Schema therapy, also called schema-focused therapy, combines elements of a variety of therapeutic interventions to address ongoing problems like personality disorders, eating disorders, and chronic depression. It is designed to break life-long problematic patterns.
Schema therapy is based on the premise that maladaptive beliefs, or schemas, are developed early in life and played out over and over.
Jeffery Young, at Columbia University, developed Schema Therapy and opened the Schema Therapy Institute. Young recognized that there were some individuals that did not respond to the traditional cognitive therapies, but instead seemed to operate through a series of dysfunctional thought patterns, or schemas.
- Early Maladaptive Schemas
- Schema Domains
- Coping Styles
- Schema Modes
Early maladaptive schemas are self-defeating patterns developed in childhood that are repeated throughout life. Schema therapy defines 18 potential schemas.
The 18 early maladaptive schema defined above are further grouped into schema domains. These domains relate to the basic emotional needs of the child. If the child’s emotional needs are not met an early maladaptive schema, or beliefs, may develop.
Coping styles refers to the ways the child adapts to schemas and to damaging childhood experiences. Not all children cope the same way to stressful or even traumatic events. The theory asserts that there are three general ways that a person copes to the schemas: surrender, avoidance, and overcompensation.
Schema modes are the emotional states and coping responses everyone experiences. Things that a person is particularly sensitive to can trigger them. Schema modes may cause a person to overreact or act in ways that may be harmful to him or herself.
- Stop using the maladaptive coping styles (surrender, avoidance, overcompensation) allowing a person to access the “core feelings”
- Heal the early maladaptive schemas
- Learn to turn off the self-defeating schema modes as quickly as possible
- Get emotional needs in met in everyday life
The Schema Therapy Institute has put together a slide presentation that further explains the concepts behind Schema Therapy.
Innovative Therapy Fosters Full Recovery For Patients With Borderline Personality Disorder
A major outcome study has shown that a high percentage of those with borderline personality disorder can experience a full recovery from symptoms through schema therapy.
