Schema Therapy
What is schema therapy?
Schema therapy is a psychotherapy developed specifically for treating complex and long-standing emotional difficulties. It incorporates elements of cognitive behavioural therapy, psychoanalytic therapy and gestalt therapy.
Schemas refer to painful self-beliefs, usually develop early on in life, which underlie emotional and relationship problems. For example, an individual may see themselves as fundamentally unloveable (a "defectiveness" schema) or strive to meet impossibly high standards (an "unrelenting standards" schema). When groups of schemas become activated, they are called "schema modes”. When modes dominate how a person thinks and behaves, emotional difficulties often arise.
Schema therapy aims to change the negative self-beliefs and modes which lie at the root of psychological problems. It achieves this by using the most effective clinical techniques developed in several leading psychotherapies, including the relationship between the client and the therapist.
I am an accredited Advanced Schema Therapist with the International Society of Schema Therapy (ISST). I have practised Schema Therapy for several years and have published on this approach. Furthermore, I have a special interest in Schema Therapy applied to eating disorders.
What can schema therapy help with and does it work?
Schema therapy is particularly helpful for long-standing emotional difficulties which have not responded to other psychotherapies. It is also useful when you understand what the problem is intellectually but struggle to make lasting behavioural changes. Research indicates that schema therapy is an effective treatment for many difficulties including personality disorders, relationship problems, eating disorders, anxiety, depression and childhood trauma.
How is schema therapy different from CBT?
Schema therapy differs from CBT in a number of important ways:
- Schema therapy focuses equally on how problems first developed (the past) and what has kept them going (the present).
- Schema therapy works with beliefs which have been in a person’s life for a long time. These beliefs take time to change and for this reason schema therapy is often provided over a longer period than CBT (e.g. 20 sessions or more).
- Schema therapy incorporates different therapeutic techniques drawn from a variety of therapies which are proven to be effective, including cognitive and analytic approaches.