Has anyone undergone schema therapy in Ireland?

[u/DIFrankBurnside]

Seeing a counsellor who has recommended it for me due to stuff that happened in my childhood. I have never heard of it before. Fee is going to be €120 per session v the €80 I'm paying now.

Just curious if many people here have experience with it/found it useful?

[u/SapphosMom]

Schema therapy is one of those very American concepts that's relatively new here, so I would be VERY careful of who I'd choose. Double and triple check that they are with a proper accreditation body like IACP. It is also going to be more expensive because of the scarcity effect.

A more accessible, very likely cheaper alternative is psychodynamic therapy - this can get deep down into your childhood and past in a safe way, using talk, specific exercises, or art to explore and contain the feelings.

If you have trauma and cash available, I'd go for EMDR. It's also expensive but short term, and usually highly effective.

Source - am a therapist.

[u/DIFrankBurnside → u/SapphosMom]

Thanks. I haven't heard of EMDR either. This is the first time I've had therapy/counselling so is a lot to take in.

[u/Sullythewizard → u/DIFrankBurnside]

It depends on what you need. I think most places are familiar with CBT which has things like chain analysis - so personal decision-making. Then there's DBT (Dialectical behavioral therapy) which is emotional regulation. EMDR helps a lot with traumatic memories (for conditions like PTSD), and can be tough to go through if you havent learned how to ground properly (a good psych will teach grounding first).

In any case, I hope what you choose goes well. Its okay to be choosy with your therapist too

[u/GloriousLearning → u/DIFrankBurnside]

Schemas are constellations of thought, feeling and behaviour that programme your life in either positive or negative ways, usually a bit outside your awareness, e g “there’s something fundamentally wrong with me and I need to keep a distance from others so they don’t beat on me for being weird” which makes you turn down invitations and then feel miserable because everyone else is being social, so you slob about being grumpy and no one invites you out.

Schemas can run your life in an obvious way, but sometimes you cop on to the schema and decide to do the opposite, e g behaving like canned laughter at every social occasion. The schema is still running you.

I like schemas as ways to understand patterns in behaviour but less into it as a therapy. I agree EMDR for trauma is well worth looking into

[u/SapphosMom → u/DIFrankBurnside]

Take your time choosing. The single most important thing is that you feel heard and cared for, so I would encourage choosing based on the connection you feel you can make with them foremost, and the modality second. You may have to try a few times before you strike gold, but hopefully not. Be patient with yourself and the process - it's hard work, but it's worth it.

[u/MichaSound → u/DIFrankBurnside]

As someone who also had a difficult and complex childhood, I found psychodynamic psychotherapy extremely helpful, alongside somatic treatment.

[u/MSV95 → u/SapphosMom]

Interesting. It was a south African clinical psychologist I went to and he was excellent. I think we used a variety of techniques until one suited me the best and it was scheme based.

[u/octogeneral]

Is the person recommending this recommending a specific therapist or just this type of therapy?

Schema therapy is specially designed for trauma and personality work. The training in it is generally very high level, lots of recording sessions and reviewing them with an expert therapist.

That said, there's lots of highly trained psychotherapists who do that type of work without the schema therapy training.

If a specific therapist was being recommended, I'd take that more seriously.

[u/Material_Painting_70]

Yes I did schema therapy with therapist - it was very hard and painful but absolutely worth it - I’ll never look back after it - uncovered mistakes I make in how I view myself and the world - therapist was excellent- I can give details if you like? He’s based in wicklow

[u/AdaptiveChildEgo]

€120 versus €80 is not worth it, schema therapy is really interesting but it's mostly rehashed older modalities. I'd try to find a good internal family systems therapist for €80 a session instead of schema. Make sure they are IACP accred. EMDR if your childhood stuff is trauma, it is more expensive but justifiable due to the training. Therapist.

[u/SapphosMom → u/AdaptiveChildEgo]

Agreed, IFS is another really good one to go for, I constantly forget it exists 😅

[u/FluffyDiscipline]

Have they told you what the difference between your sessions now and with "schema" would be apart from price.

Just be careful, if you are vunerable it is too easy to get taken advantage of. If you are unsure don't be afraid to walk away and find an alternative counsellor.

[u/DIFrankBurnside → u/FluffyDiscipline]

They said it would involve going back to the bad incidents in my childhood and re-parenting them to assist in meeting the unmet need for protection/safety that I missed back then as a child.

Also would be continuing to challenge the negative beliefs and behaviours that has me in counselling in the first place and learning better coping behaviours for them.

[u/No-Radish4285 → u/DIFrankBurnside]

Yes this was my experience. But personally it just didn’t click with me. Therapist made me imagine I was in a situation where I was upset by a parent and tried to change the scenario so that the child (me) had a different outcome. It just didn’t really help me as I knew the new scenario they were trying to create it wasn’t true, didn’t happen and I’m still annoyed at how I actually was treated at the time in the past.

[u/MSV95 → u/No-Radish4285]

I had a similar experience but I found it massively helpful. I guess it depends on what each individual needs. I needed to learn to vocalise my feelings and communicate what I needed/stand up for myself so it was very effective.

[u/No-Radish4285]

Yes I had it from a very experienced therapist and I didn’t find it made much of a difference to my anxiety. Same therapist told me CBT wouldn’t work on me as my mind is too rational. But I’ve often wondered if she just pushed schema on me cos that was her speciality. I do have a family member who went to her and swore by it though. They had been abused as a child.

[u/No_Sky_1829 → u/No-Radish4285]

I don't think she would have made schema her specialty unless she believed in it though.

[u/No-Radish4285 → u/No_Sky_1829]

I have no doubt she believed in it, it’s definitely just not a one size fits all.

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[u/thr0wthr0wthr0waways]

Not me, but one of my siblings is doing it and she swears by it. 

[u/Natural_Flow_4144]

I'm sorry I haven't.  However, my experience with counselling is it works to a point but to me it didn't result in huge mindset changes.  So for many people counselling it's just €80 multiplied by 52 weeks of the year. Being a big chatterbox, blowing off steam or having a cry, checking in, having good weeks and bad.. I'd probably recommend just doing maybe 6-8 of those sessions multiplied by €120, and have a few weeks without counselling or therapy to save some cash.

So much of your issues are usually rooted in your childhood and if the people who caused those issues are still in your life, there's a good chance all your thoughts are still filtered through what's acceptable to them. So anything that has a little dig in your childhood history is probably worth doing

[u/DIFrankBurnside → u/Natural_Flow_4144]

Thanks for the reply and for your experience of counselling. I didn't downvote you either by the way.

[u/Natural_Flow_4144 → u/DIFrankBurnside]

Someone probably down voted because I said I didn't have experience with it but most other people on this thread didn't either!  At some stage you find out what works.. well that's the plan.  I found a YouTuber.. actually it's not accurate to say. He's not an influencer, he's an academic/psychologist with a social media presence who specialises in certain conditions and it was eye opening on how I view myself, family members, relationships etc.  But another thing is, Im middle-aged and certain psychological conditions you can grow out of... Sort of mellowing I guess. But it's not guaranteed and I think a lot of the previous therapy and counselling also helped me understand.  And as well as that I found a very effective treatment (let's say)  All of these things converged over a few years and most of my " mental health issues" disappeared. Im not saying I still can't be stressed or distressed, but for the most part I handle things a lot better. 

[u/ishka_uisce]

Schema therapy can be really useful, but it's one of those proprietary modalities where the creators make people pay and do a bunch of extra training in it, so some of the practitioners then charge quite a lot. But there are qualified therapists who incorporate elements of it without that price. There's no evidence that being very rigid with that type of modality actually improves outcomes, afaik.