Schema-Focused Approach to Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy

Abstract

I define schema-focused approach to cognitive behavioral psychotherapy practice as a dynamic, caring, helping relationship in which a psychotherapist assists the client in achieving and maintaining optimal functioning and health. Caring, an authentic human action is expressed through attributes of compassion, competence, conscience, confidence, and commitment. The schema-focused approach to cognitive behavioral psychotherapy focuses on cognition, affect, and behavior in an attempt to increase the resources upon which the self draws in the process of redefining itself in psychotherapy. The schema psychotherapy model postulates that schemas develop as a result of toxic upbringing or unmet core emotional needs in childhood. In this model, 18 possible damaging and powerful schemas grouped into five schema domains (Disconnection and Rejection, Impaired Autonomy and Performance, Impaired Limits, Other-Directedness, and Overvigilance and Inhibition) emerge. In response to a threat the self develops three possible maladaptive schema coping styles of surrender, avoidance, and overcompensation. The schema therapy has three phases: the Assessment, the Education, and the Change. The goal of schema-focused approach to cognitive behavioral psychotherapy is to reverse the client’s self-destructive process by enabling the individual to recognize the early maladaptive schemas and to correct them, preventing further distortions and/or fragmentation.