CPD for Therapists

Rónán Johnston Integrative Psychotherapy/CBT for Adults and Adolescents

What happens when we run aground with CBT interventions? The client is stuck or frustrated and we’ve run out of thought records or psychoeducation ideas? Schema Therapy was Jeffrey Young’s solution; an approach which marries CBT with the psychodynamic, using some Gestalt to help things along. Despite his early work with Aaron Beck, the father of CBT, he continued to experience some insurmountable psychological difficulties of his own, which only started to heal when he used this new revolutionary approach on himself. Then with Klosko and Wieshaar he developed the fundamental ideas into an entire new CBT approach, which sits comfortably with ACT in the third wave of CBT. When the client starts to understand that it’s not just their thinking but their entire belief system is causing their pain, things begin to move and we can help them get unstuck.

If you have done Schema work as part of your diploma or degree, this workshop will be a good way to see how Schema Therapy can be plugged in from the beginning, working hand in hand with other CBT interventions, while at the same time giving the client insight into why they think the way they do. This workshop is intended as an add-on to those who may already have studied some schema therapy as part of a degree or diploma, but will be “followable” to those who haven’t.
1. How to help someone assess their schemas using the YSQ
2. How to see which are actual schemas and which are more likely to be “modes” of other schemas
3. How to help them build and strengthen their healthier modes while learning to catch and correct their core schemas.
4. How to help them get unstuck if they’ve been in therapy for a while.

Rónán Johnston is a Psychotherapist working in Zestlife and his own practice in Wicklow with his wife, Joanne, also a therapist. For the first thirty years of his career, he worked in music production and broadcasting, but for the past decade he has turned to working counselling and psychotherapy, using a blend of modalities, with Schema Therapy as an important element of his work. His MA dissertation examined the impact of Schema work with adolescents and young adults