Couples Training Program

SCHEMA THERAPY FOR COUPLES CERTIFICATION COURSEWORK

Schema Therapy for Couples: ISST Certification Training

Train in schema therapy for couples with a co-developer of the model. The Fall 2026 program covers all 33 hours of coursework toward ISST couples certification. Live online, weekly across 11 weeks.

Schema Therapy for Couples Training

The Couple Stuck in the Same Fight for Years

One partner has folded into silence. Arms crossed, eyes on the floor. The other leans forward, voice rising, cataloging every failure from the past six months. You have seen this cycle before. You have named it for them, mapped it, slowed it down in session. And still, the moment a raw spot gets touched, they are right back in it.

Some couples respond to the standard playbook. Others do not. The pattern repeats regardless of insight, and the partners who keep activating it are often the ones carrying the deepest schemas, sometimes with personality dynamics underneath. For these couples, naming the cycle is not enough. You need a model built to reach what drives it.

Why Schema Therapy for Couples

Schema therapy was developed for the hardest individual cases: borderline, narcissistic, and avoidant presentations that resist other approaches. Schema therapy for couples brings that same depth into the room with both partners. Rather than managing conflict at the surface, the model reaches the early schemas and modes each partner brings, then works with the clash between them directly.

This is what makes the difference with couples who have not moved. When a partner shifts into an Angry Child or Detached Protector mode mid-session, you recognize what is happening and respond to it, instead of treating it as resistance or bad faith. The fight stops being a mystery. It becomes a map.

It Complements What You Already Do

Schema therapy for couples is not starting over. If you work in Emotionally Focused Therapy, the Gottman Method, Imago, or another approach, it is the piece that reaches the entrenched character patterns those models can struggle to move. The schema framework adds precise assessment, a shared language for each partner’s modes, and experiential techniques like chairwork and imagery rescripting that create change couples can feel.

Many clinicians add schema therapy to an existing orientation rather than replacing it. The result is a deeper toolkit for the couples who used to leave you stuck.

Train at the Source

Your trainer, Travis Atkinson, co-created schema therapy for couples alongside Jeffrey Young. He studied with Young from the mid-1990s and worked beside him at the Cognitive Therapy Center of New York for more than a decade. He is also a certified Emotionally Focused Therapy supervisor mentored by the late Sue Johnson, and one of the first Certified Gottman Method Couples Therapists in New York.

That lineage matters. Schema therapy for couples is deeply experiential, and the work is transmitted person to person, not from a textbook. When you train here, you learn the precision of schema therapy paired with the emotional depth of EFT, from someone who helped build the model.

Designed for Mastery, Not Completion

Research shows that after multi-day intensives, clinicians retain less than 20% of what they learned within a month. When learning is spaced over time and reinforced between sessions, retention more than doubles. We built this program around that research.

Each three-hour session covers one focused topic. You take it into your actual clinical work with couples, then return the following week to share what clicked and what did not, alongside clinicians from around the globe. By the time you use an intervention with a real couple, it will not be the first time. ISST requires 30 hours of coursework for couples certification. We deliver 33, because those extra hours are where the model starts to click.

What You Receive

  • 33 hours of live coursework completing all ISST requirements for couples certification
  • 11 weeks of live, interactive training in a small cohort
  • Hands-on practice with assessment tools, chairwork, and imagery rescripting for couples
  • Access to session recordings for at least 1 year after training ends
  • A global community of peers to learn from long after the course
  • A Certificate of Completion supporting your ISST certification application

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Course content

  • Identify the schemas of each partner, and define the default relationship mode cycle
  • Use assessment inventories: YSQ-3, YPI, SMI, BDI, BAI, DAS, WC, etc.
  • Conceptualize schemas and the default mode cycle
  • Link childhood wounds and maladaptive relationship patterns to the current relationship, and identify the strengths of the relationship
  • Introduce Schema Flashcard, Mode Mapping, Mode Clash Card, Needs vs. Wants Tool
  • Identify Schema Chemistry and schema clashes
  • Assess the degree of passion, romance, intimacy, and sexual satisfaction
  • Determine if any complicating factors (levels of commitment, individual past trauma or disorders, injuries in the relationship, etc.) and/or contraindications (active affairs, addictions, patterns of violence, etc.)
  • Find supplemental resources or treatment, as needed
  • Create “Needs Value Map”
  • Identify vision of the relationship: goals, dreams, mission, desired legacy
  • Establish goals of treatment, and set the time frame

  • Create and maintain a secure therapeutic bond
  • Practice “empathic confrontation,” as needed
  • Use therapeutic self-disclosure
  • Intervene when the therapist’s own schemas and modes are activated in-session
  • Differentiate between the “wants” and “needs” of the therapist and the couple
  • Repair ruptures in the therapeutic relationship
  • Discuss ethics and confidentiality concerns with the couple (disclosures, consultations with other therapists, conflicts of interest, confidentiality issues, etc.)

  • Connecting Dialogues: provide antidotes to schemas and maladaptive modes by identifying and expressing (1) core emotions (2) urges to cope. Next, use adaptive coping modes to invite the partner to meet needs
  • Chair Work: use mode dialogues to address the mode cycle and schemas
  • Imagery Rescripting: identify childhood origins of schemas, link to current relationship, create an antidote to schema origins while deepening emotional depth and increasing emotional connection
  • Use tools to shift clashes: Mode Clash Cards, Schema Flashcards, Meta-perspective, “Needs vs. Wants” tool, etc. 
  • Couples Toolbox: assign homework to solidify work in-between sessions

  • Develop a language for a deeper emotional connection
  • Build shared meaning in roles, rituals, goals, values, and dreams
  • Create a shared narrative of the couple’s story, including the desired legacy
  • Build and sustain mutually satisfying passion, romance, intimacy, and sexual satisfaction, and address any sexual dysfunctions
  • Solidify mode cycles to create antidotes to schemas with interactions involving (a.) self-and-partner soothing (b.) inviting bids (c.) successful repairs (d.) stance of curiosity and acceptance

  • Address and heal relationship injuries (affairs, betrayals, other significant injuries)
  • Confront addictions, aggressive modes, and patterns of physical violence
  • Treat couples with survivors of childhood trauma (sexual, emotional, physical) 
  • Treat specific personality disorders in a couple (BPD, NPD, OCPD, Avoidant, Antisocial, etc.)

FALL 2026 PROGRAMS
Image of Travis Atkinson, the co-founder of schema therapy for couples.

Travis Atkinson

Founder + Trainer

FALL 2026 33-Hour Course Dates Are:

SEPT: 23, 30
OCT: 7, 14, 21, 28
NOV: 4, 11, 18
DEC: 2, 9

Time: 11 am – 2 pm Eastern Time

  • 33 hours of coursework completes all ISST requirements
  • Access to recordings for at least 1 year after training ends
  • Certification of Completion
  • Global community of peers to learn from and share experiences
  • Access on your favorite device


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COUPLES PROGRAM TUITION

Couples Program


Tuition and Investment

33 hours of live training over 11 weeks. Complete coursework toward ISST couples certification.

Tuition for this program is set on a regional, cost-of-living basis. Every clinician receives the same live coursework, the same supervision, the same chairwork practice, and the same ISST couples certification pathway, regardless of tier. Installment plans and humanitarian rates are available.

For tier details and a quote for your region, please visit the Tuition page.

Country tiers follow World Bank classifications. For full details on tiers, payment terms, and the refund policy, visit the Tuition page.

Start your learning journey today! Enroll now in our online course.

Dive Deeply into the World of Couples Therapy: Expand Your Skillset and Make Lasting Change!


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