Mark Maluga, MA, PhD

Schema Therapy is an integrative psychotherapy approach that combines components of cognitive-behavioral, experiential, interpersonal and psychodynamic therapies into a unified model. SchemaTherapy is effective in helping individuals to change negative ("maladaptive") patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors which have affected their lives for a long time when other methods and interventions have been unsuccessful.

The Schema Therapy model was developed by Jeffery Young, PhD, who originally worked with Aaron T. Beck, MD, the founder of Cognitive Therapy. While treating clients at the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Young and his colleagues identified a group of clients who gained limited benefit from the standard cognitive therapy approach. These clients typically had long-standing patterns or themes in thinking, feeling and behaving/coping that required a different means of intervention. Dr. Young developed Schema Therapy to help people address and modify these deeper patterns or themes, also known as "schemas" or "lifetraps."

The schemas targeted in treatment are enduring and self-defeating patterns that typically begin early in life. These patterns consist of negative/dysfunctional thoughts and feelings, have been repeated and expanded upon throughout life, and pose obstacles for accomplishing one's goals and getting one's needs met. Some examples of schema beliefs are: "I'm unlovable," "I'm a failure," "People don't care about me," "I'm not important," "Something bad is going to happen," "People will leave me," "I will never get my needs met," "I will never be good enough," and so on.

Although schemas are usually developed early in life (during childhood or adolescence), they can also form later, in adulthood. These schemas are perpetuated behaviorally through the coping styles of schema maintenance, schema avoidance, and schema compensation. Schema Therapy is designed to help individuals break these negative patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving and to develop new, healthier schemas to replace or disempower negative schemas.

Schema Therapy consists of three stages: assessment, emotional awareness, and behavioral change. Maladaptive or negative schemas are explored and identified in the assessment stage. The emotional awareness stage involves clients getting in touch with these schemas and learning how each schema is triggered and operates in day-to-day life. Lastly, clients actively replace negative, habitual thoughts and behaviors with new, healthy cognitive and behavioral schemas in the behavioral change stage.

Dr. Maluga utilizes Schema Therapy in a compassionate and engaging manner to assist clients in identifying negative or maladaptive schemas and creating healthy schemas. 

Schema Therapy Links:

APA - Schema Therapy and Jeffery Young