What is Schema Therapy?
Schema Therapy is designed to help you break free from deep-rooted, unhelpful beliefs and coping mechanisms that are likely to have been present for a long time. In this approach, I’ll be working collaboratively with you to uncover and understand the origins of some of the patterns and thinking that you’re finding unhelpful and tricky. Once these underlying patterns are recognised, our focus shifts to healing them using a range of techniques, such as mindfulness, challenging thoughts, imagery exercises, chair-work, role-play, exposure therapy, and general coping skills training.
The goal of Schema Therapy is to create a lasting change in how you feel about yourself and others, rather than simply trying to change your thought patterns. Lasting change happens from not only cognitively understanding what’s happening for you but EXPERIENCING the shifts we are making by feeling them in your body and having compassion for the ways you’ve been coping. The range of schema techniques schema therapy uses to create change will support us in allowing you to feel these shifts more deeply.
So, what is a schema?
Schemas are broad, ingrained beliefs we hold about ourselves and others. You’re not ‘faulty’ if you have schemas. We all have schemas, just different ones because our lives and childhoods were different. Negative schemas tend to develop in childhood or adolescence when essential needs like safety, stability, consistency, and validation are not adequately met. We form beliefs based on the world around us and often that ‘world’ feels very small when we’re just a child – we’re applying what we learn from our family and caregivers to our perception of the world at large.
Negative schemas can persist into adulthood, impacting how we see ourselves and they continue to impact the way we see the world. They often prevent us from fulfilling our emotional needs and can prevent us from fully being ourselves or pursuing our goals. They can hinder the formation of healthy relationships, contribute to mental health struggles, and can lead to a general sense of dissatisfaction with life.
Why I get excited about schema therapy…
Schema therapy is exciting because it helps us to understand that what we are experiencing doesn’t make us flawed or irreparable. Schema therapy helps us to understand the ways we’ve had to learn to cope in particular ways and supports us to have compassion for those ways that once helped us in hard circumstances and the therapy helps us to work toward different, more supportive, ways of coping and experiencing life. It also helps us to embed a more positive internal voice and more attentive self-care.