The Reciprocal Role Deck
Bring Your CAT Sessions to Life - Explore Reciprocal Roles, name Intolerable Emotions, and Recognise Patterns with the Reciprocal Role Deck
Moving Beyond the Hesitation of Mapping
The Reciprocal Role Deck is a clear, flexible tool designed to help therapists, supervisors and teams make sense of the relational patterns that shape complex clinical work.
Whether you’re reformulating, supervising, teaching or running reflective practice: naming reciprocal roles can feel daunting, especially for people new to the Cognitive Analytic Therapy model. When pressure builds to get the formulation right, clinical fluidity stalls.
The Reciprocal Role Deck acts as an external tool. By moving the language of CAT out of the abstract and onto physical cards, you create a tangible, collaborative space where patterns can be sorted, arranged, and explored in real-time.
How it helps
In Individual Therapy
Co-Create Reformulations: Let your clients physically touch, move, sort, or reject cards. It turns formulation into a collaborative process rather than an professional assessment, lowering defenses and deepening insight.
Track the Session Process: Place cards between you and your client to help visually name subtle enactments or reciprocal role shifts the moment it occurs in the room.
In Supervision & Case Management
Scaffold Learning: Perfect for supervision groups. Use the cards to multi-map a complex case dynamically on a table, allowing peer groups to test out different configurations before committing them to paper.
Unstick Difficult Cases: When a case feels stuck in a loop, layout the cards to identify hidden snags, traps, or dilemmas that might be disrupting the therapeutic alliance.
In Teaching & Training
Active, Experiential Learning: Move away from passive PowerPoint lectures. The reciprocal role deck transforms abstract relational theory into a tactile, interactive classroom exercise, allowing students to physically manipulate variables as they learn the mechanics of CAT mapping.
Lower the barrier to getting started: Trainees often experience intense pressure to formulate "perfectly" on a blank page. Utilising the cards lowers the stakes, encouraging experimentation, collaborative dialogue, and immediate conceptual clarity during group case-formulation exercises.
What's inside:
(Upgraded & Expanded for Version 2)
Based on real-world training feedback from over 500 delegates, Version 2 has been comprehensively expanded to offer deeper therapeutic utility and includes:
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Core Reciprocal Roles: Clear, accessible language cards representing common parent-child and relational dynamics.
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NEW: Intolerable Emotions Cards: Dedicated cards to map the precise affective states that drive stuck patterns.
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NEW: CAT Traps, Dilemmas, and Snags: Physical cards to help highlight procedural traps, letting you construct rudimentary maps on any flat surface.
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Dry-Wipe Versatility: Includes blank, heavy-duty gloss cards. Use a dry-wipe pen to co-create entirely bespoke roles unique to your client's idiosyncratic language.
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Storage Box: Built to withstand the daily wear-and-tear of a clinic bag or busy community rotation.
How it works
The Reciprocal Role Deck is intuitive and flexible—simply draw and explore the cards to uncover relational patterns, emotions, and roles.
A short series of instructional videos will be coming soon, showing practical ways to introduce the cards, facilitate discussions, and adapt exercises across therapy, supervision, and training settings.
What our existing customers have to say
The Ultimate CAT Trainee Bundle:
Save on the Complete System
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Accelerate your development. Get The Reciprocal Role Deck bundled alongside 8 copies of My Cognitive Analytic Therapy Diary and access to our on-demand Introductory Course to CAT.
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Best value for individual students, course cohorts, and supervised trainees.
Save £32.90