Do you often feel overwhelmed by fear and worry? Do anxious thoughts keep you up at night? Does self-doubt, overthinking, or a sense of never feeling truly at ease make daily life more difficult? Perhaps you struggle with constant self criticism, difficulty making decisions, or the fear of being judged or rejected by others. Maybe you feel physically on edge – restless, tense, or experiencing racing thoughts that won’t quiet down, leading to insomnia. Or do you avoid certain situations altogether, fearing failure, not being good enough, embarrassment, shame or possibility of losing control?
If anxiety is disrupting your daily life and preventing you from feeling calm and in control, Schema Therapy offers a structured, effective approach to help you break free.
It’s natural to feel a wave of anxiety before a big event like an exam or interview. But when worry and fear start to take over your daily life – even in situations that shouldn’t feel overwhelming – it may be a sign of persistent anxiety. Anxiety often manifests as constant fear and excessive worry, sometimes escalating into panic attacks. These feelings may linger under the surface and can interfere with your professional, personal and social lives.
If you’re struggling to deal with anxiety alone, Schema therapy provides a powerful, evidence based approach to understanding and overcoming anxiety. I’m Dr Sonney Gullu McPhee, a Chartered Clinical Psychologist and an advanced schema therapist practicing in Petersfield, Hampshire. My schema therapy sessions provide insights and understanding, and offer practical strategies to break free from irrational fears, and take control of your anxiety.
Learn all about how schema therapy can be your practical guide to deal with anxiety.
Understanding Schema Therapy and Schemas
Schema therapy is an approach that helps you identify and modify the core patterns of how you think, feel, and behave in your life. These patterns known as schemas, develop from early life experiences and continue to influence you into adulthood.
According to Schema Therapy, unmet childhood needs and adverse childhood experiences – such as neglect, criticism, or emotional abuse – lead to the formation of maladaptive schemas. These schemas continue to persist into your adult life, even if you are unaware of them, and strongly shape your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
Understanding your schemas is crucial when addressing anxiety because maladaptive schemas shape the way you perceive threats, react to uncertainty, and manage your emotions. Many schemas – such as Abandonment, Defectiveness, or Vulnerability to Harm – trigger an automatic anxiety response, keeping you trapped in patterns of fear, avoidance, and self-doubt.
For example, if you grew up with parents who weren’t available due to work or personal issues, your emotional needs (support, love, connection and reassurance) may have been neglected or unmet. If this was consistent across your childhood, you may have experienced a pattern of insecurity, feelings of fear, and abandonment. This abandonment schema will follow you into your adulthood, where you may replicate the emotional instability experienced during childhood.
When you don’t address these counterproductive patterns, they lead to mental health issues including anxiety, depression and other mental health problems. Schema therapy can be the best therapy for anxiety to uncover these patterns and identify the connections between childhood experiences, adult behaviours, and lingering anxiety.
How Schema Therapy Helps Controls Anxiety
When you deal with anxiety daily, it can distort the way you see yourself, your relationships and the world, reinforcing negative thought patterns and emotional responses. Schema Therapy can help you identify, challenge and reshape these deep-rooted patterns, allowing you to develop healthier and more adaptive ways of thinking and responding to anxiety.
This therapy uses a range of techniques designed to modify maladaptive schemas, which fall into three key areas: cognitive, emotional/experiential and behavioral.
Here’s how I use them in my anxiety disorders treatment strategies.
Cognitive Techniques
The main goal of cognitive schema therapy techniques is to identify and challenge negative thought patterns and core beliefs that reinforce anxiety. In our sessions, we work together to explore your past experiences to uncover the underlying schemas fueling your anxiety. Through this process, we will examine the evidence that contradicts these maladaptive schemas, helping to weaken their grip and replace them with healthier, more balanced perspectives.
We will also use tools like schema diaries, schema dialogues and flashcards, to help you develop more adaptive ways of thinking. Schema dialogues are a particularly powerful cognitive technique that engages different parts of your mind in conversation, allowing you to challenge and transform maladaptive schemas effectively.
Experiential/Emotion Focused Techniques
I use experiential or emotion focused schema therapy techniques, including guided imagery rescripting, chair work and role-play to help process painful childhood memories and change the associated emotional responses. Through these emotion-focused practices, we’ll “rescript” past traumatic events, replacing distressing narratives with a more positive and empowering perspective.
During chair work, I’ll guide you in re-enacting past or future scenarios, allowing you to engage in meaningful dialogues with different chairs that represent various aspects of yourself or significant people in your life. This technique helps break unhelpful patterns and fosters emotional healing.
As a core part of my anxiety disorder treatment strategy, these techniques empower you to take control of your mental health. The insights and skills gained in our sessions extend far beyond therapy, equipping you with lifelong tools to better deal with anxiety, and emotional challenges.
Behavioural Techniques
Behavioural schema therapy techniques aim to change the unhelpful patterns of behaviour associated with the maladaptive schemas. These techniques help you practically apply what you’ve learnt in my therapy sessions in your everyday life.Through role playing and behavioral experiments, we will work together to practise new ways of responding to situations that typically trigger anxiety. By testing these behaviors in a safe and supportive environment, you can gradually replace fear-based reactions with healthier, more constructive ones. Homework assignments encourage you to try new behaviours in real-life situations, and report back on your experiences. These assignments help you challenge avoidance, build confidence, and reinforce adaptive responses to anxiety.
As part of my anxiety disorder treatment strategy, these behavioral techniques help you break free from unhelpful behavioral patterns and take active steps towards lasting emotional well-being.
Control Anxiety with Professional Help from Dr McPhee
Controlling anxiety and breaking free from persistent feelings of fear is possible with the right therapeutic approach. When anxiety is deeply rooted in maladaptive schemas, it requires more than surface-level coping strategies – It involves identifying and reshaping the core patterns driving your anxiety.
If you’re struggling with anxiety, I’ll work with you to explore the underlying schemas that keep you stuck and provide practical tools and strategies to manage your anxiety symptoms and develop healthier emotional and behavioral responses.
This process isn’t about quick solutions – it is about committing to real, lasting change by addressing the underlying beliefs, emotions and behaviors that sustain anxiety. Your schema therapy sessions will support you in this journey, helping you build resilience and long term emotional wellbeing.
As your schema therapist and chartered clinical psychologist, I embrace a tailored, evidence-based approach in my practice. I offer flexible therapy options, with in-person consultations at my clinic in Petersfield, Hampshire, and remote sessions offering the best online therapy for anxiety.
Call or email to schedule a complimentary 15-minute consultation to explore how we might work together to help you deal with anxiety.