What schemas are
Schemas are emotional patterns that form in childhood — often outside conscious memory — and persist into adult life. Familiar examples include the feeling of being fundamentally defective, the certainty that abandonment is around the corner, the conviction that you must perform to be loved, or the sense that emotions are dangerous and must be suppressed. They are not personality traits and they are not preferences. They are wounds that wired in early.
How Schema Therapy works
Schema Therapy combines elements of CBT, attachment theory, gestalt and psychodynamic work into an integrative model developed by Dr Jeffrey Young. Therapy moves through three phases: identifying which schemas are most active, doing emotional work to soften their grip (often using imagery and chair work), and building behavioural changes that wouldn't have been possible before. Most schema-focused therapy runs over 12–24 months.
Who Schema Therapy is for
Schema Therapy is the modality we recommend when standard CBT has helped with symptoms but not with the underlying themes, when therapy keeps cycling back to the same emotional terrain, or when relationship patterns repeat across many years and many partners.
- Adults with long-standing depression or anxiety that hasn't fully responded to CBT
- Adults with personality-disorder diagnoses, including borderline and avoidant patterns
- Adults with chronic perfectionism, fear of abandonment or trust difficulties
- Adults who experience repetitive relationship patterns they cannot explain
Schema Therapy online — Australia-wide
We deliver Schema Therapy in-person at our Townsville clinic and online via secure telehealth to clients across Australia. Schema work translates well to telehealth — many of the imagery and chair-work techniques work just as effectively over video, and the consistency of seeing the same clinician each session matters more than the room.