ABSTRACT
‘Challenging’ behaviour challenges us. It challenges carers to know what to do, think, feel and how to respond to the people they care for. Services often respond in ways that aim to contain and control behaviour, responses that are restrictive and often unhelpful, and rarely lead to therapeutic change.
A cognitive analytic reformulation that expresses these common reactions to challenge as an understandable response to stress is described. We then describe ways in which this reformulation can be used to support stressed individuals, teams and organisations and enable them to find other ways of responding to ‘challenging behaviour’ that deescalate the cycle.
The chapter focuses on sources of stress that reinforce unhelpful and ‘challenging’ ways of responding to service users, and asks the question, who is challenging who? A number of case studies illustrate the material throughout and describe how the approach can be used in a number of settings including social care, mental health, learning disability and medium-secure services. The chapter offers the CAT-informed practitioner a way of compassionately reformulating situations when they and those they support are challenged.
