Introduction to Schema Therapy
Schema Therapy offers a transformative, integrative framework for addressing deeply entrenched emotional and behavioural patterns that often prove resistant to traditional talk therapy.
This PCI College CPD workshop provides a vital introduction to this powerful model, which bridges cognitive-behavioural, experiential, and psychodynamic approaches. By participating, you will gain the theoretical depth and practical techniques to help clients break free from lifelong “life traps” and develop healthier, more adaptive ways of meeting their core emotional needs.
Who is this course for?
This workshop is specifically designed for counsellors, psychotherapists, and helping professionals, including students currently in professional training, who have an interest in moving beyond surface-level interventions to address the core structures of client distress.
- Counsellors & Therapists: Gain a sophisticated integrative model to support clients with complex, chronic, or treatment-resistant issues.
- Students in Training: Build a foundational understanding of one of the most effective modern models for deep-seated change.
- Mental Health Professionals: Enhance your clinical toolkit with structured, evidence-based techniques for working with personality-related difficulties.
- Reflective Practitioners: Learn to identify how your own “schemas” may interact with clients, fostering greater professional awareness.
What are the benefits of doing this course?
This course provides a robust conceptual framework that allows you to work more effectively with the “tenacious” patterns that keep clients stuck.
- Enhanced Clinical Precision: Learn to identify the core “schemas” and “modes” driving unhealthy client behaviour, leading to more focused treatment.
- Expanded Toolkit: Master a blend of cognitive, experiential, and behavioural techniques that go beyond standard CBT.
- Increased Efficacy: Gain confidence in working with complex, long-standing emotional wounds that have not responded to other methods.
- Professional Growth: Develop a more nuanced understanding of the therapeutic relationship, learning how to use it as a “limited reparenting” tool for client healing.
What will you learn?
The curriculum balances the essential theory of the schema model with live, experiential practice to ensure you can apply these skills directly in the therapy room.
- Theoretical Foundation: Introduction to schemas, schema domains, coping styles, and schema modes as a unified model of personality.
- Assessment & Formulation: Learning how to identify and map a client’s specific schemas and modes to create a targeted treatment plan.
- Experiential Techniques: Practical practice in techniques like imagery, chair work, and empathic confrontation.
- Pattern Breaking: How to assist clients in shifting from maladaptive coping styles to healthier “Healthy Adult” functioning.
- Live Practice: Opportunities to experience concepts in practice through role-play, peer feedback, and guided exercises.
Course Content
- An Introduction to the theory of Schema Therapy: an evidence based practice
- Coping styles: schema maintenance, schema avoidance, schema compensation
- Key skills and techniques in Schema Therapy
- Putting theory into practice in a professional setting
Eligibility
This is a CPD workshop specifically designed for Counsellors & Psychotherapist or other helping professionals with therapeutic experience and students currently in professional training. BSc Counselling & Psychotherapy students in Years 1, 2, 3 and 4 of their studies are all invited to apply for this CPD workshop.
IT Skills
Students require sufficient IT skills to complete the course.
Additional Entry Requirements
Students can expect to be provided with advice and support concerning any learning difficulties that they may encounter. Any diagnosed learning difficulty, e.g. dyslexia, must be noted on the application.
Fees
Standard Rate: Applies to all non-affiliated participants.
PCI College Graduate: Discounted rate available for graduates of BSc Degree and Postgraduate programmes.
Current BSc/MSc Students & Alumni Members: Preferential rate available. Join our Alumni Group on LinkedIn to access this discount
Course Fees – Northern Ireland
Course Total