The workshop begins with establishing safety and connection within the group and the agreement to keep confidential any personal material disclosed. Participants are encouraged to share as much or little content in the group as they feel comfortable with. They can choose to focus on particular schema or mode issues that affect their personal or professional life or go into the day open to whatever experience they have. Just as they do with all groups, Joan and Ida assess the needs of the participants and plan the day’s work in collaboration with participants based upon the needs and modes present. The focus in the workshop is on experiential work.

Joan and Ida spent two years as members of a self-therapy for therapists group in their training and consider that experience critical to their understanding of themselves, their reactions when participating in a group and what clients experience. Participation in the workshop will add new interventions to use with clients and deep experience of Schema Therapy from the “inside-out”. They believe that what one learns from this experience cannot be taught as effectively didactically, if at all. For that reason self-therapy in group is a requirement for ISST group Schema Therapy certification and this work shop fulfils that requirement. It can also be used to meet the three supervision hours credit allowed to meet individual schema therapy certification supervision requirements.