Group Schema Therapy (GST) is a group therapy programme for people with experiences of childhood or attachment trauma.
The programme supports people who recognise that their current difficulties are connected to adverse experiences in childhood and/or adolescence.
GST aims to support people affected by adverse experiences in their early years. It is designed to help address longstanding patterns of feeling, thinking and behaviour that are causing distress. These patterns may contribute to difficulties such as recurring depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance misuse, emotional dysregulation, poor self-image or relationship difficulties.
GST is a day programme which consists of 20 weekly group sessions, which take place in person, and runs over a six month period.
What is Schema Therapy?
In Schema Therapy, we see a direct connection between psychological distress in childhood and problems we experience in the present.
We all have emotional needs as children, such as the needs to feel safe, to express ourselves, and to have independence. When our emotional needs are consistently not met, we develop ways of perceiving ourselves, other people, and the world around us; for example, we might think that we are unlovable or a failure, that nobody can be trusted, that the world is unsafe and so on. These are what we call “maladaptive schemas”. They are beliefs that were shaped by events in our lives that we did not chose and, therefore, are not our fault.
These schemas were helpful to us at the time; they helped us to survive and make sense of what was happening during childhood. However, these schemas can become rigid; we can continue to believe them into adulthood and react to them in ways that cause us problems in how we relate to ourselves and others. Schema Therapy therefore helps you to become more aware of your individual schemas by learning about your core unmet emotional needs and how your schemas manifest and impact on your life as an adult.
What will you learn?
Through the GST programme, once you have started becoming aware of your own schemas, we will move towards changing the impact of these schemas through a range of cognitive, behavioural, and emotion-focused techniques.
Important aspects of treatment include examining and experiencing what happens in your interactions with other people. When we have strong maladaptive schemas, we may find it difficult to express our needs and open-up about our inner emotional world. GST provides an opportunity to learn these skills in a dedicated space with other people who are experiencing similar difficulties.
You will gain new experiences within a safe therapeutic environment that allows you to express what is going on inside and learn how your interactions with other group members bring out your schemas.
How can you be referred to GST?
Currently, places in the GST programme are available to services users under the care of a consultant psychiatrist at SPMHS. Referrals are accepted from psychologists working with multidisciplinary teams at SPMHS.
