Are you ready for positive cognitive behavioral therapy?

Recent decades have witnessed the development of competency-based, collaborative approaches to psychotherapy. Positive CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) offers the best constructive vision to date of what CBT looks like when joined with Positive Psychology and Solution Focused Brief Therapy. Positive CBT shifts the focus of therapy from what is wrong with clients to what is right with them, and from what is not working to what is. Two of its applications are the Positive Functional Behavior Analysis and the upward arrow technique, both described in this article. Positive CBT aims at improving the well-being of clients and therapists, drawing on research and applications from Positive Psychology and Solution-Focused Brief Therapy. Research is necessary to find out how Positive CBT is distinct from, can be combined with or may be even superior to traditional CBT.