Schema-Based CBT for Treating Challenging Cases

When standard CBT tools manage symptoms, but your clients keep circling back to the same patterns, it may be time to work at the schema level. This training equips you to move beyond surface-level symptom reduction and address the deeper meaning structures that drive relapse, resistance, and chronic distress.

If you’re ready to help clients get to the “root” of their problems—so they don’t have to keep coming back over and over again—this training offers an integrated, schema-based CBT framework that blends evidence-based precision with deeper, lasting change.

Jeff Riggenbach, Ph.D., trained at The Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research as well as the Midwest Schema Therapy Institute, specifically to develop a schema-informed CBT approach for treating difficult-to-treat clients. Over the past 20 years, he has directed clinical programs for personality disorders and trained practitioners in all 50 U.S. states and nine countries on advanced cognitive-behavioral methods. His expertise in thinking and personality styles directly informs this course’s focus on maladaptive schemas, schema maintenance processes, and therapeutic relationship dynamics.

Through didactic teaching, case studies, humor, and practical demonstrations, Dr. Riggenbach translates cutting-edge CBT-based literature into tools clinicians can use immediately “in the trenches.” Participants will learn to flexibly integrate “top down” and “bottom up” strategies, apply process-based observations within the therapeutic relationship, and implement schema reconstruction interventions in both individual and group formats.

This course explores the integrated model of schema-based CBT and its relationship to ACT, DBT, Schema Therapy, and other offshoot models. Participants will identify 18 maladaptive schemas and understand how they drive presenting problems, examine the three stages of schema change, and analyze the three processes that reinforce schema maintenance and coping styles. The training also demonstrates behavioral pattern-breaking strategies, schema-based journaling, data logs, experiential exercises, schema mode work, and two schema reconstruction processes—one psychoeducational and one Socratic in nature—to help clients disrupt entrenched cycles and achieve durable change.

Key Takeaways:

• Integrated Model Clarity: Analyze how ACT, DBT, Schema Therapy, and related CBT offshoots connect within a unified schema-based framework for complex cases.
• Schema-Level Intervention Skills: Identify 18 maladaptive schemas, understand the three stages of schema change, and address the processes that reinforce maintenance and coping styles.
• Advanced Treatment Strategies: Apply “top down” and “bottom up” interventions and use the therapeutic relationship to promote deeper, relapse-resistant recovery.

Why this course?

• Depth Beyond Standard CBT: Go beyond symptom management to target lifelong patterns that drive chronic and resistant presentations.
• Expert-Led, Research-Grounded Training: Learn from a clinician trained at The Beck Institute and the Midwest Schema Therapy Institute who has taught this model nationally and internationally.
• Immediately Applicable Tools: Gain practical interventions—from schema reconstruction to experiential techniques—that can be implemented right away in both individual and group settings.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the relationship between ACT, DBT, Schema Therapy, and other “offshoot” Models.
• List 18 maladaptive schemas and the role they play in driving presenting problems.
• List the 3 Stages of Schema Change.
• Describe the 3 processes reinforcing underlying schema maintenance and coping styles.
• Make use of the therapeutic relationship with process-based observations to promote recovery.
• Describe 3 “top down” and 3 “bottom up” strategies for treating challenging cases.

Challenging cases do not have to remain stuck in repetitive cycles of symptom flare-ups and partial improvement. With a schema-based CBT approach that targets underlying meaning structures while preserving empirically supported techniques, you can help clients not only get better—but stay well. This course offers a focused opportunity to deepen your clinical impact and expand your treatment repertoire in ways that endure.