The CBT Program at Wellspring Academies
Key components of the CBT Program at Wellspring include stimulus control, goal-setting, self-monitoring, decisional counseling, rational emotive therapy, relapse prevention training, positive focusing and stress management.
These techniques help students develop the “supernormal” skills and emotional control they need in order to enhance their self-regulatory skills, manage their environments and stay highly committed to success. We think of this approach as coaching the students to view themselves as “athletes in training.” Athletes have to use super-normal self-regulatory skills to transform their bodies. So do weight controllers. This perspective helps students feel empowered, for it inspires them to think of themselves as athletes in training.
Students have 3-5 CBT sessions per week with Wellspring therapists (called “Behavioral Coaches” at school). Sessions are one-on-one as well as in a group setting. Students write out specific goals during each session (copy kept by participant and behavioral coach), self-monitor food and activities daily, journal daily and read excerpts from books and handouts.
A typical CBT session is as follows:
- Review of each student’s accomplishments in the prior day(s). The tone of these reviews will be consistently positive, oriented to problem solving and reinforcement of specific accomplishments.
- Integration of a CBT/weight control topic, such as stimulus control, 5-step problem solving, decisional counseling and stress management/coping.
- Quiz (on readings assigned in the prior session).
- Assignment of new readings.
- Review of behavioral contracts (goals).
Individual sessions also review progress and self-monitoring journals, focusing on the details of each student’s efforts.
