Psychoeducation can be therapeutic when done right.
Providing psycho-education for clients can be helpful but it can also be “information overload.” With a few simple tweaks it’s easy to make psycho-ed more therapeutic to help the client feel understood, seen and known.
Below are some ways to make psycho education more powerful:
Keep it brief. I don’t tend to spend a whole session going through all their schemas and modes. Instead, I include brief psycho-ed alongside formulation feedback. For example, “John, it makes sense to me that you have a vulnerability to harm schema, a fear that bad things will befall you, and I think this schema might be increasing your health anxiety. What do you think?
Use psycho education to normalise the presence of a schema or mode. “John, it makes sense you have this vulnerability to harm schema given your parents would often warn you of bad things that might happen when you were growing up.”
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Keep it simple and relevant. Focus your psycho education on the schemas and modes related to the presenting problem to avoid information overload.
See what they need - ask the client how much detail they want to know. I find many clients want to know just the main points.
Offer psycho-ed for homework. After clients complete the ysq I send them a list of schemas and ask them to pick the schemas (or parts of schemas) that resonate the most with them. Then we explore this and the relevance to their presenting problems in the session.
Give it time - psycho-ed is an approach that you can weave in bite sized nuggets as needed and as relevant. This avoids the "information overload" and ensures psycho ed can be feel more therapeutic.
Tena Davies
Clinical Psychologist
Advanced Certified Schema Therapist, Supervisor & Trainer
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