‘It's not you, it's me’: Addressing therapist schemas during CBT training and beyond

This chapter poses the suggestion that our own beliefs and values as individuals will shape how we experience the CBT training journey and will undoubtedly influence our preferred learning styles, engagement with clinical supervision, clinical interactions, and personal wellbeing. Whilst most trainees flourish by the final stages of training, many will feel that at times, it has been an uphill struggle, personally and professionally. This chapter is intended to carve out space for reflection, with a focus on identifying trainee therapist schemas that might make a demanding training course all the more so, and to begin planning ways to mitigate this. The overall aim is that trainees move on from this part of the book with an increased awareness of how they bring their personal self to the professional arena and that they do so armed with strategies that enhance their ‘therapist self-esteem’.