NeuroAffective-CBT®: Advancing the Frontiers of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy

Understanding the current clinical context

In a 2018 article “CBT, what’s all the fuss about“, Daniel Mirea highlights the ongoing confusion surrounding the mental health treatment landscape. Despite the years that have passed since, the core issues persist, individuals struggling with mental health continue to feel uncertain about what they need, what treatment options are available, and what their prognosis might look like. This ambiguity makes it difficult for many to navigate the complex world of psychotherapy and psychological support, leaving them unsure about the most appropriate course of action for their well-being.

The Emergence of NA-CBT  in parallel with Integrative-CBT 

Against this backdrop, Integrative Cognitive-Behavioural Therapies (I-CBT) have emerged as a potential “fourth wave” in the evolution of CBT which would eventually be overshadowed by the 2019 pandemic. Nonetheless, I-CBT points to a family of contemporary therapeutic approaches that retain the evidence-based strengths of traditional CBT while expanding its scope to address the multifaceted nature of modern psychological suffering.

The term “Integrative-CBT” was first introduced in 2017 at the 9th International Congress of Cognitive Therapy, held at Babeș-Bolyai University in Transylvania. The conference, attended by renowned clinicians and psychologists, placed particular focus on the emerging influence of digital technology on psychotherapy. In hindsight, this focus was prescient: within two years, a global pandemic would push psychotherapy almost exclusively online, redefining practices such as in vivo exposure and accelerating the need for flexible, digitally adaptable therapeutic approaches. Unfortunately, subsequent global challenges, including the pandemic and ongoing geopolitical unrest, have diverted attention from the development and dissemination of I-CBT, despite its relevance. These therapies emphasize flexibility, technological integration, and responsiveness to new psychosocial stressors. Rather than being strictly diagnosis-driven, I-CBT, like NeuroAffective-CBT® (aka NA-CBT®), incorporates techniques from various traditions, neuroscience, and biopsychosocial models to respond to the full spectrum of human emotional experience.

A defining feature of I-CBT, and particularly NA-CBT, is the recognition of the profound psychological impact of the digital age and artificial intelligence. On one hand, technology enables new learning styles – essential for neuroplasticity (Uddin, L. Q. , 2021), faster research, enhanced communication, and remote therapeutic. On the other, it introduces new stressors, chronic multitasking, information overload, constant social comparison, and reduced in-person social interaction, that can impair emotion regulation, attention, and self-worth.

The digital environment has reshaped how individuals process information, connect socially, and experience emotion. For example, social media exposure has been linked to chronic self-criticism and low self-esteem, while digital overstimulation is associated with anxiety and attention dysregulation. Moreover, reduced in-person interaction weakens opportunities for affective mirroring and co-regulation, both essential to empathy development and emotional resilience. These challenges are particularly pronounced among younger populations and demand a therapeutic response that is both emotionally attuned and digitally aware. NA-CBT incorporates these realities into its treatment strategies, recognising that a rigid medical disease model (assess + diagnose + treat) has many shortcomings but also, building emotional resilience in a digitally saturated world requires new skills and frameworks. Studies by Twenge & Campbell (2018) and Elhai, Levine, & Hall (2017) have demonstrated clear links between smartphone use, social media exposure, depressive symptoms, and impaired affect regulation. Complex emotions such as shame, guilt, self-hatred can be both generated and perpetuated by online interactions.

Further empirical evidence supports the link between digital overuse and impaired self-regulation, a key target of NA‑CBT’s digital-awareness interventions. For example, excessive smartphone use has been shown to impair executive functioning, increase mind-wandering, and elevate the frequency of cognitive failures, factors closely tied to negative mood symptoms and attention problems in students (Zheng et al., 2023). Additionally, mobile phone addiction has been associated with significant emotion regulation difficulties, including diminished effectiveness in strategies like cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression (Zhou et al., 2022; Liu et al., 2023; Elhai et al., 2017). These findings highlight the need for therapy models like NA‑CBT to incorporate digital literacy and self-regulation as foundational treatment components.

The Contribution of NA-CBT

It is now more clear than ever, that the world is evolving at a fast pace due to human ingenuity and creativity. Innovation in the digital, engineering and artificial intelligence  aim to make our life interesting and convenient but with significant hidden costs.

NeuroAffective-CBT, developed by Daniel Mirea, predates the formal emergence of the I-CBT movement but exemplifies its core principles. NA-CBT offers a sophisticated, integrative model that blends traditional CBT methods with insights from neuroscience, affect theory, biology and somatic psychology. What distinguishes NA-CBT is its particular focus on emotional states that are difficult to articulate or categorize, especially shame-based experiences such as chronic shame and guilt, self-loathing, and feelings of worthlessness. These states often lie outside the reach of traditional, diagnosis-oriented CBT protocols. NA-CBT addresses this gap by integrating cognitive and behavioural methods with an understanding of brain-based emotional processes, body-mind feedback loops, and flexible, modular treatment planning adapted to a new digital age.

The model is designed to meet clients where they are emotionally, neurologically, and behaviourally. Rather than forcing individuals into rigid diagnostic boxes, NA-CBT builds a therapeutic framework around lived emotional realities, drawing on somatic techniques, empathic mentalisation, and trauma-informed practices. The result is a highly adaptable and emotionally resonant approach that supports deep and lasting change.

As the pace of innovation accelerates and continues to reshape human psychology, therapeutic models must evolve accordingly. NA-CBT represents a forward-looking response to this need, one that honors the scientific roots of CBT while embracing the complexity of contemporary emotional life. By addressing the unique challenges of a hyperconnected, overstimulated world, NA-CBT offers clinicians a powerful tool for guiding clients toward emotional integration and psychological well-being.

The Intersection of Thought, Emotion, Behaviour and Biology

Cognitive-Behavioural methods: traditional CBT focuses on the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, with an emphasis on identifying and changing cognitive distortions and maladaptive behaviours. CBT helps individuals become more aware of their thought patterns and how they affect emotional and behavioural responses. NA-CBT continues to utilise these core principles but seeks to go beyond the limitations of traditional CBT by incorporating additional approaches and insights from the fields of neurobiology and physiology in particular.

The Neurobiology and Neuroaffective Understanding

NA-CBT draws upon contemporary neuroscience, attachment theory, and even mammalian behavioural studies to better understand how complex or “undiagnosable” emotions are processed in the brain and body. Emotions such as shame, guilt, and self-loathing often lie beneath the surface of diagnosable disorders but exert a powerful influence on behaviour, physiology, and well-being. These emotional states are not merely psychological phenomena, they are deeply embodied experiences that activate specific brain structures (e.g., the amygdala), engage neurochemical responses, and produce measurable physiological changes.

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The Brain’s Core Function: Predict and Protect

At the heart of the brain’s function is a singular goal: survival. The brain works continuously and in close partnership with the mind to anticipate threats and initiate behaviours that keep the organism safe. It does this through prediction, detecting patterns, forecasting danger, and triggering the release of emotional signals to prepare the body for action. In this sense, emotions are not abstract feelings, they are the brain’s calls for specific, adaptive behaviours. For example, fear prompts avoidance or escape; anger prepares the body for confrontation; sadness signals loss and seeks social support.

Understanding Shame and Guilt as Adaptive

While fear and anger are commonly addressed in psychotherapy, NA-CBT pays particular attention to less obvious and often overlooked emotions such as shame and guilt. These emotions are not dysfunctional by default, in fact, they serve critical self-regulatory functions.

Take shame, for example. It acts as a powerful internal alarm, designed to:

• Reduce arousal in overwhelming social situations

• Inhibit actions that might lead to exclusion or danger

• Motivate behavioural correction in the service of group belonging

The experience of shame, “I can’t bear this feeling; I must do something to stop it”, often results in immediate, sometimes maladaptive, actions aimed at relief or concealment. Understanding this emotional mechanism allows therapists to trace the link between affect and behaviour, and to intervene with more precision. NA-CBT recognises that effective therapy cannot rely solely on cognitive restructuring. While important, cognitive work must be integrated with emotional and biological understanding. By working with both mind and body, NA-CBT can address the physiological roots of emotion, Normalise negative affect as adaptive rather than pathological and provide interventions that regulate both neurobiology and behaviour. This comprehensive approach enables clients to build true emotional resilience, not by avoiding difficult emotions, but by integrating and responding to them adaptively.

“Emotions are not problems to be solved; they are messages to be  understood. NA-CBT helps decode these messages and transform them into healing”.

Shame-Based Disorders and Pervasive Emotional Challenges

A central focus of NA-CBT is the treatment of shame-based disorders, conditions often underrepresented or vaguely defined in clinical literature, yet deeply debilitating in practice. These disorders are characterised by persistent feelings of inadequacy, self-blame, self-loathing, or worthlessness. They may not fit neatly within traditional diagnostic categories, yet they underlie many presentations seen in therapy, including depression, anxiety, trauma-related symptoms, and personality difficulties. Such emotional states are often resistant to traditional CBT, as they stem from complex, long-standing affective patterns that are deeply embedded in the client’s emotional memory and physiological response systems. These patterns are frequently shaped by early attachment experiences, relational trauma, or repeated interpersonal invalidation.

NA-CBT responds to these challenges by targeting the neuroaffective dimension of shame-based disorders, addressing both emotional experience and its biological underpinnings.

Therapy protocols integrate:

• New learning and learning experiences aiming to enhances cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility may be understood as the ability to adapt your thinking and behaviour when situations change, to shift between tasks, or to view problems from multiple perspectives. Research shows that novel learning stimulates brain plasticity, which strengthens the neural networks involved in executive functions, like attention control, working memory, and problem-solving (Liu, C. L. et al. , 2023; Gkintoni E. et al., 2025; Uddin, L. Q. , 2021).
• Psychoeducation (for example, life traps or education on hormones and nervous system regulation).

• Cognitive restructuring of toxic beliefs (e.g., “I’m unlovable,” “I’m defective”).

• Emotion regulation strategies tailored to shame and guilt or unwanted emotional experiences (identified outside of a diagnosable disorder).

• Body-based and sensory practices aiming to interrupt stress responses and build interoceptive awareness.

• Lifestyle interventions such as basic sleep hygiene, intense physical exercise and movement alongside relaxation, nutritional support and supplementation.

These combined approaches help clients regulate physiological stress more effectively and respond to emotional triggers, such as perceived rejection, failure, or abandonment, with greater resilience and clarity.

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Evidence-Based Practices and Adaptability

NA-CBT is firmly grounded in the principles of evidence-based practice, drawing from a wide body of psychological and neuroscientific research to inform its methods. Techniques used within NA-CBT are supported by outcome studies in cognitive and behavioural therapy, research on affect regulation and trauma treatment, advances in neurobiology, particularly regarding neuroplasticity, emotional circuitry, and stress physiology. Yet what makes NA-CBT distinctive is not only its foundation in science but its capacity to evolve. As research continues to illuminate the intricacies of brain function and emotional processing, NA-CBT integrates these findings into its model. For example:

• Neuroplasticity research informs how clients can rewire entrenched emotional patterns through repetition and emotional safety

• Attachment and affective neuroscience guide relational techniques like empathic mentalisation

• Studies on self-regulation and the autonomic nervous system shape interventions such as breathwork, attention-shifting, and somatic tracking

This adaptability ensures that NA-CBT remains clinically relevant and scientifically informed, offering practitioners and clients a model that is responsive to the complexity of modern psychological suffering. 

“Rather than applying a fixed protocol to a static diagnosis, NA-CBT is a living, integrative model, one that grows in alignment with the science of healing and the realities of lived human emotion.”

Key Characteristics of NeuroAffective-CBT

NeuroAffective-CBT  is a transdiagnostic-modular therapeutic model that has been developed and refined over the last 20 years by Daniel Mirea an experienced behavioural therapist who successfully integrates his broad academic and professional experience to fill a void and, help victims of various psychological problems difficult to diagnose. The approach emerged from a recognition of the limitations in existing diagnostic frameworks, such as the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and ICD (International Classification of Diseases), particularly when it comes to addressing chronic mental health conditions that don’t fit neatly into specific diagnostic categories.

As such, the development of NA-CBT was driven by the need for a therapeutic model that could better understand and respond to individuals facing chronic mental health conditions that were transdiagnostic in nature. These conditions often involve deeply rooted emotions or affective experiences like shame, guilt or low self-esteem, that are difficult to categorise or diagnose using traditional psychiatric frameworks. In most cases, the network of maintaining factors problems that underlie these conditions are complex and confusing, making them challenging to address via self-help methods or conventional treatments.

It is important to note that in NeuroAffective-CBT, the terms affect and emotion are used interchangeably to describe biologically driven responses that influence behaviour and internal states. These are distinct from feelings, which are the conscious, often linguistic representations or interpretations of affective experiences essentially, the “symptom” or subjective reflection of an underlying emotional state.  Such complex psychosomatic reactions are often difficult to articulate, particularly because the English language lacks the vocabulary to fully capture their nuance. For instance, certain cultures, such as Japanese, have precise words for emotions that remain unnamed in English, such as the emotion experienced after receiving a bad haircut. These nuanced, hard-to-translate emotional states often fall under broader experiential categories like low self-esteem, and may manifest as shame, self-loathing, or self-disgust—core affective experiences frequently addressed in NA-CBT.

On the other hand, psychotherapists may inadvertently contribute to client confusion by overestimating the average person’s understanding of emotional processes, such as the distinction between thoughts, emotions, and feelings. When clinicians avoid offering clear guidance or psychoeducation, despite it being a cornerstone of the cognitive and behavioural tradition, they risk reinforcing emotional uncertainty. This lack of clarity can unintentionally amplify distressing or poorly understood emotional experiences.

Because NA-CBT is not confined to treating a specific diagnosis and instead it opts for a transdiagnostic journey, the therapy plan addresses a broader range of emotional and psychological struggles that affect not only the sufferer but also those directly involved with them; for example someone that feels unattractive and not capable of sexual appreciation avoids the partner and any level of intimacy, in fear of rejection and disappointment. Over time the partner ends up feels equally unwanted and rejected – distance and lack of intimacy between the two, becomes the new normality. With such cases, the partner would also have to be involved in the therapeutic plan.

The approach is especially useful for individuals who experience a range of overlapping symptoms that cannot be fully explained by a single condition, such as anxiety, depression, trauma, or personality disorders. Transdiagnostic approaches were in fact promoted by clinicians like Meichenbaum, Beck, Barlow or Burns during the second-wave of CBT development in response to a range of symptoms that often cross the boundaries of a tight and specific diagnostic criteria. NA-CBT supports these views and attempts to further promote the notion that affective experiences such as shame, self-disgust or low self-esteem are at times inconsistent with DSM/ICD categories by displaying symptoms from both the hypo- and hyper-arousal spectrum and in fact low self-esteem can be observed in a range of categorised pathologies such as major depressive disorder, social anxiety, personality disorders, not to mention PTSD.

Modular framework

One of the defining features of NeuroAffective-CBT is its modular structure. Rather than following a fixed sequence of treatment stages, NA-CBT divides the therapeutic journey into flexible, interlocking modules. These modules, Assessment, Psychoeducation and Motivation, Physical Strengthening, Integrated-Self Development, Coping Skills and Regulation, and Consolidation and Future Planning, can be tailored to the individual’s clinical presentation, emotional needs, and capacity for learning.

 

This modular design offers several advantages:

• Customisation: Interventions can be adjusted to match the client’s readiness, goals, and specific psychological challenges.
• Fluid sequencing: Modules are not linear phases, but intersectable and interchangeable components. For instance, a client may begin therapy with Module 3 (Physical Strengthening) before engaging in Module 2 (Psychoeducation and Motivation), depending on the outcome of the assessment and therapy plan.
• Responsiveness to emerging needs: Therapists can move between modules as clinically indicated. If a client reveals unresolved childhood trauma during module 1, the Assessment phase, it may be therapeutically necessary to engage in trauma integration work (Module 4: Integrated-Self) sooner than planned, before returning to modules focused on resilience-building or psychoeducation.

This flexibility ensures the therapy remains responsive without losing coherence and allows for targeted intervention based on the client’s developmental trajectory within treatment.

For example:

• In the Physical Strengthening module, clients explore the connection between body and emotion. They are encouraged to monitor posture, somatic tension, and physical states, learning how bodily cues both reflect and shape emotional experience. The principle that “the mind instructs the body, and the body instructs the mind” is central here.
• Shame, in particular, may manifest in collapsed posture, restricted movement, or muscle rigidity. Therapists help clients develop awareness of these patterns and use somatic techniques to foster empowerment, energy, and emotional stability.

By working through these modules in either sequence or parallel, depending on the formulation, clients develop deeper internal awareness and greater psychological adaptability. The modular framework of NA-CBT is thus a dynamic map, not a rigid manual: it guides the therapeutic process while allowing for creativity, attunement, and clinical judgement.

Chronic and Complex Emotional Experiences

The model specifically addresses chronic mental health conditions that are often undetected or overlooked in traditional clinical settings. Individuals suffering from these conditions may experience ongoing emotional distress that is not clearly linked to a specific diagnosis. These emotional challenges are often marked by persistent negative affects and recurring stress that can feel unmanageable. Such clients often struggle with shame, self-loathing, guilt, and low self-esteem, making it difficult for them to identify and articulate the emotional roots of their struggles.

Neuroaffective research points out that an integrated or balanced sense-of-self, improvements in confidence and well-being could be achieved through better hormonal regulation and associated learning. This type of research which includes biology and physiology, sleep research, neuroimaging analysis and so on, has influenced CBT treatments over the recent years and continues to shape therapists’ understanding of neuroplasticity, neurotransmitters, hormonal regulation and even the role of gut and microbiome in our mental health.

By incorporating neuroscientific insights, NA-CBT allows individuals to better understand how neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to change and adapt) can be harnessed to help reshape maladaptive emotional responses. The approach focuses on fostering new neural connections that can lead to more positive emotional experiences and improved overall well-being. People who face these chronic conditions may have a history of painful emotional experiences, often with relatively rare breaks of wellness. The difficulty in pinpointing the triggers for emotional distress can make it even harder for these individuals to find relief or solutions. These affective experiences are often complex and intertwined, making it challenging to distinguish clear boundaries between emotions like anger, sadness, fear, and shame. The emotional experience of these individuals is often ambiguous or non-specific, which means that their distress does not always fit neatly within the confines of a conventional diagnosis. This can leave clients feeling lost, misunderstood, and without clear guidance or support.

An overview of the therapy toolkit

Module 1: Assessment and case formulating – this foundational stage is where the therapeutic journey begins, with the primary focus on building trust and establishing a collaborative relationship. It provides the ideal opportunity to introduce some of NA-CBT’s unique conceptual tools, such as “empathic-mentalisation”, a technique for deeply understanding the client’s lived experience, and the “Pendulum Effect”, a dynamic case formulation model that maps the oscillation between affect-driven coping behaviours. 

As with all CBT-based approaches, NA-CBT starts with a comprehensive assessment, not only to identify symptoms and risk factors, but to develop a personalised case formulation that will inform and guide the entire treatment plan. This stage is not optional, it is a core therapeutic condition. Without a clear, collaboratively developed formulation, therapy lacks structure and direction. In NA-CBT, assessment is not merely diagnostic; it is relational, emotional, and deeply attuned to the client’s cognitive, affective, and neurobiological context.

The assessment and case formulation are critical components of the therapeutic process. NA-CBT emphasises that, this initial stage requires detailed, empathic listening with timely sensitive observations, it is perhaps the most important stage in the therapy. Without a thorough assessment and case formulation, therapy lacks direction, “much like steering a boat without a rudder”, a concept famously articulated by Donald Meichenbaum. This initial phase of the NA-CBT process is not simply about understanding the client’s risk factors and maintenance  symptoms and eventually formulating a treatment plan. But it is primarily about enabling a strong therapeutic alliance and establishing a trusting relationship between the therapist and the client. In NA-CBT, this is achieved by using methods unique to this approach, such as empathic-mentalisation which incorporates method-acting techniques like being able to step into client’s world and embody their lived experience, feelings, actions and thoughts. Empathic mentalisation is a term coined by Daniel Mirea to describe therapist’s deep understanding of client’s emotional world and thought processes. This technique helps the therapist to engage with the client in a way that validates their experience, while also facilitating greater self-awareness in the client. It aids in exploring not just the content of thoughts, but the emotional and neurobiological context in which these thoughts arise. This process often means feeling victims’ pain and truly seeing the world though their eyes, crucial in helping a victimised client feel understood, supported, and safe to engage with the difficult therapeutic work ahead.

Building this strong therapeutic relationship during the initial phase of NA-CBT also serves to create a secure and collaborative environment where the client can be open about their difficulties. This relationship is foundational to the effectiveness of the treatment, as it fosters the necessary trust for the client to explore complex and sometimes painful emotional material. Through empathetic mentalisation, the therapist is able to essentially feel client’s psychological pain and align more closely with the client’s lived experience, ensuring that the case formulation is not just a clinical process, but one that reflects the client’s personal, emotional, and psychological world. In this way, NA-CBT integrates empathy and understanding into the therapeutic process, enhancing the overall effectiveness of the treatment and helping clients navigate their emotional challenges more effectively.

 Module 2: Psychoeducation & Motivational Enhancement:

This module marks yet another foundational turning point in NA-CBT, where clients begin to actively engage with the knowledge, insight, and motivation necessary for sustainable emotional growth. The aim is to equip clients with a working understanding of their emotional, cognitive, and physiological patterns, while enhancing self-efficacy, resilience, and readiness for change.

Objectives of Module 2

• Build Insight: Help clients make sense of their psychological experiences using clear, relatable explanations.
• Enhance Self-Efficacy: Foster the belief that they can influence their emotional responses and life outcomes.
• Strengthen Motivation: Reinforce the reasons for seeking change and develop a values-based commitment to the therapy process.
• Develop Problem-Solving Skills: Introduce structured, practical strategies for addressing everyday challenges and emotional setbacks.

Core Components

1. Tailored Psychoeducation
   • Clients are introduced to basic neurobiological and psychological concepts (e.g., the stress response, emotion regulation, cognitive distortions, affective loops).
   • Information is personalised, not generic: explanations are linked directly to the client’s case formulation and symptoms (e.g., understanding shame as a self-regulatory emotion, or avoidance as a short-term coping strategy that reinforces anxiety).
   • This empowers clients to understand that their experiences are not “pathological,” but meaningful, predictable, and modifiable.
2. Clarifying Thoughts vs. Emotions vs. Feelings
   • Many clients enter therapy without a clear understanding of the differences between these core concepts.
   • The therapist helps them disentangle cognitive processes from emotional and somatic experiences, increasing emotional literacy.
   • Exercises may include labelling emotions accurately, distinguishing feelings from judgments, or tracking internal responses to interpersonal triggers.
3. Values Clarification & Motivational Mapping
   • Clients identify what truly matters to them, relationships, creativity, safety, achievement and, map out how their current emotional difficulties interfere with those values. Learning to live life “as if “… the opposite of what the internalised shame is suggesting: “I am capable of receiving appreciation”. 
   • Therapists may use tools such as motivational interviewing techniques, the “Values Compass,” or structured reflection to enhance intrinsic motivation.
   • This creates a purpose-driven rationale for treatment: “I’m not just managing anxiety; I’m learning to live a fuller, more aligned life.”
4. Expectancy and Hope Building
   • Hope is a clinically relevant predictor of engagement and outcome.
   • The therapist fosters hope by explaining neuroplasticity (i.e., the brain can change), the evidence-base of CBT principles, and by reinforcing early wins or shifts in awareness.
5. Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills
   • Clients learn to identify avoidant or impulsive patterns and replace them with structured, proactive approaches.
   • Techniques may include cost-benefit analysis, or structured decision trees.
   • As they practice solving real-life issues in therapy, their sense of competence and autonomy increases.

Therapist Role and Therapeutic Tone

• The therapist takes a collaborative but directive role, offering clear information, compassionate feedback, and concrete strategies.
• Therapeutic communication is normalising, hopeful, and validating, balancing scientific explanation with empathy.
• Frequent check-ins ensure the pace, depth, and content of psychoeducation are aligned with the client’s cognitive and emotional readiness.

“The psychoeducation stage sets the intellectual and motivational groundwork for deeper emotional processing and behavioural change. In NA-CBT, psychoeducation is not an optional add-on, it is a core therapeutic intervention that empowers the client to become an active participant in their healing process.”

Module 3: Physical Strengthening:

“TED’s your best friend!” — your inner life coach,  a symbol of much needed  lifestyle changes.

In NeuroAffective-CBT, physical wellbeing is inseparable from emotional resilience. Module 3 focuses on strengthening the body to support affect regulation and psychological adaptability. To make this concept practical and memorable, NA-CBT introduces TED a simple, symbolic and imaginary guide that clients can use daily to reflect on essential lifestyle habits that directly impact mood and emotional functioning. Drawing inspiration from the popular film character, a loyal and lively teddy bear, TED becomes a metaphorical ally for clients. In therapy sessions, catchphrases like “TED’s your best friend” and “When in doubt, check with TED!” serve as accessible cues to reinforce the importance of routine self-care. TED helps clients remember that small, consistent physical actions can have powerful psychological effects.

Tired (energy levels and sleep deprivation)

Exercising (physical exercises scheduling)

Diet (nutritional habits: drinking & eating)

TED offers more than a checklist, it encourages self-monitoring, fosters self-efficacy, and highlights the role of daily physical care in maintaining emotional regulation and overall mental health.

This acronym serves as a quick and relatable check-in tool:

• Tired: Am I sleep-deprived? Is my energy low?

• Exercise: Have I been active or moved my body at all lately? Was I too ‘static’ at work this week?

• Diet: How well am I eating and hydrating? Have I skipped meals or relied on comfort foods? Did I have enough water or too many sugary and caffein drinks? What about alcohol in the evening? How many shots are in a ‘night cap’?

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Clinical purpose and supporting evidence for TED

• Improve affect regulation through better sleep, exercise, and nutrition

• Build resilience by supporting the body’s stress response system

• Enhance self-appreciation through embodiment and physical awareness

• Boost immunity and emotional energy by addressing biological needs

• Prevent or reduce dysregulation by managing known physiological risk factors

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One of the most compelling features of NA‑CBT is the TED module focusing on Tiredness, Exercise, Diet, each demonstrating strong empirical links to emotional and cognitive wellbeing:

Tired: Poor sleep disrupts emotion regulation and brain function. Insomnia is closely linked to increased emotional reactivity and reduced cognitive control, heightening vulnerability to mood disorders (Baglioni et al., 2011). Later school start times, which improve sleep quality in adolescents, have been associated with better academic performance and emotional health (Alfonsi et al., 2020).

Exercise: Regular physical activity, particularly aerobic exercise, has been shown to significantly reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. Exercise promotes emotional regulation, lowers cortisol levels, and enhances neuroplasticity—effects comparable in some cases to antidepressant medication or psychotherapy (Kandola et al., 2019; Craft & Perna, 2004).

Diet: A high-quality diet, rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and omega-3 fatty acids, has been linked to better emotional resilience and lower risk of depression. Meta-analyses and large-scale population studies show that dietary patterns directly influence inflammatory markers and neurotransmitter function involved in mood regulation (Lassale et al., 2019; Jacka et al., 2011).

A recent study surveying university students reinforced the combined impact of these three components on mental health: it found that poor sleep, suboptimal diet, and low physical activity were each independently associated with poorer cognitive function, emotional regulation, mood, and stress resilience (p < .05 in all cases); (Schlitt, Downes, Young, & James, 2022).

By embedding empirical findings into the TED framework, NA‑CBT demonstrates both depth and scientific integrity, bridging theory, neuroscience, and lifestyle-based interventions. This strengthens the model’s relevance in addressing emotion regulation challenges, especially shame-based issues, within a comprehensive, evidence-informed treatment structure. 

Therapist’s Role

Therapists introduce TED early in treatment and reinforce its relevance throughout therapy. It is particularly useful when clients report low motivation, mood fluctuations, or physical symptoms linked to emotional states (e.g., fatigue, headaches, irritability). TED provides a non-judgmental starting point for conversations about lifestyle patterns, and a pathway for gently challenging passive or avoidant behaviours.

“By strengthening the body, clients increase their capacity to face emotional challenges with greater stability, confidence, and energy. TED is not just a reminder, it is a practical, empowering companion on the path to wellness”.

Module 4: Development of the ‘Integrated-Self’:  

This stage represents a pivotal phase within NeuroAffective-CBT, as it addresses the profound internal fragmentation commonly observed in individuals affected by trauma, chronic shame, emotional neglect, rejection, or prolonged psychological threat. Many clients enter therapy experiencing a painful division between the person they currently experience themselves to be and the person they believe they “should” be. This split is often maintained by internalised shame, chronic self-criticism, deeply-rooted beliefs (DRBs), and maladaptive protective survival responses organised around the Pendulum-Effect.

Within NA-CBT, the Pendulum-Effect describes oscillation between three principal survival responses:

• Overcompensation
• Avoidance
• Capitulation

Although initially protective, these strategies gradually reinforce chronic shame, hypervigilance, emotional dysregulation, and deeply-rooted beliefs such as:

• “I am defective”
• “I am unlovable”
• “I am weak”
• “I am unsafe”
• “I will fail”
• “Something is wrong with me”

Importantly, NA-CBT conceptualises these deeply-rooted beliefs not simply as abstract cognitive distortions, but as affectively encoded conclusions emerging from repeated emotional experiences, attachment patterns, developmental adversity, and shame-based learning. Over time, these beliefs become embodied organisational principles through which the individual interprets themselves, others, and the world.

The aim of this module is therefore not perfection, emotional suppression, or symptom elimination, but integration: the gradual development of a coherent, emotionally resilient, and psychologically stable sense of self capable of holding vulnerability, pain, strength, and personal meaning within the same autobiographical narrative.

                                  “The goal is not perfection, but wholeness.”

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Cognitive Updating and Self-Reintegration

A central component of this phase involves cognitive updating and self-reintegration. Clients are helped to identify shame-based interpretations, rigid self-conclusions, trauma-linked meanings, and maladaptive assumptions that continue to organise emotional and behavioural responses in the present.

Unlike traditional approaches focused solely on disputing “irrational thoughts,” NA-CBT seeks to understand how these meanings originally developed, why they became emotionally convincing, and how they once functioned as adaptive survival mechanisms.

Clients gradually begin to understand that many self-critical conclusions were shaped under conditions of:

• fear
• humiliation
• rejection
• emotional deprivation
• chronic criticism
• interpersonal threat

Through this process, fragmented aspects of identity begin to reintegrate. Clients learn to experience vulnerability without humiliation, mistakes without collapse, emotional needs without shame, and bodily reactions without catastrophic interpretation.

Reintegration involves helping the individual develop a coherent autobiographical narrative in which painful experiences are acknowledged and contextualised rather than avoided, denied, or continually re-lived as present-tense danger states.

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Self-Acceptance and Self-Compassion

For many traumatised individuals, chronic self-criticism becomes internalised as a misguided form of self-protection:

• “If I criticise myself first, others cannot hurt me.”
• “If I stay perfect, I may avoid rejection.”
• “If I remain hypervigilant, I may remain safe.”

Within NA-CBT®, self-compassion is therefore not introduced as simplistic reassurance or “positive thinking,” but as corrective emotional learning capable of reducing chronic shame activation and hostile self-monitoring.

Clients are gradually encouraged to:

• recognise shame states
• mentalise emotional responses
• tolerate vulnerability
• reduce self-attack
• develop compassionate internal dialogue
• separate identity from traumatic experience

Therapeutic techniques may include:

• guided imagery
• observer-perspective work
• compassionate reframing
• interoceptive awareness
• embodiment practices
• affect regulation strategies
• narrative updating

Over time, the internal dialogue begins shifting:
from attack toward understanding,
from humiliation toward acceptance,
from defectiveness toward shared humanity.

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Trauma Processing and Narrative Reconsolidation

Unresolved trauma frequently disrupts continuity of self. Many individuals report feeling psychologically divided, as though part of them remains emotionally trapped within the original traumatic experience.

Clients often describe:

• “I am not the same person anymore.”
• “Part of me is still stuck there.”
• “My body still reacts as if it is happening now.”

Within NA-CBT, trauma work aims not to erase memory, but to reconsolidate meaning.

Mirea conceptualises this integrative process as:

NeuroAffective Narrative Reconsolidation (NNR)

NNR combines:

• narrative activation
• affect regulation
• somatic tracking
• attentional widening
• perspective shifting
• cognitive updating
• identity reintegration
• autobiographical integration

The therapeutic aim is to help traumatic memories become emotionally tolerable, appropriately located in time, and integrated into autobiographical identity rather than continuously re-experienced as ongoing threat states.

Trauma memories are therefore not viewed simply as cognitive content, but as body-affect-meaning networks involving physiological activation, emotional learning, sensory memory, survival responses, and shame-based interpretation.

Several trauma-informed methods may contribute to this process, including:

• imaginal reliving
• hotspot identification
• narrative exposure
• bilateral stimulation
• imagery rescripting
• perspective shifting
• cognitive updating
• somatic regulation strategies

These methods are integrated flexibly according to the client’s affective tolerance, developmental history, and neurophysiological regulation capacity.

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Neurobiological Processes in Integration

From a neurobiological perspective, effective trauma processing requires an optimal balance between emotional activation and emotional regulation.

If activation is insufficient, trauma-linked memory networks may remain inaccessible for modification. However, if emotional arousal becomes excessive, the individual may enter overwhelm, dissociation, emotional collapse, or defensive avoidance.

Within tolerable affective activation, the nervous system becomes capable of updating previously encoded meanings and associations.

NA-CBT® conceptualises this process as involving coordinated interaction between:

• affective systems
• autonomic regulation
• attentional networks
• motivational neurocircuitry
• memory reconsolidation mechanisms

Dopaminergic systems contribute to:

• motivation
• reinforcement learning
• expectancy
• behavioural engagement

Noradrenergic activation contributes to:

• attentional orientation
• mobilisation
• adaptive arousal
• emotional salience

Importantly, NA-CBT distinguishes adaptive emotional activation from traumatic overwhelm. Certain forms of anxiety are understood as functional and motivational rather than pathological. For example, the anticipatory anxiety before an important examination may enhance preparation and learning rather than trigger behavioural avoidance.

The therapeutic goal is therefore not emotional numbness, but regulated emotional engagement within a tolerable window of affective activation.

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Empathic–Mentalisation Based Therapy Alliance

Within NA-CBT, the therapeutic alliance is viewed not merely as rapport-building, but as an active mechanism of emotional regulation, attachment repair, affective safety, and psychological integration.

Empathic–Mentalisation Based Therapy Alliance refers to the therapist’s capacity to deeply understand and emotionally resonate with the client’s internal world while simultaneously maintaining reflective awareness, regulation, and clinical grounding.

This process partly resembles principles observed in method acting, although the purpose here is therapeutic attunement rather than performance. The therapist attempts, as closely as possible, to step into the client’s lived emotional reality:

• how the client experiences threat
• how shame is organised internally
• how the body carries fear
• what meanings have become attached to rejection, failure, abandonment, or vulnerability

This concept aligns closely with Lev Vygotsky’s view that human cognition, emotion, and meaning develop relationally through interaction with other minds. Within therapy, emotional understanding and regulation are gradually internalised through repeated experiences of being accurately understood by another regulated nervous system.

The therapist therefore attends carefully not only to verbal content, but also to:

• posture
• tone
• pauses
• breathing shifts
• bodily tension
• emotional contradictions
• physiological changes
• affective rhythm

Importantly, unlike method acting, the therapist does not merge with the client’s emotional state. Dual-awareness is maintained at all times:
the therapist remains empathically immersed while simultaneously reflective, regulated, and clinically observant.

For many traumatised individuals, this relational experience becomes profoundly corrective. Many have never previously experienced emotional understanding without criticism, dismissal, fear, humiliation, or abandonment.

From a neurobiological perspective, attuned therapeutic interaction may facilitate limbic regulation through co-regulation processes. Tone of voice, facial expression, pacing, emotional resonance, and interpersonal safety cues communicate safety at a nervous-system level before higher-order cognitive restructuring even begins.

In this sense, the therapeutic alliance becomes an embodied relational process through which the client gradually internalises safer ways of experiencing themselves and others.

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Toward Wholeness and Emotional Resilience

The ultimate aim of this module is integration rather than symptom elimination. Through trauma resolution, cognitive updating, self-compassion, affect regulation, and autobiographical reintegration, the client gradually develops a more stable and coherent sense of identity.

Over time, clients increasingly become able to:

• recall traumatic experiences without re-entering the original threat state
• tolerate affect without emotional collapse
• experience vulnerability without shame
• integrate strengths and limitations within the same identity
• align behaviour with personal values rather than survival responses
• develop increased emotional flexibility and resilience

The individual is no longer entirely organised around:

• shame
• hypervigilance
• self-attack
• avoidance
• emotional collapse
• overcompensation

Instead, traumatic experience becomes part of the story, but no longer the entirety of identity.

     “Integration is not the erasure of pain, but the ability to hold pain and peace within the same truth.”

For many clients, this phase represents a profound therapeutic turning point: the moment when shame gradually gives way to dignity, and the past begins transforming from a source of ongoing threat into a source of meaning, resilience, and psychological growth.

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Module 5: Coping Skills Training & continued Self-Regulation:

This module is dedicated to equipping clients with a practical, adaptable toolkit for emotional regulation, behavioural activation, and everyday functioning. Drawing from the strength of traditional behaviour therapy and enriched by the latest findings in neuroscience, this phase empowers clients to implement real-world strategies that foster stability, resilience, and self-direction.

The tools and interventions introduced here go beyond symptom relief, they aim to help clients shift their lifestyle, challenge unhelpful behavioural patterns, and respond more flexibly to internal and external triggers.

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Bridging Behaviour Therapy and Neurobiology

The techniques used in this module reflect a hybrid approach: they integrate the proven efficacy of behavioural strategies (such as exposure, assertiveness, and habit formation) with neurobiological principles that promote emotional and attentional regulation.

Clients learn how Emotion-Driven Reinforcing Behaviours (EDRBs), aiming to initially soothe or escape emotional discomfort are in fact self-sabotaging, simply perpetuating long-term avoidance, distress and self-dislike. By making this process explicit through tailored psychoeducation, clients are supported in identifying when these behaviours arise and how to respond differently.

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Key Therapeutic Tools:

• Tailored Psychoeducation – therapy here is not one-size-fits-all. Educational strategies are carefully linked to the client’s unique formulation and emotional profile. This helps demystify emotional reactions and builds cognitive insight into how behavioural patterns are maintained (i.e., EDRB’s and vicious cycles); the function of avoidance or safety behaviours; the role of attentional bias and misinterpretation.

  

• Behavioural Techniques

  • Assertiveness Training: Developing confident, non-defensive communication skills

  • Graded Exposure Plans: Facing feared situations in a planned, progressive way

  • Behavioural Activation: Engaging in meaningful activities to counteract withdrawal or passivity

• Mind-Body Integration

• • Breathwork and Body Awareness: Using interoceptive tools to manage arousal

  • Mindfulness Practices: Developing non-judgmental awareness of present experience

  • Imagery, Self-Hypnosis and Guided Relaxation: Facilitating deep calm and focused attention, understanding progressive muscle relaxation

• Cognitive and Executive Skills

  • Problem-Solving Training: Building structured approaches to tackling real-life challenges

  • Decision-Making Strategies: Strengthening judgment, especially when emotion is high

  • Attention-Training: Shifting attentional control away from threat cues or internal preoccupation

• Ongoing use of NA-CBT specific concepts

  • Empathic-Mentalisation continues as a relational tool, helping clients regulate emotion by feeling understood and reflected

  • EDRB awareness is applied actively, allowing clients to replace self-sabotaging behaviours with adaptive coping

  • Lifestyle interventions – the imaginal inner coach: TED’s your best friend !
  • NeuroAffective-Narrative Reconsolidation – trauma processing method

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Encouraging Calculated Risk and Trust in the Therapeutic Process

One of the most significant psychological shifts in this phase involves encouraging clients to act against familiar gut-instincts, such as avoiding conflict, suppressing emotion, or retreating from social engagement. Taking calculated interpersonal or emotional risks requires:

• Trust in the therapist and therapeutic process

• Belief in personal capacity for change

• Willingness to tolerate short-term discomfort for long-term growth

The therapist’s role is to support and scaffold these efforts, providing clear rationale, modelling confidence, and reinforcing every success.

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Outcome: Practical Mastery for Real-Life Application

By the end of this phase, clients should:

• Possess a robust toolkit of practical self-regulation strategies

• Feel capable of confronting emotional and interpersonal challenges

• Be increasingly confident in their ability to manage distress without resorting to old coping patterns

This module serves as a vital bridge between insight and action, ensuring that the emotional and cognitive gains achieved in earlier modules are not only preserved but also translated into meaningful, day-to-day application. However, it is essential to emphasize that the ‘numbered’ modules in NA-CBT do not represent fixed stages of treatment. Instead, they are flexible, intersecting components of a modular framework that can be adapted to the client’s evolving needs, formulation, and therapeutic readiness. For instance, an exposure plan might be introduced much earlier in the process if clinically indicated by the case formulation, current social context, or strength of the therapeutic alliance.

Module 6: Skills Consolidation and Relapse Prevention:

Module 6 represents the final stage in the NA-CBT process. It is a critical phase designed not only to preserve the therapeutic gains achieved during treatment but to equip clients with the confidence, insight, and self-efficacy needed to sustain these gains long after therapy concludes. This phase focuses on integration, application, and anticipation, bringing together everything the client has learned, helping them apply these insights in their everyday life, and preparing them to face future challenges with resilience.

Reconnecting with Values and Renewed Commitments

At the heart of long-term change lies clarity of purpose. In this phase, the therapist supports the client in revisiting the values and motivations that initially brought them into therapy. This process helps clients:

• Reaffirm the goals and personal values that now shape their decision-making

• Recognise how therapy has helped them align behaviour with core beliefs

• Strengthen their sense of direction moving forward

This reflective work reinforces meaning and intrinsic motivation, which are vital for sustaining emotional growth and resilience outside the therapy room.

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Identifying Triggers and Planning for Relapse

Relapse is not failure, it is a foreseeable part of the human experience. NA-CBT takes a proactive, compassionate approach to preparing for potential setbacks.

Together, therapist and client:

• Identify high-risk situations (e.g., social rejection, work stress, loss of routine)

• Recognise early warning signs of emotional dysregulation or cognitive distortions

• Develop a personalised relapse prevention plan, which may include:

  • Rehearsing coping responses

  • Creating support structures

  • Strategising for re-engagement with therapeutic tools when needed

By normalising and planning for relapse, clients reduce fear and shame associated with potential setbacks, empowering them to navigate challenges confidently and skilfully.

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Reinforcing Core Skills and Building Confidence

This phase includes a structured review of the coping strategies and tools introduced throughout the modules, such as:

• Cognitive reframing and thought-challenging

• Emotional regulation practices

• Body-based interventions (e.g., TED: Tired, Exercise, Diet)

• Mindfulness, self-hypnosis, and attention regulation

Clients are encouraged to apply these tools in real-life scenarios, reinforcing skill mastery and increasing self-trust in their ability to manage distress. This practical rehearsal helps convert therapeutic insight into habitual action.

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Sustaining Growth and Fostering Self-Efficacy

Ultimately, this module aims to transition the client from therapist-supported growth to self-directed resilience. The focus shifts from treatment to personal leadership of one’s mental and emotional well-being.

The outcomes of this phase include:

• A sense of mastery over previously overwhelming emotions

• A coherent, values-aligned sense of identity

• A robust toolkit for maintaining progress and adapting to future demands

“Therapy doesn’t end when sessions do, it continues in every moment where the client chooses clarity over confusion, compassion over criticism, and values over fear.”

This final stage affirms the client’s capacity for lifelong growth, giving them the tools and inner confidence to not only maintain but build upon the work achieved in therapy.

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Final thoughts…

 NeuroAffective-CBT represents a significant advancement in the field of psychotherapy, offering a transdiagnostic, modular framework that is specifically designed to address chronic, complex, and difficult-to-diagnose mental health conditions. Developed by Daniel Mirea, this approach draws from decades of research in psychology, neurobiology, and emotional regulation, making it a powerful tool for treating individuals who struggle with deeply rooted emotions like shame, guilt, and self-loathing. Its flexibility, combined with an in-depth understanding of the brain’s emotional processes, makes NA-CBT an effective treatment for those facing long-standing emotional challenges that have often eluded conventional therapy.

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Clarification of Key Terms

• Emotion-Driven Reinforcing Behaviours (EDRBs): Behaviours that are driven by emotional discomfort and serve to reinforce avoidance or maladaptive regulation strategies. Example: withdrawing socially after shame to avoid judgment.

• Empathic-Mentalisation: A therapeutic stance in which the therapist actively imagines and embodies the client’s internal world, thoughts, feelings, intentions, in a way that fosters safety, insight, and emotional regulation.

• Affect vs Emotion vs Feelings:

  In NA-CBT, the terms affect, emotion, and feeling refer to related but distinct psychological and neurobiological processes.

  Affect refers to an immediate, automatic physiological and neurobiological state associated with basic threat, safety, reward, or attachment processing. Affective responses are often rapid, implicit, and body-based, involving autonomic, hormonal, and sensorimotor changes that may occur prior to conscious awareness. Affect is closely linked to survival-oriented systems and forms the foundation upon which emotional experience develops.

  Emotion refers to the integrated psychological experience that emerges when affective states are interpreted and organised by cognitive, autobiographical, social, and contextual processes. Emotions involve coordinated patterns of physiological activation, appraisal, attention, meaning-making, memory, action tendencies, and behaviour. Emotional responses are shaped not only by biology, but also by learning history, attachment experiences, culture, and interpersonal context. Emotions are therefore understood as biologically grounded yet psychologically organised states that help individuals adapt to environmental demands, social situations, and survival-related challenges.

  Feelings refer to the subjective, consciously experienced awareness of affective and emotional states. They represent the personal, phenomenological experience of what an emotion “feels like” internally and are often shaped through language, reflection, and self-awareness.

  Within NA-CBT, feelings are understood as the consciously experienced expression of underlying affective and emotional processes, integrating bodily sensation, emotional meaning, and subjective awareness.

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Where can you get training in NA-CBT

In London and online, an overview of NeuroAffective-CBT® techniques are offered on request, via Welcome or Members pages, but also on offer  to all UKCHH graduates and post-graduate/doctoral students @RegentsUniversity or @ExistentialAcademy via NSPC-Middlesex University. In-depth tailored certificated training in I-CBT and NA-CBT can additionally be offered to any training organisation that may be interested.   Daniel Mirea can easily be reached on this website, his email address (therapy@danmirea.co.uk) or at UKCHH where he regularly teaches – UK College of CBT & Hypnosis – this college is focused on Hypno-CBT, CBT and evidence-based psychology only, it could well be the only college in London that has taken a lead in Integrative-CBT methods (aka 4th wave-CBT) under Daniel Mirea, Donald Meichenbaum and Mark Davis’s guidance. Since this is advanced cognitive-behavioural training and the approach places itself falls under the umbrella of I-CBT therapies, it is not presently offered outside the psychological, psychiatric and CBH community which means that one would have to have a core mental health profession or to at least be accredited in Cognitive-Behavioural Hypnotherapy (CBH) before attending training in NA-CBT.