This Advanced Master Class is intended for participants who have completed the Introduction to Group ST. It fulfills the advanced level training requirement for certification in Group ST by the International Society for Schema Therapy (ISST). Each six hour training day fulfills one of the module requirements for certification. Module one focuses on interventions to get through the Maladaptive Coping Modes: including the avoidant and overcompensating modes and mastery of group empathic confrontation interventions. Module two focuses on interventions for the Dysfunctional Parent modes and accessing the Healthy Adult mode. Module three focuses on interventions to reach and heal the Child Schema Modes including group imagery rescripting, playful interventions and limited reparenting by child mode. Each module consists of equal parts of didactic with demonstration and practice with observation and coaching. Although the interventions are discussed in terms of their application in Group ST, many are just as applicable to individual and participants report their effectiveness in their individual as well as group work. Their second book The Schema Therapy Clinician’s Guide, Wiley 2014 provides an entire program of group and individual ST that is appropriate for brief 10-20 sessions or longer (1 year) outpatient and more intensive programs like inpatient and day therapy. It includes therapist scripts and handouts for 42 group sessions and 12 individual sessions. This ST program is adaptable for a variety of lengths and is transdiagnostic.

This workshop is part of the curriculum for ISST certification in Group Schema Therapy. You will receive a certificate of attendance upon completion that can be used in the documentation required for that certification.

A quote from the founder of Schema Therapy, Jeffrey Young PhD, after he attended a Farrell-Shaw Group ST Workshop:
“Group Schema Therapy has the potential to deliver the powerful treatment strategies of the schema approach in a more cost effective manner than has been possible with individual schema therapy — with equivalent or perhaps superior results. The experience that the authors have gained over 30 years is evident throughout. The approach Joan and Ida have developed is truly unique, exciting and promising. Joan Farrell is an outstanding schema therapist who serves as the “stable base”, emotional center, and “educator” for the group as a whole – a role I can imagine myself learning to fill, given enough time and experience. What truly amazed me – perhaps because her style is so different from mine and Joan’s — was the remarkable group work of Ida Shaw. It is hard to convey the level of originality, creativity, and spontaneity she brings to the group experience. She is able to blend elements of gestalt, psychodrama, role- playing, and her own infectious style of play into an approach that perfectly fits the intensive demands of schema mode work, cajoling patients to change in profound ways.”
Jeffrey Young Ph.D.
Schema Therapy Institute of New York (Columbia University, Department of Psychiatry)

Joan Farrell and Ida Shaw are the main developers of Group Schema Therapy and the authors of Group Schema Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Step-by-step Treatment Manual with Patient Workbook, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012; The Schema Therapy Clinician’s Guide: A Complete Resource for Building and Delivering Individual and Group Integrated Mode Treatment Programs, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014 and the DVD Set: Group Schema Therapy: An innovative approach to treating patients with personality disorder, IVAH-Hamburg, 2011. Experiencing ST from the Inside-Out: A Self-Practice/Self-Reflection Workbook for Therapists, Guilford, 2018.

They are ISST Certified Trainer-supervisors in individual and group ST and direct the Schema Therapy Institute Midwest – Indianapolis. Joan is a licensed clinical psychologist, an adjunct professor of clinical psychology, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis and Research Director of the Center for BPD Treatment & Research, Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) & Eskenazi Health where Ida is Training Director. They regularly provide training internationally, receiving outstanding reviews as expert and enthusiastic trainers. Ida is also an ISST Certified trainer-supervisor in Child Adolescent ST and chairs the ISST certification review committee in C-A. Joan is the ISST Coordinator of Certification and Training and has been since 2012. She was faculty in psychiatry at IUSM for 25 years – training clinical psychologists and psychiatry residents in Schema Therapy, Borderline Personality Disorder, trauma and personality disorder treatment. Both have worked with a wide range of trauma and personality disorder patients for over thirty years, including combat veterans, childhood sexual abuse survivors, accident and assault victims, patients with borderline personality disorder, avoidant PD and dissociative disorders and those with chronic or complex disorders in which trauma is involved.