Schema Therapy

Schema Therapy is a medium to long term, integrative psychotherapy that was originally developed to treat the symptoms of personality disorders, but now can be used to treat a wide variety of issues including addictions and eating disorders. People may form maladaptive schemas if their needs were not met in childhood or adolescence and also develop unhelpful coping behaviours as a result. Schema Therapy can help a person to identify these maladaptive schemas and improve their ways of coping through corrective emotional experiences in therapy.

• Schema- a set of unconditional beliefs that a person has about themselves in relation to others and the world that can develop early in childhood and adolescence.
• Maladaptive schema- a set of beliefs that are self-defeating and cause dysfunction in a person’s life