What is Schema Therapy?
For the patterns that were formed early, make sense in retrospect, and keep running anyway.
A schema is a deep, organizing belief about yourself and other people — “I am not enough,” “people leave,” “my needs come last.” Schemas usually form early, in response to real circumstances, and they were often reasonable answers to those circumstances at the time.
The trouble is that schemas outlive the situations that created them. They shape who you are drawn to, what you expect, how you interpret neutral events, and how you treat yourself — long after the original context is gone.
Schema therapy combines cognitive and behavioural work with experiential methods — imagery, dialogue work, and a strong therapy relationship — to help you recognize your schemas, understand where they came from, and meet the needs underneath them in ways that actually work now.
How it works
-
Name the pattern
We map your schemas and the situations that trigger them, until they are recognizable in real time.
-
Understand its history
Patterns loosen when you can see clearly where they came from and what they once protected.
-
Meet the need differently
The goal is not to delete the past but to stop reliving it: getting real needs met in present ways.
Schema therapy can help with
- Long-standing self-criticism
- Repeating relationship patterns
- Chronic emptiness or unworthiness
- Perfectionism with deep roots
- Difficulty trusting or depending on others
I reach for schema therapy when the same theme has followed someone across jobs, relationships, and years — when the pattern is older than any of its current triggers.