About Schema Therapy
Schema Therapy is a deeply integrative, evidence-based approach that can support you to change long-standing emotional & behavioural patterns. It helps you make sense of your past, understand your reactions and feelings in the present, and pave the way toward a more values-driven future.
Why Schema Therapy is my Primary Modality:
Schema Therapy offers a well-researched, integrative framework that helps make sense of complex emotional and relational patterns that are shaped by adverse 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 for my clients:
I find Schema Therapy particularly helpful because it offers a compassionate, structured way to understand why certain emotional patterns and relationship difficulties keep repeating. I find it especially helpful for people who have experienced long-standing stress, trauma, or complex relational histories. Rather than focusing only on symptoms, it has techniques that facilitate deeper emotional processing. Research shows these approaches help clients make sense of past experiences, build healthier coping patterns, and move toward meaningful, lasting change.
Who Schema Therapy can be helpful for:
Schema Therapy can be especially beneficial for people who feel stuck in recurring behavioural patterns or recurring emotional reactivity, despite insight or previous therapy. It can therefore be helpful for those experiencing chronic anxiety or low mood, relationship difficulties, effects of childhood or relational trauma, faith-related harm, institutional betrayal, 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
Through experiential techniques such as imagery and chair work, we access the emotions and memories connected to longstanding patterns. This deeper work helps identify the unmet needs that lie beneath complex feelings and experiences, creating space for meaningful change.
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.
I offer schema therapy for individuals and couples, providing an approach that addresses long-standing emotional and relationship patterns to support meaningful, lasting change.
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 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 - Identified in the Research of Jeffrey Young
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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 become active when core emotional needs are not being met. These modes can appear suddenly—especially under stress, in close relationships where we feel hurt or disappointed, or when long-standing patterns (schemas) are triggered. Most people shift between different modes throughout the day, sometimes rapidly, particularly when exposed to a trigger. This rapid shifting is often referred to as a mode cycle.
Rather than listing every possible mode, this overview offers a high-level snapshot of the main categories of modes. In schema 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.
By thoughtfully exploring your individual modes and the patterns that activate them, Schema Therapy helps increase awareness of these processes, reduce the impact of unhelpful coping or overly critical states, and support the development of a strong, compassionate Healthy Adult mode.
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
Respond to self and others with compassion.
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.
A Schema Therapy Case Example: “Sam”
(Note: This is not a real client)
Sam is someone who values close relationships, but finds that under stress — especially when feeling hurt, rejected, or misunderstood — different emotional “modes” can take over. At times, Sam may feel vulnerable or angry; at other times Sam copes by shutting down, overthinking, giving in, or turning inward with harsh self-criticism.
This illustration shows how understanding Sam moves between different modes, depending on the circumstances.
Sam’s Common Schema-Driven Modes
Sam moves between different emotional states, or modes, depending on stress and relationship triggers. At different times, one mode can take over while others move into the background.
Underlying Schemas Influencing Sam’s Modes
Schemas are deeply held beliefs that are linked to emotional and bodily responses, and they play a key role in shaping Sam’s reactions. When particular schemas are triggered, they tend to show up through different modes. These modes represent Sam’s attempts to protect himself from the vulnerable feelings that arise when those schemas are activated. In therapy, Sam will begin to understand these beliefs, and where they emerged from.
How Schema Therapy Helps Shift Unhelpful Modes
Schema Therapy uses a range of experiential and reflective approaches to help people understand and shift long-standing patterns with compassion and care. Imagery work uses guided imagination to revisit emotionally significant experiences, helping Sam reduce the intensity of present-day triggers and develop new, more supportive responses. It can also be a gentle and effective way of processing traumatic memories. Chair work involves using different seats to explore and respond to different parts of the self, making patterns easier to notice and change. Limited reparenting refers to the therapist offering a consistent, supportive relationship that helps Sam build self-compassion and a stronger, steadier inner voice. Creating mode maps, alongside other cognitive and behavioural activities, allows Sam to recognise patterns, test old beliefs, and practise responding in ways that better support his values and relationships.
The Primary Goal of Schema Therapy - Strengthening Sam’s “Healthy Adult Mode”
The primary goal of Schema Therapy is to help Sam develop a strong and reliable Healthy Adult mode — the part of him that can notice what’s happening internally and in relationships, respond with understanding rather than automatic reactions, and make choices that reflect his values. As this mode becomes stronger, Sam is better able to soothe vulnerable feelings, regulate his emotions, set boundaries, reality-check fears, and reduce the influence of self-criticism or unhelpful coping patterns.
SCHEMA THERAPY MAY BE A GOOD FIT IF:✓
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You’re curious about how early relational or systemic experiences continue to shape your present life.
You’re open to therapy as a gradual, exploratory process that supports meaningful change in how you relate to yourself, others, and your life over time.
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You’re looking for a deeper therapeutic process, and want to understand the needs and emotions that sit beneath your patterns of behaviour and relating.
You notice familiar emotional or relational patterns repeating—especially with the people you care about most, and you are ready to change.
You find yourself responding in ways that don’t always reflect your values, intentions, or sense of self.
You’re interested in understanding longstanding patterns, not just managing symptoms.
You’ve tried other therapeutic approaches, and while you gained insight, you found it difficult to translate that understanding into lasting emotional or behavioural change.
SCHEMA THERAPY MAY NOT SUIT YOU IF: ✓
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You’re primarily seeking short-term strategies, advice, or information rather than a longer-term, exploratory therapeutic process.
You’re not yet feeling ready to gently explore your own patterns of response and the impact on self and others, alongside developing compassion for the impact of past experiences on self.
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You’re not currently interested in collaborative reflection on how both internal experiences and relational contexts shape your responses.
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You’re currently experiencing psychosis or significant instability, and a period of stabilisation and support may be more helpful before engaging in this depth of work.
As my work is offered online, there are limits to the support I can safely provide. If you’re experiencing active suicidal thoughts, I may only be able to work with you unless you are also well supported by local services or trusted supports.