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Schema Therapy is an integrative therapy incorporating elements of cognitive behavioural, transactional analysis, psychodynamic and gestalt therapies. It is used to treat more complex and longstanding problems that are not always helped by the “here and now” approach of CBT, enabling clients to understand, and then rework how their early experiences shape their current reactions.

• Schemas are our core patterns or behaviours that we tend to repeatedly use throughout our lives. They can sometimes lie dormant for a long time, being activated by certain triggers
• Coping Styles are the way we adapt to schemas and early life experiences. These are often unhealthy and tend to maintain or worsen the problems.
• Modes are particular emotional states that we all slip into from time to time. Whilst we can be in a dominant state or mode for some time, we can flip over into other modes. For example someone may find themselves sometimes clingy and needy, and then angry and then self-critical. Or others may find themselves trying to please and working really hard to get things right, only to flip later into feeling worthless and a failure.

Schema therapy helps clients to understand the unhelpful modes and coping styles and move towards a “healthy adult” approach, which is a way of responding in a balanced, non-destructive and gently assertive way to triggers.

As this work often involves revisiting childhood patterns which have been established for a long term, this is often a longer term therapy.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is proven to help with:

anxiety, depression, panic attacks, agoraphobia, post-traumatic stress, obsessions, OCD, low self-esteem, driving anxiety, phobias, eating disorders, health anxiety, insomnia, pain management, chronic fatigue syndrome/ME, stress, chronic worry (GAD), social anxiety/shyness and other unhelpful patterns of thinking and behaving. CBT is…

• well-researched: it is based on scientific principles and which research has shown to be effective for a wide range of problems.
• collaborative: clients and therapists work together to identify and understand problems in terms of the relationship between thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
• problem focused: the approach usually focuses on difficulties in the here and now and relies on the therapist and client developing a shared view of the individual’s problem
• short-term: tasks carried out in between sessions mean that much of the work is done by the client independently allowing for the therapy to be relatively brief. The average number of sessions ranges from between ten and thirty.
• supportive and challenging: based on gaining an understanding of the relationship between thinking, acting and feeling in the present. Rowan frequently integrates CBT with EMDR, which is a technique clinically proven to be successful in helping people deal with traumatic memories, and also Schema Therapy. She may also draw on her experience in Stress Management and Yoga Tuition to offer a therapy individually formulated for each client. She also offers supervision.

Rowan is a BABCP accredited CBT therapist

We have developed a teacher training curriculum and were able to host training sessions for teachers and educational personnel about new techniques of teaching how to read. We believe this will empower teachers in classrooms to teach more effectively.

The focus of our last quarter has been working with local groups to improve bus networks. We believe that it is vital to provide transportation options for children living in rural areas. Thanks to our donors we were able to fund 50 buses and 200 cars that transport children to schools all around the globe.

This summer, because of the effort of our volunteers and the generous donations from our sponsors, we were able to deliver 10,000 pencils to children in need. We were able to reach the most unprivileged areas and provide local schools with this vital tool for education.