Coping Cat Treatment: What It Is And How It Is Applied To Children With Anxiety
Over the last few years, the number of cases of anxiety has increased considerably, especially as a result of the pandemic triggered by Covid-19. And there is another pandemic that is mental health, with anxiety disorder being one of the most prevalent, affecting both adults and children.
In order to treat anxiety in children, there is Coping Cat treatment, a psychological treatment for anxiety, framed within the cognitive-behavioral model, which uses language adapted for children so that they can understand what anxiety is and how to treat it. How can they cope?
In this article we will see what the Coping Cat treatment consists of. and how it should be used.
The Coping Cat treatment, created by Dr. Phillip Kendall in the 90s, consists of a psychological intervention program that is framed within the cognitive-behavioral model for the treatment of a series of diverse anxiety problems in children aged between 7 and 13 years. This program is developed over 16 sessions through which the child must understand her anxiety and also develop a series of skills and strategies to cope with that anxiety.
This treatment is used to address various anxiety disorders with children (for example, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, or separation anxiety disorder).
It should be noted that the Coping Cat treatment has a manual that explains in detail how this program should be carried out step by step, based on the premise that the psychologist must use language that adapts to children, especially with the little ones, since as we have said it can be applied from 7 years old.
Main objectives of the Coping Cat program
Below we will briefly explain what the fundamental objectives of the Coping Cat treatment are when it comes to addressing various anxiety problems that children suffer from.
The first objective is help the child with whom the treatment is carried out be able to recognize their anxiety symptoms from different points such as the sensations in the body, the emotions felt and the thoughts that arise in your mind when you feel anxiety.
Secondly, the child must be helped to identify the situations that cause anxiety, which causes so much discomfortso that you are also aware of how you normally act in these situations and thus can evaluate whether the way you normally behave helps you cope with anxiety or really harms you even more.
Once the above has been achieved, the psychologist must help the child develop and train a series of strategies that allow him to be able to face and manage the anxiety he suffers.
Finally, another of the fundamental objectives of the Coping Cat treatment would be help the child learn to evaluate his or her own way of behaving in situations that cause anxiety and also teach him to reinforce himself in some way when his behavior is appropriate and allows him to cope with the situations that caused him anxiety so that this way of coping is maintained in the long term.
How is Coping Cat treatment applied?
To apply the Coping Cat treatment, a booklet is used that tells the story of a cat. On the first page the cat who is the protagonist of the story appears introducing himself before telling his story.
In summary, the psychologist must tell him the story of the cat explaining that the cat had been adopted and that when he arrived at the new house with his new family he was very afraid of being in an unknown place, so he used to hide under the sofa; However, the cat ended up learning to manage that fear.
As we can see, this story serves as an example for the child to see that if the cat managed to face and manage the fear he felt when living in a new home, he can also manage to manage his anxiety and confront the situations that trigger it. effective.
The manual used for the Coping Cat treatment is structured in two main parts: the first part is psychoeducation, which is aimed at training the skills that the child must learn during the sessions in a therapeutic context; while the second part, the exposition, is focused on the practice of those skills in a real context.
As we can see, the Coping Cat treatment is a way to address anxiety disorders in children in a way that can be funwithout it becoming traumatic for him with the aim that at the end of the treatment the child has the necessary skills and enough confidence to get going when he needs it.
Main techniques used in Coping Cat treatment
The Coping Cat treatment manual describes various cognitive-behavioral techniques that have high scientific evidence for treating anxiety problems. Let’s see below what are the main techniques used in this treatment.
1. Modeling
Modeling is one of the fundamental techniques of the Coping Cat treatment, since it is the psychologist who must be in charge of showing the child how to put into practice the skills that have been acquired throughout the anxiety treatment program.
Therefore, The therapist must previously act as a model in order to show the child how he should behave in the situation he fears.being a mode of observational learning that has proven to be quite effective.
2. Relaxation techniques
In the Coping Cat treatment, relaxation techniques are used with the aim of teaching the child to control anxiety levels and also be able to reduce them, since It is essential that you be in a state of calm when facing feared situations..
Therefore, relaxation techniques will help the child learn to manage their own activation levels and ensure that they decrease when they are too high due to the anxiety suffered at certain times.
Related article: “6 easy relaxation techniques to combat stress”
Role-playing is another technique used during the Coping Cat treatment program that should be used to rehearse how to effectively deal with feared situations before facing them in real life, being a safe way to train these skills so that the child is prepared when facing these situations in a real context.
4. Exposure techniques
During the Coping Cat treatment program, it is important that exposure techniques are used so that the child gradually faces those situations that generate anxiety. Therefore, as he acquires the tools to control discomfort and to know how to act in feared situations, he gradually exposes himself to those feared situations.
The way to carry out this technique, being gradual, is that the child can move on to the next situation (one that generates a little more anxiety) when you have managed to remain in a situation having significantly reduced anxiety levels with respect to the initial levels, so that now the situation does not generate discomfort, doing this every once in a situation that generated higher levels of anxiety.
You may be interested: “Exposure therapy with response prevention: what it is and how it is used”
5. Self-instruction training
Self-instruction training serves to teach the child to direct himself through messages that instill motivation and support, leading the child in the right direction when he or she has to face the situation that generates that anxiety.
6. Reinforcement
Finally, another of the techniques that are most commonly used during Coping Cat treatment for anxiety in children is reinforcement, which serves to reinforce each step that the child takes in the correct direction that allows them to overcome their fears. Therefore, every progress that the child makes must be reinforced.
