This worksheet helps clients identify and understand the vicious cycles that maintain their early maladaptive schemas (EMS).
Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Formulation is a key component of schema therapy. Helping clients recognize how their EMS are maintained and breaking the patterns that perpetuate them is an important task in therapy. This Schema Maintenance – Vicious Cycles worksheet offers a practical framework for exploring and addressing schema perpetuation. Therapists can use this formulation to identify self-defeating patterns that sustain clients’ EMS, explore the negative consequences of schema-driven coping responses, and develop strategies to break these cycles.
This schema-focused worksheet helps clients:
Addressing pervasive patterns of problematic thinking and behavior.
Treating entrenched mood-related difficulties.
Eating disorders where schemas play a key role.
Understanding the impact of traumatic experiences on current difficulties.
Select a core EMS that operates in the client's life.
Guide the client in describing how they cope with the schema when it is triggered.
Discuss short-term benefits and long-term costs of these responses.
Link coping strategies with the client's unmet emotional needs.
Review the cycle and identify where change might begin.
Formulation is a fundamental aspect of schema therapy (Van Genderen, 2011). Schema-focused formulations provide a comprehensive, integrative, and individualized framework for understanding clients’ difficulties by examining the interactions among their past experiences, early maladaptive schemas (EMS), and current issues (Young et al., 2003). Similar to cognitive therapy, formulation in schema therapy acts as a ‘crucible’ that combines clients’ lived experiences, schema theory, and relevant research to create a clear understanding of these problems (Kuyken et al., 2009). However, formulations in schema therapy tend to be broader compared to those in short-term treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT; Rafaeli et al., 2011).
Vicious cycles (also known as ‘maintenance circles’, ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’, ‘deviation amplifying feedback’ loops, and ‘reciprocal interactions’) have long been recognized in psychotherapy as key mechanisms that sustain psychopathology (Horney, 1936; Watzkawick, et al., 1974; Wender, 1968). Schema theory identifies several factors that contribute to the vicious cycles that maintain EMS, including cognitive distortions, self-defeating life patterns, and schema coping styles (Young, 1999; Young et al., 2003).
Helping clients recognize how their EMS are maintained and breaking the cycles perpetuate them is an important task in therapy (Young et al., 2003). This Schema Maintenance – Vicious Cycles worksheet offers a practical framework for exploring and addressing schema perpetuation, emphasizing the role of maladaptive coping responses. Therapists can use this formulation to introduce clients to key schema therapy concepts, identify vicious cycles that maintain EMS, and develop strategies to break these unhelpful patterns.
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