Simeone-DiFrancesco

Schema Therapy with Couples  International Training Center

 

 

The cutting edge of therapy with couples

 

About the Training Institute

among our programs, we offer

 Certification training

with the International Society of Schema Therapy for Schema Therapy with Couples.

 

 

We also offer specialized Training programs with a christian anthropology and application

currently these are offered as optional add-on specialty courses.  see training page for more information.

 

 

          Working with the Schema Therapy—Organizational Development Special Interest Group (multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-national and minority inclusive) and having spent her career focusing on minority inclusivity, Dr. Simeone-DiFrancesco has always been particularly attuned to the necessity of cultural competence, issues of prejudice, isolation, and lack of comprehension that ethnic and religious minority groups endure when they attempt psychotherapy or training as therapists.  It became clear in 30 plus years of delivering direct service and studying the research on culturally competent psychotherapy, supervision and training, that working with a client or trainee's ethnocentric culture, religion, and even family sub-culture is critical to a successful positive outcome.  In fact, in honoring the best listening and dialogue/Connect-Talk® skills, one is required to be open to the values, sacred figures, inspirational ideas, and meaning that individuals give to their lives and to what it is to be human.  This applies also how some see their place in connection to the rest of the world, God, and the universe.  She also observed how the ethnic, religious and cultural group of Christians clients as well as therapists, were vastly underserved. 

            It quickly became apparent to her that the core case conceptualization, set of interventions, schema and mode amelioration techniques together with building of the Healthy Adult Mode, all build robustly upon the Christian set of values, perspectives and understanding of human nature and human flourishing.  In fact, she found that it also became a sturdy house built upon a Judeo-religious foundation.  As she is highly trained in these two religious and cultural perspectives, the ability was there to work from within it, and hence address the particular challenges that persons often have from these religious and cultural/sub-cultural groups.  Working from within a client or trainee's religious, ethnic or cultural perspective involves the same attitudes of openness, non-judgmentalism, and acceptance without the necessity of agreement, as do all our interactions with trainees and clients.  We need to be ready to explore their world gently from within it, rather than from standing outside.  Hence, there is a definite need to develop cultural competence in working and collaborating with clients and trainees from the various world religions.  This also includes understanding the "religion" of the client, (coming from the Latin, “re-ligare”, which means what one ties oneself to in terms of values, principles and meaning in life).  This is the ideal.  She has also discovered that often when a client or trainee encounters a dysfunctional belief, upon their own examination, they often find it very much affected by unhealthy Critic or Parent Modes that have caused a distortion from the actual essence of the client’s own spiritual and emotional true “north” belief system.  We can learn to help our clients and trainees eliminate the “anthropomorphisms” they soaked up in life, and actually re-embrace their true religion and culture that resonates with what they know in their heart to be the “real thing”. 

            All of this does take training and expertise in all aspects, Christian religion & Gospel understanding of the real Jesus and what He modeled and lived, expert understanding using this knowledge accurately in the provision of top-notch schema therapy, and also very important, clear ethical principles in using these skills that fully respect the autonomy of clients and trainees, and their informed consent.  Hence, Dr. Simeone-DiFrancesco has undertaken to provide added optional tracks of training that might expertly serve this Christian minority and culture/sub-culture in both aspects by equipping providers with:  training with what she considers the best evidenced-based and effective psychotherapy together with a highly informed and trained religious catechesis.  To this end, she was able to contract with Romuald B. Simeone to provide most expertly the religious catechesis, “Scriptural Pastoral Foundations”.  In this way, those who choose to be certified by this Institute by taking this additional non-ISST certified add-on specialty course canwork toward achieving a double foundation and credential.

            We lay out before you our offerings and our Training Tracks on the Trainings Page. 

 

 

 

About Dr. Chiara simeone-difrancesco

Internationally Certified through the International Society of Schema Therapy, Advanced & Trainer levels for both individual & Couples Schema Therapy

 

             I provide training for clinicians in Schema Therapy for Couples and related topics domestically and internationally, having achieved Advanced and Trainer/Supervisor Certification in Individual Schema Therapy (2001), and certified at the Advanced and Trainer/Educational Consultant level for Couples Schema Therapy (2015).

             Workshops include: Schema Therapy for Couples for the International Society of Schema Therapy (ISST) Conferences at:  

  • Coimbra, Portugal

  • New York City, NY

  • Istanbul, Turkey

  • Brookfield, Wisconsin

  • Cairo, Egypt

  • Copenhagen, Denmark

And:

  • Certification-track training of schema therapists in Couples ST, Bulgaria & Mexico

 

And:

  • Introduction to Culturally Competent Schema Therapy for Christians, Jesus-Centered Schema Therapy® and Virtue-Based Theology of the Body, San Diego, CA 2023.

 

 

             I am the co-author of the book published by Wiley-Blackwell, Schema Therapy with Couples, A Practitioner’s Guide to Healing Relationships, published internationally and in the U.S. A.  (July 20, 2015).   In 2009 I started the ISST Marital and Couples Workgroup, and ran it till mid-2014 when I was elected as Chair of the Couples Subcommittee to the ISST Board.  

            I subsequently started and trained a multi-national special interest group for ISST, “Schema Therapy for Organizational Development” (ST-0D), that has a particular emphasis on multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-national and minority inclusive dialogue between schema therapists and with their clients.

            My clinical approach is primarily Schema Therapy, which integrates cognitive, analytic, gestalt and other experiential treatments into a sophisticated and cohesive treatment plan. Additionally, I realize that psychology needs to have theory based on the principles of logic, reason, and the nature of the human person. Together, these work towards fulfilling basic human needs and the creation of meaning in life, essential ingredients of human fulfillment and happiness. 

            In my academic preparation, I graduated with Honors from Holy Apostles College, Connecticut with a double B.A. in Philosophy and Religious Studies as one of their first female graduates. This was a rigorous program which taught me to think logically and philosophically. This enables one to see deeper issues and separate them from come-and-go symptoms and hot issues. This essentially dovetails with Schema Therapy, which also strives to form a deeper conceptualization of what is actually happening from a “mode perspective”. It is these mode cycles— connected to early-formed coping mechanisms that responded to environmentally caused “early maladaptive schemas” (commonly called schemas)— that cause an individual or a couple to “get stuck” and seek out therapy.   

            Subsequently I received an M.A. in “Psychology in Education”, and a “M.Ed. in Counseling Psychology and Rehabilitation” from Columbia University, New York. I proceeded from there to obtain my Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi School of Education in the Counseling Psychology program. 

            My mental health training and experience has deliberately been very varied, from rural Mississippi mental health centers, to the V.A. Medical Center in Memphis as a graduate student, to the Northern Nevada Mental Retardation Center while at Columbia University.  My doctoral internship encompassed sites at Massachusetts maximum state prisons, as well as at Boston City Hospital. A second period of internship was pursued at the U.S. International Psychology Clinic including teaching graduate students at their Irvine campus in California.  

            After completing my degree, I became a Commissioned Corps Officer in the Federal Public Health Service practicing general psychotherapy and performing special assignments regarding sexual abuse victims. I then moved to Oshkosh to lead a psychology unit in the State of Wisconsin Dept. of Corrections as a Chief Psychologist, and to eventually pursue private practice. In 1992, I opened the Wisconsin Family Growth and Reconciliation Center LLC, which reached out to a wide variety of people of all backgrounds, faiths and beliefs. In the spring of 2007, I opened up a specific division that would serve the Christian minority in Menasha, WI, with a second office in Appleton, Wisconsin. Then, in 2015 I started the Marriage & Family Schema Therapy Institute, a division of Healing International, Inc., specializing in providing services for the healing of marriages and families, a life-long devotion of mine. Wanting to focus more on the provision of writing and training, I returned to private practice with Connect-Talk® LLC.

            In addition to my licenses as a psychologist (WI and VA), I  was  accepted as a member of the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology and also received the Interjurisdictional Practice Certificate from the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards. I attained Level II training in Gottman Couples Therapy, finished my Externship in Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), became certified in Medical and Analytical Hypnotherapy, and was trained and supervised in EMDR. I turned my focus to Schema Therapy as I noticed the remarkable effect it had on clients. Schema Therapy is designed for those with entrenched patterns, as well as complex and difficult marital cycles. At the same time, It allows me to utilize the skills developed via these other psychotherapeutic perspectives which I studied and practiced.    

            I am an active member of a number of professional organizations, including the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology, the International Society of Schema Therapy, the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, and the American Association of Christian Counselors.