Experiential techniques help the therapist and patient first identify and then fight the patient’s schemas on an affective level.
The purpose of experiential assessment techniques is to identify the patient’s core schemas, understand their origins in childhood, and link them to the presenting problem. We described how to conduct an imagery assessment session, moving from a safe-place image to disturbing images from the patient’s childhood to images of the patient’s current life problems.
The therapist introduces experiential change strategies following the cognitive change techniques. The goal is to help patients bolster rational understanding of their schemas with emotional understanding. Many experiential change techniques represent a simplified version of mode work, using imagery dialogues with the three main characters of the Vulnerable Child, the Dysfunctional Parent, and the Healthy Adult. The therapist brings the Healthy Adult into the patient’s images of childhood to reparent the Vulnerable Child. The aim is for the patient to develop an internalized Healthy Adult mode, modeled after the therapist. We also discussed other experiential change techniques, such as letters to parents and imagery for behavioral pattern-breaking.
Finally, we discussed overcoming obstacles to experiential work, primarily schema avoidance. The solutions we proposed included educating the patient about the rationale, giving the patient permission to take several minutes to generate an image, using relaxation imagery with gradually increasing affective strength, medication, body work, and conducting dialogues with the Detached Protector mode.
In the next chapter, we describe the behavioral component of schema therapy—what we call “behavioral pattern-breaking.”