Is Schema Therapy something for me? 

When I bring up the therapy approach “schema therapy”, my clients are often confused and even assume that they did understand correctly or even my pronunciation is questioned.

Since I’m a strong supporter of this so-called third-wave CBT therapy, and believe almost everyone can benefit from it, I want to shed some more light on it.

A schema is a belief and a thought at the same time. For example you might have a “defectiveness schema” with the corresponding thought: “I am inadequate” and corresponding feeling of shame.

Recently I found this amazing short little youtube animation that gives a nice “taste” of what schema therapy is.

Please click here for the Schema Video

I am not affiliated with the video and also would like to highlight that while schema therapy was originally developed more for personality disorders and more severe clinical cases (and it is also presented like this in the video), I truly believe it’s beneficial for anyone interested in breaking long-standing, often maladaptive relationship patterns, and giving themselves the best opportunity to thrive and live up to their full potential.

How does Schema Therapy Sessions look like? How many Therapy Sessions do I need? 

I’m often asked what schema therapy actually looks like in practice, and what to expect. I offer schema therapy online and offline and in a transparent 3-stages model.

1. Comprehensive History Taking aka talking about childhood and filling in a standardised official questionnaire for self assessment of schemas.
   • It will take around 5 clinical hours plus 1 hour self assessment
   • Goal: A “One page” individual case conceptualisation model that explains your schemas, critic voices and maladaptive coping styles
2. Schema Awareness Stage aka trying out the model in real life.
   • Understanding and applying the case conceptualisation model with every day examples, understanding trigger points and refining the model if needed.
   • Often clients are surprised by how much we can explain in a single piece of case conceptualisation paper and that most of our patterns and reactions to triggers are very repetitive.
   • This stage takes on average around 3-5 clinical hours.
3. Growing the Healthy Part in You aka breaking the pattern and giving yourself what you really need instead of “hanging around” in maladaptive coping modes.
   • In this stage we apply various experiential techniques such as empty chair talk, imagery re-scripting and EMDR trauma processing therapy. In all techniques we are dealing with emotions and not just thoughts.
   • This is the most complex stage, and while clients usually find it the hardest, they also consistently tell me it’s the one that helped them most.
   • The length of the part really varies a lot and can be between 10-30 sessions, depending on the complexity of the case.

Ready for a change? Please drop me a message via email or WhatsApp.