Deliberate practice exercises allow students and trainees to rehearse foundational schema therapy skills so that they can build competence and hone their own personal therapeutic styles.
Each book in the Essentials of Deliberate Practice series contains customized role-playing exercises in which two trainees act as a client and a therapist, switching back and forth under a supervisor's guidance. The trainee playing the therapist improvises appropriate and authentic responses to client statements organized into three difficulty levels—beginner, intermediate, and advanced—reflecting common issues encountered by schema therapists.
The first 12 exercises focus on skills derived from schema therapy’s three stages—bonding and emotional regulation, mode change, and autonomy—and include limited reparenting, psychoeducation about schema modes, and empathic confrontation. Following these are two comprehensive exercises—an annotated transcript and free-form mock therapy sessions—in which trainees integrate essential skills into a single session.
Step-by-step instructions guide participants through the exercises, identify criteria for mastering each skill, and explain how to monitor and adjust difficulty. Guidelines to help trainers and trainees get the most out of training are also provided.
Wendy T. Behary, MSW, LCSW, is the founder and director of The Cognitive Therapy Center of New Jersey and The Schema Therapy Institutes of NJ-NYC-DC. She was also the President of the International Society of Schema Therapy (ISST) from 2010–2014. She is the author of
Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed (New Harbinger Publications). She has been treating narcissist clients, their partners and associates, and couples experiencing relationship problems; training professionals; and supervising psychotherapists for over 20 years. She lectures internationally to professional and general audiences on schema therapy and on narcissism and relationships.
Joan M. Farrell, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and Adjunct Professor of Psychology and Research Director of the Center for Borderline Personality Disorder Treatment and Research at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. She directs the Schema Therapy Institute Midwest—Indianapolis. She has been training psychologists and psychotherapists internationally for 40 years. She developed a group model of schema therapy with Ida Shaw, and they wrote two books on this model for borderline and other personality disorders (Wiley Blackwell). Their latest book is
Experiencing Schema Therapy From the Inside-Out: A Self-Practice/Self-Reflection Workbook for Therapists (Guilford Press). Visit https://www.schematherapy-training.com/.
Alexandre Vaz, PhD, is director of training at the
Sentio Marriage and Family Therapy graduate program and
Sentio Counseling Center. He has authored many books on deliberate practice and psychotherapy training and is coeditor of the book series
The Essentials of Deliberate Practice (APA Books). Dr. Vaz has held multiple committee roles for the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) and the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR). He is founder and host of “Psychotherapy Expert Talks,” an acclaimed interview series with distinguished psychotherapists and researchers.
Tony Rousmaniere, PsyD, is program director of the
Sentio Marriage and Family Therapy graduate program, and executive director of the
Sentio Counseling Center. He has authored many books on deliberate practice and psychotherapy training and is coeditor of the book series
The Essentials of Deliberate Practice(APA Books). In 2017, Dr. Rousmaniere published the widely cited article in
The Atlantic Monthly, “What Your Therapist Doesn’t Know.” Dr. Rousmaniere supports the open-data movement and publishes clinical outcome data at
drtonyr.com. He is president of Division 29 of APA.
