CBT therapists are encouraging allies of their clients and need to be genuine, caring, and willing to engage with clients as full human beings in both struggles and successes.

 

SB-CBT practitioners ask clients for imagery and metaphors to describe their experiences, both positive and negative.

Applications of Strengths-Based CBT

Three current applications for SB-CBT 

areas

(1) an add-on for classic CBT

(2) a four-step model to build resilience and other positive qualities

(3) the NEW Paradigm for chronic difficulties and personality disorders.

add-on to classic 

CBT when clients come to therapy with goals to reduce problematic moods (depression, anxiety, anger), behaviors (eating disorders, substance misuse) or

other difficulties (psychoses, hypochondriasis) for which there are well-established

and effective CBT protocols.

The four-step model to build resilience provides a template for building positive

qualities (Padesky & Mooney, 2012). Their four steps are:

(1) search

(2) construct

(3) apply

(4) practice

These everyday activities clients are motivated to do are areas of strength.

This search for strengths is the first step in their model.

 

The second step is to discover what obstacles clients encounter while doing these activities and how they manage these obstacles. 

 

The third step involves the therapist helping

 

The fourth stage involves Joseph conducting a series of dating experiments while he practices maintaining a focus on resilience.

The four steps of this model are:

(1) Conceptualize the OLD System of operating and help clients understand they do things “for good reasons,”

(2) construct NEW systems of how

clients would like to be

(3) strengthen the NEW using behavioral experiments to try on NEW ways of being and edit them as needed

(4) relapse management