About Schema Therapy
Schema Therapy is an evidence-based psychological therapy that helps identify and change long-standing emotional patterns, maladaptive coping styles, and relationship difficulties rooted in early life experiences.
Why Schema Therapy is my Primary Modality
Schema Therapy my primary therapeutic modality, which offers a well-researched, integrative framework that helps make sense of complex emotional and relational patterns shaped by early experiences, ongoing stress, and trauma. It provides both structure and flexibility, allowing therapy to be tailored to the individual while remaining grounded in evidence-based practice.
Why I find Schema Therapy so helpful
I find Schema Therapy particularly helpful because it offers a compassionate, structured way to understand why certain emotional patterns and relationship difficulties keep repeating, especially for people who have experienced long-standing stress, trauma, or complex relational histories. Rather than focusing only on symptoms, it works at a deeper level to help clients make sense of their experiences, build healthier coping patterns, and create meaningful, lasting change.
Who Schema Therapy can be helpful for
Schema Therapy can be especially beneficial for people who feel stuck in recurring patterns despite insight or previous therapy, including those experiencing chronic anxiety or low mood, relationship difficulties, effects of childhood or relational trauma, faith-related harm, or long-standing self-criticism and shame. It is also well suited to clients who want to understand themselves more deeply, strengthen emotional regulation, and develop healthier ways of relating to themselves and others over time.
Key Components of Schema Therapy
Identify Early Maladaptive Schemas & Modes
This involves identifying long-standing emotional patterns and moment-to-moment coping responses that shape how you experience yourself, others, and relationships, particularly under stress.
Engage in Experiential Techniques
Experiential techniques help access and work with emotions and memories linked to these patterns, supporting deeper change through approaches such as imagery and chair work rather than insight alone.
Reality Testing and Cognitive Restructuring
This step focuses on examining and gently challenging schema-driven beliefs, helping develop more balanced, compassionate, and realistic ways of understanding yourself and your experiences.
Limited Reparenting and Building Healthier Patterns
Through a supportive therapeutic relationship and practical strategies, unmet emotional needs are addressed while new, healthier ways of relating, coping, and setting boundaries are developed over time.
Schema Therapy for Individuals
Schema Therapy for individuals focuses on identifying and healing long-standing emotional patterns that shape how you see yourself, relate to others, and respond to stress. By addressing unmet emotional needs and the coping styles developed to manage them, this approach supports deeper insight, emotional regulation, and lasting change — particularly where difficulties have been present for a long time.
Schema Therapy for Couples
Schema Therapy for couples helps partners understand how their individual schemas and coping patterns interact within the relationship, often creating cycles of misunderstanding, conflict, or emotional disconnection. By increasing awareness, strengthening emotional safety, and supporting healthier ways of responding to one another, this approach can foster greater empathy, communication, and more secure connection over time.
Common Early Maladaptive Schemas
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Disconnection & Rejection
Abandonment Schema
Fear that people will leave or can’t be trusted to stay emotionally present.
Mistrust/Abuse Schema
Expecting others to hurt, abuse, or take advantage of you.
Emotional Deprivation Schema
A sense that your emotional needs won’t be met by others.
Defectiveness/Shame Schema
Feeling flawed, not good enough, or unworthy of love.
Social Isolation/Alienation Schema
Feeling different from others or like you don’t belong.
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Impaired Autonomy & Performance
Dependence/Incompetence Schema
Feeling incapable of handling daily responsibilities alone.
Vulnerability to Harm or Illness Schema
Fear that catastrophe (illness, accidents, etc.) is about to happen.
Enmeshment/Undeveloped Self Schema
Feeling too emotionally fused with others or unsure of who you are.
Failure Schema
Belief that you will fail or are fundamentally inadequate.
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Over-vigilance & Inhibition
Negativity/Pessimism Schema
Focusing on the negative and expecting the worst.
Emotional Inhibition Schema
Suppressing emotions to avoid disapproval or upsetting others.
Unrelenting Standards/ Hypercriticalness Schema
Feeling you must meet high standards to avoid criticism.
Punitiveness Schema
Believing people should be harshly punished (including yourself) for mistakes.
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Other-Directedness
Subjugation Schema
Surrendering control to others to avoid conflict or rejection.
Self-Sacrifice Schema
Putting others’ needs ahead of your own at your own expense.
Approval-Seeking/Recognition-Seeking Schema
Overly focused on gaining approval or status.
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Impaired Limits
Entitlement/Grandiosity Schema
Believing you're special and don’t need to follow rules or consider others.
Insufficient Self-Control/Self-Discipline Schema
Difficulty tolerating frustration or delaying gratification.
Common Schema Therapy Modes (A Basic Overview)
In Schema Therapy, modes describe the emotional states or “parts of the self” that tend to show up in the moment — particularly under stress, in close relationships, or when old patterns are triggered. Most people move between different modes throughout the day, or in a short amount of time when they are exposed to a trigger (also known as mode cycles).
Rather than listing every possible mode, this overview offers a high-level snapshot of the main categories to help you recognise patterns that may feel familiar. In therapy, modes are often individualised in collaboration with clients, including using language or names that feel meaningful and relevant to their lived experience.
Why Understanding Modes Matters
Understanding modes helps explain why reactions can feel intense, sudden, or “out of character,” particularly in close relationships or high-stress situations. Rather than viewing these responses as personal failings, Schema Therapy understands them as meaningful patterns that once served a protective purpose.
Schema Therapy focuses on increasing awareness of modes, reducing the impact of unhelpful coping or critical states, and supporting the development of a strong, compassionate Healthy Adult.
Coping ModesCoping modes develop as ways of managing or avoiding emotional pain. They often emerge automatically and can be difficult to recognise in the moment. While these modes may have been adaptive at an earlier time, they can limit emotional closeness, flexibility, and wellbeing over time.
Detached Protector
Emotional withdrawal, numbing, distraction, or shutting down to avoid overwhelm or emotional pain. This mode can create distance in relationships and reduce access to feelings and needs.
Compliant Surrenderer
Giving in, people-pleasing, or prioritising others’ needs to avoid conflict, rejection, or disapproval. Over time, this can lead to resentment, exhaustion, or a loss of self.
Overcompensator
Attempts to counter vulnerability through control, perfectionism, dominance, achievement, or self-reliance. This mode often masks underlying fear, shame, or insecurity.
Critical and Demanding critic ModesThese modes reflect internalised rules, expectations, and judgments that developed in response to early experiences of pressure, criticism, or conditional acceptance. While they are often intended to prevent failure, rejection, or harm, they can become harsh, inflexible, and emotionally costly over time.
Punitive Critic
An inner voice that attacks, shames, or blames, often reinforcing feelings of worthlessness or failure.
Demanding Critic
Internal pressure to meet high standards, be productive, or “do better,” often at the expense of rest, emotional needs, or self-care.
Together, these modes can create an internal environment that feels relentless or unsafe. Schema Therapy focuses on helping people recognise when these critical states are active, understand where they came from, and gradually reduce their influence.
Forensic ModesForensic modes may emerge in situations involving threat, power, conflict, or survival. These are understood as situational states rather than fixed traits and can occur in people with no involvement in forensic or legal systems.
Bully and Attack
Responding to perceived threat or vulnerability with aggression, intimidation, or attempts to dominate in order to regain a sense of control.
Predator
Emotional detachment combined with goal-focused behaviour, where empathy is temporarily switched off to achieve an outcome or avoid perceived danger.
Conning and Manipulative
Using charm, deception, or manipulation to protect oneself, maintain control, or avoid consequences.
Paranoid or Suspicious Mode
Heightened mistrust, hypervigilance, or readiness to perceive threat, often shaped by past experiences of betrayal, danger, or injustice.
Schema Therapy approaches forensic modes with curiosity and containment, focusing on understanding what activates them and strengthening alternative, healthier responses.
Vulnerable ModesThese modes reflect emotional needs, reactions, and developmental responses.
Vulnerable Child
Feelings such as sadness, fear, shame, loneliness, or helplessness. This mode often emerges when a person feels criticised, rejected, unsafe, or emotionally exposed.
Angry or Distressed Child
Emotional responses such as anger, frustration, or distress when needs feel ignored, boundaries are crossed, or a person feels treated unfairly.
Entitled Child
A state where emotional needs feel urgent and non-negotiable, leading to strong expectations that others should meet those needs immediately. This mode often develops when limits were inconsistent, or when entitlement functioned as protection against deeper vulnerability or deprivation.
Healthy Adult ModeThe Healthy Adult mode represents emotional balance, insight, and psychological resilience. It is the part of the self that can hold difficult feelings, reflect rather than react, and respond in ways that are aligned with values and long-term wellbeing.
The Healthy Adult can:
recognise and soothe vulnerable parts
set boundaries with critical or coping modes
tolerate emotional discomfort without acting impulsively
balance needs, responsibilities, and self-care
respond to others with empathy, firmness, and flexibility
The Healthy Adult can hold complexity — acknowledging pain while also recognising strengths, limits, and context. It allows space for rest, self-care, and enjoyment, alongside commitment and responsibility.
A central aim of Schema Therapy is to strengthen and stabilise the Healthy Adult, so it becomes more accessible in everyday life and especially during moments of stress or relational difficulty.
Areas of Interest
I work with individuals and couples who may be:
Individuals
Experiencing mental health concerns such as anxiety, depression, trauma, OCD, stress, grief, or difficulties related to life transitions
Feeling stuck in long-standing emotional or relational patterns, including self-criticism, emotional withdrawal, people-pleasing, shame, or fear of abandonment
Navigating complex family dynamics, including conflict, estrangement, boundary difficulties, intergenerational patterns, or ongoing family stress
Recovering from relational harm, coercive control, or experiences of domestic and family violence
Managing the emotional impact of high-pressure, high-responsibility, or controlling environments, including workplaces, organisations, and religious settings.
Seeking support with identity, belonging, or sense of self, particularly where past experiences continue to shape present relationships
Couples
Experiencing ongoing communication difficulties, conflict, or emotional disconnection
Wanting to better understand and change entrenched interaction patterns that repeat despite effort or insight
Working through breaches of trust, including infidelity, and seeking support with repair and reconnection
Navigating the impact of family-of-origin dynamics, blended families, parenting stress, or external pressures on the relationship
Seeking to strengthen emotional safety, responsiveness, and mutual understanding within the relationship
Inclusive and Client-Led Care
I welcome individuals and couples from all backgrounds. Therapy is collaborative and tailored to your needs, values, and goals, with a focus on compassionate, trauma-informed, and ethical psychological care. For clients who value a faith-sensitive approach, I work with awareness of religious beliefs and contexts where this is relevant to their experience.
This is a space shaped by your experiences and what you hope to understand and change.
