An introduction to Schema Therapy

By Dr Eliot Goldstone

ISST Accredited Advanced Individual Schema Therapist

Schema Therapy is an evidenced based treatment for people who want to better understand their feelings, relationship patterns or thought processes. It can advance self awareness, whilst also aiding those experiencing long term distress. Schema Therapy has been shown to be effective in the treatment of anxiety, depression and personality disorders.

Schema Therapy is based on the concept that we as humans all have core emotional needs in childhood. These include the need for safety, love/attachment, autonomy/validity, guidance or boundary setting and room to play/have fun. If one or more of these core emotional needs is frequently unmet in childhood, it can both create emotional distress, and, shape the way we interpret our environment throughout our life. Thus a schema is an unhelpful belief system, resultant from an unmet emotional need in childhood, which drives distress/dysfunction in life.

Schema Therapy was created to synthesise traditional psychodynamic therapies, with their focus on childhood experiences, and modern psychological therapies like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which focus more on the present day. Indeed, Schema Therapy addresses how our past childhood experiences shape how we perceive things in the now and also how we cope with our emotions (modes).

For instance, if we frequently feel inadequate in childhood (resultant from an unmet need for validity/autonomy), we may end up with a schema for failure or shame/defectiveness for self. We are then more likely to have ‘sticky’ negative thoughts about ourselves in adult life, predisposing us to anxiety, sadness and life difficulty. Unhelpful coping mechanisms often also emerge, which may help us survive difficult moments, but can have unintended/unhelpful impacts in the medium to long term.

The goal of Schema Therapy is to boost insight into our own thoughts and actions and what shaped them. In Schema Therapy we look to build the healthy adult mode (the wise and adaptive part of self) to attune to our unmet emotional needs and provide for them when they are triggered in moments of distress. In this way, we hope to reduce emotional distress and make more conscious choices in how we respond to life difficulty, rather than reacting automatically to situations based on long term patterns of thinking and coping.

If you think Schema Therapy may be a good fit for you, please call Eliot on 0451671864 to discuss further, or, send an email naturepsychology@protonmail.com