A development of CBT for working with deep, repeating patterns that formed in childhood and go on shaping life.
It happens like this: a person understands their thoughts, has mastered the techniques, does the assignments — and still ends up at the same point again and again. The same relationships, the same script, the same sense of not measuring up.
That means the issue is not individual thoughts but a stable structure — a schema that took shape long before the present circumstances.
An early maladaptive schema is a stable idea about yourself, other people and the world that formed when a child’s core needs were not met: for safety, acceptance, autonomy, boundaries, freedom to express feelings.
A child who was regularly criticised grows up with the belief “I am not good enough”. A child whose feelings were ignored — with the belief “my needs do not matter”. To the adult this no longer feels like a belief: it feels like objective reality.
Eighteen such schemas have been described, grouped into five domains.
Schema therapy describes inner life through modes — the states a person finds themselves in at different moments:
The aim of therapy is to strengthen the healthy adult mode enough that it can care for the vulnerable part and not submit to the critical one.
Assessment and the schema map. Questionnaires, interviews, work with the life history. The result is a clear map: which schemas are active and how you defend yourself against them.
Cognitive work. Testing schema beliefs against the material of your own life.
Imagery work and rescripting. The key technique. Returning to an early memory and changing its script — so that the need that went unmet at the time is met within the image. This produces an emotional shift unreachable through conversation.
Role dialogues. Chair work: dialogue with the inner critic, with the vulnerable part, with the parental figure — in real time rather than in description.
Limited reparenting. The therapeutic relationship itself becomes an instrument: within the bounds of the professional role, the specialist provides the experience of acceptance that was missing.
This is long-term work: from a year and more. Schema therapy is not an alternative to brief therapy but a tool for cases where brief therapy does not give a lasting result.
If you are a practitioner and want to add this method to your work, the centre runs programmes where it is taught.
A structured schema therapy course built to the standards of the International Society of Schema Therapy: theory, interactive demonstrations and practice across 60 academic hours.
Write to us — a coordinator will clarify what you need and suggest a therapist who works in this approach.
