ICS provides a cognitive science based rationale for:
- The disjunction between thought and emotion
- The centrality of arousal in understanding mental health difficulties
- Attachment and relationship as central to the self and the therapeutic process
- The role of mindfulness in providing a way into the process between thought, emotion and behaviour
- Deconstructing diagnosis (see book chapter on coping mechanisms)
Training Workshops
Details of CCC training workshops can be tailored to particular services — for instance teams, or NHS Talking Therapy services working in conjunction with CMHTs; groups composed mainly of therapists, or mainly of nurses and other staff groups. The linked document covers training for teams.
I deliver a number of other workshops:
- Self and Spirituality – A holistic perspective grounded in cognitive science and lived experience
- The Dynamics of Running Groups
- Shaping Therapy
- Managing Difficult Conversations
COMPREHEND, COPE AND CONNECT (CCC)
Third Wave CBT Integration for Individuals and Teams. Isabel Clarke and Hazel Nicholls. Routledge, January 2018.
Powerpoint Introduction to this initiative which incorporates The Emotion Focused Formulation Approach (EFFA).
CCC is a therapy approach that starts with collaborative, individual formulation. It is flexible and intuitively understandable, applicable across diagnosis.
A Relational Approach
Our very being is founded in relationship. Experience and felt sense are at the heart of the approach and ‘symptoms’ are viewed as understandable, but ultimately self defeating, ways of coping with an intolerable internal state.
Theoretical Background
CCC represents an integration of third wave CBT approaches on the foundation of the Interacting Cognitive Subsystems (ICS) model (Teasdale and Barnard 1993). This underlies DBT’s States of Mind diagram of Reasonable and Emotional Mind.
Applications of CCC
Acute services – inpatient and community (see CBT for the Acute Care Pathway)
- Making Sense of Crisis. A one or two day training package to introduce this approach to a service.
- The Emotion Focused Formulation Approach: bridging individual and team formulation. (Clarke, I. (2015). Clinical Psychology Forum 275. 28-33).
Primary Care (IAPT) – The italk Hampshire IAPT service used CCC/EFFA for patients with problems exacerbated by complex trauma.
Culturally Adapted Therapy – A project linking centres in Pakistan, Canada and Southampton.