Schema Therapy in London, Ontario

London, Ontario is a city people arrive in. Western University and Fanshawe College draw students from across the province and abroad, and in 2021 non-permanent residents, a census group that includes international students and temporary workers, were about 4.6 per cent of the population. In 2021, around 42 per cent of households rented, and for students and new arrivals that can mean a string of leases, roommates and neighbourhoods in the first few years. A move like that is often meant as a clean slate.

Schema therapy explains why the slate rarely stays clean. A schema is a core belief formed early, usually in childhood, about whether you are lovable, capable or safe with other people, and it travels with you. The person who always expected to be left notices the roommate who stops texting back. The one who learned that love had to be earned by being useful becomes the housemate who does everyone's dishes and quietly resents it. New surroundings do not create these patterns, but they often make them easier to see, because the familiar people who used to fit around them are gone. For many students, London is also the first place they have lived without family nearby, and a schema that was once soothed by a parent's reassurance or a sibling down the hall now meets the world with nothing in between.

Schema therapy also names the coping modes people fall into when a schema is triggered: going along with everyone to keep the peace, shutting down and disappearing into a screen, or taking control and criticizing before anyone can criticize you. Noticing which mode you slip into with a roommate, a partner or a supervisor is often the first real change, because it turns an automatic reaction into something you can choose.

The same patterns follow people into work. Nurses, teachers, support staff and others in caring roles often recognize schemas such as self-sacrifice and unrelenting standards: you give until you are empty, then criticize yourself for not giving more. The aim is not a diagnosis. It is to recognize the pattern while it is happening, understand what it once protected you from, and build what schema therapists call the Healthy Adult, the part of you that can meet your own needs as well as other people's.

Ghazal Sheikhtaheri, a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), CRPO #21300, uses schema therapy as the foundation of her clinical work and pursued advanced training in the approach in Germany. Sessions are online, so you can join from a residence room, an apartment or an office, anywhere in London or elsewhere in Ontario, in English, Farsi or both. Most people start with weekly 60-minute sessions after a free 15-minute consultation.