Deliberate Practice in Schema Therapy (Essentials of Deliberate Practice Series)

Review\nDeliberate Practice in Schema Therapy provides a practical guide to learning how to conceptualize clients who have had traumatic childhoods. It teaches the clinician how and when to use schema therapy to help clients understand and then change their unhelpful reactions. Practical exercises aid the therapist in using standard and advanced schema therapy techniques.\n-- Judith S. Beck, PhD, Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy, and Clinical Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA\nDeliberate practice exercises allow students and trainees to rehearse foundational schema therapy skills so that they can build competence and hone their own personal therapeutic styles.\nEach book in the Essentials of Deliberate Practice series contains customized role-playing exercises in which two trainees act as a client and a therapist, switching back and forth under a supervisor's guidance. The trainee playing the therapist improvises appropriate and authentic responses to client statements organized into three difficulty levels—beginner, intermediate, and advanced—reflecting common issues encountered by schema therapists.\nThe first 12 exercises focus on skills derived from schema therapy’s three stages—bonding and emotional regulation, mode change, and autonomy—and include limited reparenting, psychoeducation about schema modes, and empathic confrontation. Following these are two comprehensive exercises—an annotated transcript and free-form mock therapy sessions—in which trainees integrate essential skills into a single session.\nStep-by-step instructions guide participants through the exercises, identify criteria for mastering each skill, and explain how to monitor and adjust difficulty. Guidelines to help trainers and trainees get the most out of training are also provided.