Module 1: Schema Therapy Foundations: Theory and Core Skills by Dr Helen Startup and Janis Briedis

Module 1: Schema Therapy Foundations: 
Theory and Core Skills

21-23 June, 2019, Charney Manor, Oxfordshire (residential)

Module 1 overview

This 3-day workshop covers core schema therapy assessment and treatment skills and includes: schema therapy assessment, conceptualization, transdiagnostic treatment approach for complex and enduring mental health difficulties and personality disorders, including borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Topics covered in Module 1:

1. Assessment of schemas and modes, use of psychometrics and imagery in assessment.
2. Case formulation: identification of schemas and modes, the process of mode mapping, and developing treatment goals. The main emphasis of Module 1 will be on conceptualising transdiagnostically with a particular focus on borderline personality disorder (BPD) to convey a theoretical grounding in the schema therapy model.
3. Therapeutic relationship: limited reparenting, empathic confrontation, setting of boundaries and awareness of therapist’s own schemas and modes. Module 1 incorporates a significant self–reflection component. At the outset, trainees will be asked to complete a schema questionnaire. The training will explore the interplay between clients’ and therapists’ schemas and modes, and the potential for schema chemistry in the therapeutic relationship.
4. Imagery techniques including working with childhood memories and linking these to current emotional states or mode activation in imagery; incorporation of therapist nurturance in imagery; working with the vulnerable or angry child modes, strengthening the healthy adult mode.
5. Chair work and role-play techniques: Use of chair work and role play to identify schemas/modes, to enhance meta-awareness of schema/mode relationships and to promote schema/mode change. These include limit setting in relation to the angry child mode and confronting punitive/demanding modes, bypassing detached protector and other coping modes.
6. Cognitive techniques: identification and integration of relevant cognitive techniques into schema work, e.g. schema/mode diaries, pros and cons of schemas, schema dialogue, flashcards etc.
7. Body-focussed techniques to complement the standard experiential techniques – somatic resourcing, enhancing imagery and chair work using body-focussed strategies.
8. Behavioural pattern breaking: use of behavioural changes following on from schema and mode work.
9. Homework assignments: setting relevant homework directly related to the session content.

TRAINERS:

Dr Helen Startup is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Senior Research Fellow with Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.  She oversees personality disorder research for the trust and is a founder and co-director of the Sussex Parenting Clinic which is a recently commissioned service set up to support the parenting needs of adults who are seeking help for their own mental health difficulties.  Helen is an accredited CBT therapist and Schema Therapy Supervisor and Trainer, and is
passionate about improving outcomes for those with complex mental health needs. 

Janis Briedis is a Counselling Psychologist and Schema Therapy Supervisor and Trainer, working in private practice in London and having worked in a complex case service in the NHS for over a decade. He is a trained CBT, EMDR, compassion-focussed and sensorimotor therapist working with complex cases. Janis has taught Schema Therapy, CBT, trauma-focussed approaches and mindfulness in the NHS as well as the academic setting, and is a visiting lecturer at a number of universities in the UK.

For more details see: www.schematherapyschool.co.uk

Email: info@schematherapyschool.co.uk

Telephone: +44 (0) 77 3493 1562 (Janis Briedis)