When to use schema therapy with young people?
For young people who have been stuck in various areas of their lives for a long time, the issues are often intertwined with their personality development. Disturbances have arisen in their interactions with others and in their self-image.
Their ways of coping with difficult situations or emotions perpetuate these disturbances and exacerbate emotional or behavioural problems. Schema therapy can offer a solution here.
What is schema therapy?
Schema therapy is an evidence-based treatment for adults with personality disorders and other persistent problems. For youth, certain adjustments are made (e.g., working with parents, use of materials).
Schema therapy can be delivered individually or in a group. Finally, various techniques and principles from schema therapy can be integrated into the treatment environment of a residential facility.
The various forms of schema therapy and schema therapy-based approaches may be combined with one another.
Schema theory
Every child has the same basic emotional needs (such as feeling safe and connected). Sometimes it is not possible to meet those needs adequately. This may be due to unfortunate circumstances, personal issues faced by the child’s parents, and/or the child’s temperament.
This may lead to maladaptive schemas, or negative expectations that the child holds about themselves and others (for example, ‘no one can be trusted’). Depending on how the child deals with these kinds of expectations (coping responses), different sides of the child may emerge that either fully resignate to these expectations, try to avoid them, or actively reverse them.
Every young person (just like every adult) has different sides of them that become active in different circumstances. We call these sides ‘modes’. In cases of personality issues, modes are either rapidly changing or a mode is very persistent, refusing to shift.
How does schema therapy work?
In schema therapy, we aim to help the child or adolescent and their parents / support network understand the origins and functions of the modes that cause problems.
Within the boundaries of the therapeutic relationship, we meet the young person’s basic needs as much as possible, both in the here and now and through exercises focused on past experiences. The young person learns skills to deal with negative emotions in a different way.
In this way, we reduce their unhelpful schemas and modes, and encourage their healthy modes.
Watch the informative video about schema therapy here, produced by the Association for Schema Therapy.
Developmental tasks
Account must be taken of the developmental tasks young people face, such as developing their own identity and becoming independent from their parents.
Parents / network
Often, the treatment is not focused solely on the young person, but also involves the parents or the wider support network.
Modes
There is a greater focus on modes than on schemas, as modes are much less abstract.
Materials
We use all kinds of materials for psycho-educational purposes or to support experiential exercises. For younger children, we can use mode-oriented play therapy and combine that with schema coaching for parents.
