Working with Anger from a Schema Therapy Perspective During the Perinatal Period

16-17^th October, 2025 (online)
(9:30am-4:00pm UK time)

Dr Helen Startup and Dr Cathy Green, Clinical Psychologists

The transition to parenthood is emotionally charged and can dysregulate even the most emotionally resilient of individuals.  Feelings of anger and rage are a common experience as people attempt to navigate the intense demands of their new role, relationships and responsibilities.  Yet because these feelings clash with society’s idealised vision of the ‘all and only loving’ parent they can be difficult to tolerate and manage.

Schema therapy acknowledges the richness of anger, its multifaceted functions and origins, and its enormous healing potential. In schema therapy terms anger can emanate from several different ‘modes’, most notably: the bully attack, angry protector, and angry child modes. Working with anger requires the therapist to first make an accurate assessment of the ‘mode in action’, as well as to identify and attune to the unmet need unpinning the mode. The therapist might then work directly with a ‘part of the self’ that is either overwhelmed by anger or overshadowed by anger.

During this highly interactive workshop participants will learn how to disentangle the various expressions of anger within a perinatal context, to link these to core modes and schemas, convert unproductive or destructive anger to constructive assertiveness and support seeking, as well as to use their own emotional reactions to their clients’ anger to hone the conceptualisation.

Examples of all core methods (imagery, chair work, empathic confrontation) for working with anger will be demonstrated and practiced and there will be time given to reflecting on therapists’ own schema activation in relation to anger directed at them or to infants.  

The workshop will be lively and experiential with lots of video material.

Topics covered at the workshop

• Appreciate the richness of perinatal anger from a schema therapy perspective and identify from which mode anger is emanating
• Distinguish between primary and secondary anger in a perinatal context
• Support clients to translate angry child rage into more assertive behaviours such that needs are met
• Adapt chair work and imagery work for promoting change in 'protective' anger and 'over compensatory' anger
• Use empathic confrontation to name and contain an angry attacker and anger that is disrupting the therapeutic process
• Enlisting the support of our own Healthy Adult to support therapeutic work with anger.

The workshop will be lively and experiential with lots of video material.

Training costs and to book

Cost: £290 for the two-day event

To book please contact Laura Wilson: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Or to discuss further: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.