October 14, 2025 • 11 mins
[Rerun] Do you have recurring patterns in your relationships that are frustrating? Schema therapy might help. Dr. Kirk Honda talks for over four hours about the theory and how to use it in your life -- our core emotional needs, the schema that develop when some of our needs aren't met, how we habitually cope with those schema being triggered, and our overall personality modes that develop.
(Intro) The full episode is available to patrons of the podcast.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/KIRK to get 10% off your first month.
Become a member: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOUZWV1DRtHtpP2H48S7iiw/join
Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/PsychologyInSeattle
Email: https://www.psychologyinseattle.com/contact
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Facebook Official Page: https://www.facebook.com/PsychologyInSeattle/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kirk.honda
August 30, 2019
The Psychology In Seattle Podcast ®
Trigger Warning: This episode may include topics such as assault, trauma, and discrimination. If necessary, listeners are encouraged to refrain from listening and care for their safety and well-being.
Disclaimer: The content provided is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes personal or professional consultation, therapy, diagnosis, or creates a counselor-client relationship. Topics discussed may generate differing points of view. If you participate (by being a guest, submitting a question, or commenting) you must do so with the knowledge that we cannot control reactions or responses from others, which may not agree with you or feel unfair. Your participation on this site is at your own risk, accepting full responsibility for any liability or harm that may result. Anything you write here may be used for discussion or endorsement of the podcast. Opinions and views expressed by the host and guest hosts are personal views. Although, we take precautions and fact check, they should not be considered facts and the opinions may change. Opinions posted by participants (such as comments) are not those of the hosts. Readers should not rely on any information found here and should perform due diligence before taking any action. For a more extensive description of factors for you to consider, please see www.psychologyinseattle.com
(Intro) The full episode is available to patrons of the podcast.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/KIRK to get 10% off your first month.
Become a member: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOUZWV1DRtHtpP2H48S7iiw/join
Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/PsychologyInSeattle
Email: https://www.psychologyinseattle.com/contact
Website: https://www.psychologyinseattle.com
Merch: https://psychologyinseattle-shop.fourthwall.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/psychologyinseattle/
Facebook Official Page: https://www.facebook.com/PsychologyInSeattle/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kirk.honda
August 30, 2019
The Psychology In Seattle Podcast ®
Trigger Warning: This episode may include topics such as assault, trauma, and discrimination. If necessary, listeners are encouraged to refrain from listening and care for their safety and well-being.
Disclaimer: The content provided is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes personal or professional consultation, therapy, diagnosis, or creates a counselor-client relationship. Topics discussed may generate differing points of view. If you participate (by being a guest, submitting a question, or commenting) you must do so with the knowledge that we cannot control reactions or responses from others, which may not agree with you or feel unfair. Your participation on this site is at your own risk, accepting full responsibility for any liability or harm that may result. Anything you write here may be used for discussion or endorsement of the podcast. Opinions and views expressed by the host and guest hosts are personal views. Although, we take precautions and fact check, they should not be considered facts and the opinions may change. Opinions posted by participants (such as comments) are not those of the hosts. Readers should not rely on any information found here and should perform due diligence before taking any action. For a more extensive description of factors for you to consider, please see www.psychologyinseattle.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Psychology in Hey Deserving Listeners Today, I'm going to do
a deep dive on schema therapy. I find schema therapy
to be a good theory. I like it. It's practical, but
(00:21):
it also can be very deep. I think it's very useful.
It provides very specific examples. It's not this very amorphos theory.
You know, Psychodynamic theory, for example, which I love, can
be quite a morphis sometimes, whereas schema therapy provides a
very specific guidance on figuring out what one's issues are
(00:44):
and how to help them. And I've known about scheme
of therapy for a long time, and I've known the
basic premise of it and thought I would like it
as it's an integrative theory of several theories that I like.
But I didn't realize I would like it this much.
I really really like it. And if I would have
discovered this theory early in my career, I might consider
(01:08):
I might have eventually considered myself a schema therapist because
it really is in line with the way that I
think about people, and it has enough in there, enough
integrated in there that it's not narrow and limited. And
at this point in my career I just have my
own identity, and so it's kind of silly to like
(01:29):
switch course at this point. Plus, I feel like I've
been operating as a schema therapist for twenty years anyway,
having integrated other kinds of things. But anyway, Yeah, I
like schema therapy so much that I'm pretty sure I'm
going to start integrating it into some of my courses
at my university, particularly my course on family of origin,
(01:50):
which I have novice graduate students analyzed themselves and their
family of origin, their childildhood to discover their vulnerabilities as
a person and as a therapist so that they can
understand their vulnerabilities when they are sitting with their clients,
(02:11):
and schema therapy provides a pretty distinct systematic way. They
even have measures that you can, you know, surveys, instruments
you can fill out that you can actually discover what
your issues are, what your maladaptive schemas are. And I
have been doing this kind of work with my students
anyway to help them discover their issues in relation that
(02:35):
they'll you know, that their clients will trigger in them.
But I think that schema therapy provides this very systematic
way of figuring that out. So I'm going to actually
go through that in this episode and along those lines,
I think this episode is going to be useful to
you all, at least that's my way of trying to
design this. In the past, I have done deep dives
(02:57):
like this and I probably get like ninety five percent
of the stuff out there. But then some people will
email me afterwards and they'll say, Okay, I feel like
I really understand the theory. Well, I feel like I,
you know, really understand the the you know, the foundation
and the research, but how am I supposed to use it?
(03:20):
And I've always sort of resisted that because I'm like, well,
go to therapy, but I don't actually believe that you
need to go to therapy in order to help yourself.
I mean I have helped myself without necessarily going to therapy.
I've gone to therapy most of my life, so I,
you know, enjoy therapy, but sometimes it's like I probably
(03:40):
am better off just doing some things on my own.
And so I'm going to provide a step by set
process in this episode at the end, walking through how
one could use scheme of therapy within reason on themselves
to better themselves. Because I think that that's absolutely possible. Now,
if you're beyond a certain level of difficulty, then you
(04:03):
absolutely would need a therapist to help you walk through that.
But I'll make that distinction towards the end of the episode.
So throughout this episode, what I'm gonna do is I'm
going to provide little moments where I'm going to ask
that you actually pause the podcast and take some notes
because it's it can get kind of complicated, and so
if you take notes as you go along, I think
(04:25):
it'll help you to actually discover some things about yourself.
I mean, when I walked through all this stuff, I
discovered some things about myself. I even gave the instrument
to my wife, and I discovered some things about her.
I don't know if she discovered anything new about herself,
but maybe a little bit. It's interesting, you know, it's
interesting to be like, oh, okay, I guess I am
(04:46):
that way. I never thought of that as different than
other people. Is that a different thing? Do not? Everyone
isn't like that? So yeah, So I'm going to walk
through a step by step process of this s gemas
the coping styles, the modes and so on. So you know,
I think you'll find it interesting. It's another way of
(05:07):
looking at personality disorders. A lot of you want me
to talk about personality sorters for very different reasons. Some
of you actually suffer from personality disorders, and schema therapy
is another way of looking at personality and its disorders.
It's it's not really connected to the DSM categories, the
traditional categories of personality disorders that we have in our field.
(05:29):
You know, a borderline narcisism, this kind of thing. I
think it is in some ways it's more useful than
the DSM categories because it's more descriptive and perhaps using
more contemporary language than in the past, because you know,
our DSM categories come from over one hundred years ago
in some ways, I mean, historionic personality disorder comes from
(05:50):
thousands of years ago, back in the ancient Greeks and
even further back with the ancient Egyptians. So it's just
you know, just as a short note there, you know,
histrionic personality disorder. The word histor is the Greek word
for uterus, which was the thought back then was that
(06:12):
if your uterus was wandering around your body, then you
would have this disorder. Of course, it was a sexist
thing that only women could suffer from, and the Greeks
got that idea from ancient Egyptians. So in the DSM
we still have this word called the histrionic personality sort.
I mean, I use the term because it's the way
of describing it to other clinicians. I wish we had
(06:32):
a different term. I wish we called it something like,
you know, attention deficit or you know, deprived attention personality
sort or something. But anyway, the Scheme of Therapy provides
just a new language system that's more intuitive, more understandable,
and it's still in depth, though in some ways it's
(06:53):
more you know, if you look at it a certain way,
it's even more in depth than the DSM language of personality.
So if you're a clinician, I think you'll find this
particularly useful because it's a helpful way of looking at
clients and their patterns. I have forty one pages of notes,
so I think this is going to be a very
long episode now. I asked the listeners what they thought
(07:18):
of schemea Therapy today. I just posted on Facebook on Patreon,
I was like, I'm doing a deep dive on Scheme
of Therapy. Does anyone have any experience with it, and
some people wrote in. CW wrote in and said, I
am looking for a therapist who does schema therapy in
my area, but my worry is that it will annoy
me if it gets too Freudian. But it is supposed
(07:39):
to help me with my disorganized attachment style, which is
becoming untenable for me and my personal and work relationships.
The theory is clear and intuitive, I think. However, I
don't like the position of the therapist as parent or
the dismissing of hurt parts as being stuck at the
ego state which will is once told to me by
(08:01):
a schema therapist. I remember feeling angry and resentful of
that label of being stuck in an ego state. If
I could, I would go to an internal family systems therapist,
but they are not recognized in my country. And of comment, Yeah,
so interesting that you think you're worried that schema therapy
would become to Freudian and that you're looking for a
(08:24):
IFS therapist and they don't have them in your country.
If you want a deep dive on internal family systems,
you can listen to one of my older episodes in
which I do a deep dive on that. I actually
interviewed someone who does it a long time ago, probably jeez,
eight years ago or some Elizabeth wrote in I'm I'm
about to start schema therapy now. I filled out the
(08:46):
YSQ measure and we discussed my results. I've had an
intake with a new psychologist and we'll have our first
real session this Wednesday. Angel also comment as a client,
I have had schema mode therapy based on the conceptualization
that arnold aren't formulated, it differs from traditional schema therapy,
(09:07):
and that it focuses on the modes found in personality
disorders rather than the schemas. I've had DBTCBT and a
bit of ACT and compassion focused therapy. I have found
schema mode therapy with the addition of compassion work, to
be the most healing. My psychologist doesn't use it exclusively,
but we come back to it for times and issues
(09:30):
that I find myself really stuck. So I just thought
it was interesting to hear people talk about it because
I was surprised that people are actually seeking it, that
therapists are actually using schema therapy. I don't think a
lot of people in Seattle are using it maybe a lot,
but not in my circle anyway. I think it's great
that people are using it, but I was just surprised
that it's prevalence. Maybe it's more prevalent in other areas
(09:50):
of the world, I'm not quite sure. So in this episode,
I'm going to talk about the theory in detail, as
I usually like to do. I love theory and I
love talking about it. Love trying to really understand it,
not just sort of the outline of it all. I
want to really look at scheme of therapy in a
detailed way. I also want to again explain how everyone
(10:12):
can use it for themselves, for self awareness and for healing,
and I'll provide some concrete steps for that, again within reason,
meaning that if you suffer beyond a certain threshold, you
absolutely need a therapist to help you. I'm also going
to talk about how scheme of therapy works, and then
I'm going to conclude with some research and some final thoughts.
(10:34):
This is the Psychology Seattle podcast. I'm your host, doctor
Kirk Honda. I'm a therapist and a professor. This episode
is just for patrons of the podcast, so if you
want to hear this full episode, which I'm guessing is
going to be hours and hours long. You have to
become a patron of the podcast by going to patreon
dot com. That's patreon dot com. When you become a patron,
(10:58):
you get access to this episode and hundreds of other
patren only episodes, which are arguably our best episodes. Also,
know that a portion of your monthly pledge goes towards
various charities that we support. We've given over ten thousand
dollars to various charities and causes, and we've actually given
(11:19):
out almost five thousand dollars in scholarships to needy students
who are making a difference in the world. So know
that your your money's going towards a lot of really
great things. So go to patreon dot com and become
a patron of our podcast. Join us, be one of us.
Psychology in Hey Deserving Listeners Today, I'm going to do
a deep dive on schema therapy. I find schema therapy
to be a good theory. I like it. It's practical, but
(00:21):
it also can be very deep. I think it's very useful.
It provides very specific examples. It's not this very amorphos theory.
You know, Psychodynamic theory, for example, which I love, can
be quite a morphis sometimes, whereas schema therapy provides a
very specific guidance on figuring out what one's issues are
(00:44):
and how to help them. And I've known about scheme
of therapy for a long time, and I've known the
basic premise of it and thought I would like it
as it's an integrative theory of several theories that I like.
But I didn't realize I would like it this much.
I really really like it. And if I would have
discovered this theory early in my career, I might consider
(01:08):
I might have eventually considered myself a schema therapist because
it really is in line with the way that I
think about people, and it has enough in there, enough
integrated in there that it's not narrow and limited. And
at this point in my career I just have my
own identity, and so it's kind of silly to like
(01:29):
switch course at this point. Plus, I feel like I've
been operating as a schema therapist for twenty years anyway,
having integrated other kinds of things. But anyway, Yeah, I
like schema therapy so much that I'm pretty sure I'm
going to start integrating it into some of my courses
at my university, particularly my course on family of origin,
(01:50):
which I have novice graduate students analyzed themselves and their
family of origin, their childildhood to discover their vulnerabilities as
a person and as a therapist so that they can
understand their vulnerabilities when they are sitting with their clients,
(02:11):
and schema therapy provides a pretty distinct systematic way. They
even have measures that you can, you know, surveys, instruments
you can fill out that you can actually discover what
your issues are, what your maladaptive schemas are. And I
have been doing this kind of work with my students
anyway to help them discover their issues in relation that
(02:35):
they'll you know, that their clients will trigger in them.
But I think that schema therapy provides this very systematic
way of figuring that out. So I'm going to actually
go through that in this episode and along those lines,
I think this episode is going to be useful to
you all, at least that's my way of trying to
design this. In the past, I have done deep dives
(02:57):
like this and I probably get like ninety five percent
of the stuff out there. But then some people will
email me afterwards and they'll say, Okay, I feel like
I really understand the theory. Well, I feel like I,
you know, really understand the the you know, the foundation
and the research, but how am I supposed to use it?
(03:20):
And I've always sort of resisted that because I'm like, well,
go to therapy, but I don't actually believe that you
need to go to therapy in order to help yourself.
I mean I have helped myself without necessarily going to therapy.
I've gone to therapy most of my life, so I,
you know, enjoy therapy, but sometimes it's like I probably
(03:40):
am better off just doing some things on my own.
And so I'm going to provide a step by set
process in this episode at the end, walking through how
one could use scheme of therapy within reason on themselves
to better themselves. Because I think that that's absolutely possible. Now,
if you're beyond a certain level of difficulty, then you
(04:03):
absolutely would need a therapist to help you walk through that.
But I'll make that distinction towards the end of the episode.
So throughout this episode, what I'm gonna do is I'm
going to provide little moments where I'm going to ask
that you actually pause the podcast and take some notes
because it's it can get kind of complicated, and so
if you take notes as you go along, I think
(04:25):
it'll help you to actually discover some things about yourself.
I mean, when I walked through all this stuff, I
discovered some things about myself. I even gave the instrument
to my wife, and I discovered some things about her.
I don't know if she discovered anything new about herself,
but maybe a little bit. It's interesting, you know, it's
interesting to be like, oh, okay, I guess I am
(04:46):
that way. I never thought of that as different than
other people. Is that a different thing? Do not? Everyone
isn't like that? So yeah, So I'm going to walk
through a step by step process of this s gemas
the coping styles, the modes and so on. So you know,
I think you'll find it interesting. It's another way of
(05:07):
looking at personality disorders. A lot of you want me
to talk about personality sorters for very different reasons. Some
of you actually suffer from personality disorders, and schema therapy
is another way of looking at personality and its disorders.
It's it's not really connected to the DSM categories, the
traditional categories of personality disorders that we have in our field.
(05:29):
You know, a borderline narcisism, this kind of thing. I
think it is in some ways it's more useful than
the DSM categories because it's more descriptive and perhaps using
more contemporary language than in the past, because you know,
our DSM categories come from over one hundred years ago
in some ways, I mean, historionic personality disorder comes from
(05:50):
thousands of years ago, back in the ancient Greeks and
even further back with the ancient Egyptians. So it's just
you know, just as a short note there, you know,
histrionic personality disorder. The word histor is the Greek word
for uterus, which was the thought back then was that
(06:12):
if your uterus was wandering around your body, then you
would have this disorder. Of course, it was a sexist
thing that only women could suffer from, and the Greeks
got that idea from ancient Egyptians. So in the DSM
we still have this word called the histrionic personality sort.
I mean, I use the term because it's the way
of describing it to other clinicians. I wish we had
(06:32):
a different term. I wish we called it something like,
you know, attention deficit or you know, deprived attention personality
sort or something. But anyway, the Scheme of Therapy provides
just a new language system that's more intuitive, more understandable,
and it's still in depth, though in some ways it's
(06:53):
more you know, if you look at it a certain way,
it's even more in depth than the DSM language of personality.
So if you're a clinician, I think you'll find this
particularly useful because it's a helpful way of looking at
clients and their patterns. I have forty one pages of notes,
so I think this is going to be a very
long episode now. I asked the listeners what they thought
(07:18):
of schemea Therapy today. I just posted on Facebook on Patreon,
I was like, I'm doing a deep dive on Scheme
of Therapy. Does anyone have any experience with it, and
some people wrote in. CW wrote in and said, I
am looking for a therapist who does schema therapy in
my area, but my worry is that it will annoy
me if it gets too Freudian. But it is supposed
(07:39):
to help me with my disorganized attachment style, which is
becoming untenable for me and my personal and work relationships.
The theory is clear and intuitive, I think. However, I
don't like the position of the therapist as parent or
the dismissing of hurt parts as being stuck at the
ego state which will is once told to me by
(08:01):
a schema therapist. I remember feeling angry and resentful of
that label of being stuck in an ego state. If
I could, I would go to an internal family systems therapist,
but they are not recognized in my country. And of comment, Yeah,
so interesting that you think you're worried that schema therapy
would become to Freudian and that you're looking for a
(08:24):
IFS therapist and they don't have them in your country.
If you want a deep dive on internal family systems,
you can listen to one of my older episodes in
which I do a deep dive on that. I actually
interviewed someone who does it a long time ago, probably jeez,
eight years ago or some Elizabeth wrote in I'm I'm
about to start schema therapy now. I filled out the
(08:46):
YSQ measure and we discussed my results. I've had an
intake with a new psychologist and we'll have our first
real session this Wednesday. Angel also comment as a client,
I have had schema mode therapy based on the conceptualization
that arnold aren't formulated, it differs from traditional schema therapy,
(09:07):
and that it focuses on the modes found in personality
disorders rather than the schemas. I've had DBTCBT and a
bit of ACT and compassion focused therapy. I have found
schema mode therapy with the addition of compassion work, to
be the most healing. My psychologist doesn't use it exclusively,
but we come back to it for times and issues
(09:30):
that I find myself really stuck. So I just thought
it was interesting to hear people talk about it because
I was surprised that people are actually seeking it, that
therapists are actually using schema therapy. I don't think a
lot of people in Seattle are using it maybe a lot,
but not in my circle anyway. I think it's great
that people are using it, but I was just surprised
that it's prevalence. Maybe it's more prevalent in other areas
(09:50):
of the world, I'm not quite sure. So in this episode,
I'm going to talk about the theory in detail, as
I usually like to do. I love theory and I
love talking about it. Love trying to really understand it,
not just sort of the outline of it all. I
want to really look at scheme of therapy in a
detailed way. I also want to again explain how everyone
(10:12):
can use it for themselves, for self awareness and for healing,
and I'll provide some concrete steps for that, again within reason,
meaning that if you suffer beyond a certain threshold, you
absolutely need a therapist to help you. I'm also going
to talk about how scheme of therapy works, and then
I'm going to conclude with some research and some final thoughts.
(10:34):
This is the Psychology Seattle podcast. I'm your host, doctor
Kirk Honda. I'm a therapist and a professor. This episode
is just for patrons of the podcast, so if you
want to hear this full episode, which I'm guessing is
going to be hours and hours long. You have to
become a patron of the podcast by going to patreon
dot com. That's patreon dot com. When you become a patron,
(10:58):
you get access to this episode and hundreds of other
patren only episodes, which are arguably our best episodes. Also,
know that a portion of your monthly pledge goes towards
various charities that we support. We've given over ten thousand
dollars to various charities and causes, and we've actually given
(11:19):
out almost five thousand dollars in scholarships to needy students
who are making a difference in the world. So know
that your your money's going towards a lot of really
great things. So go to patreon dot com and become
a patron of our podcast. Join us, be one of us.
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