Online Schema Therapist
Schema Therapy is an evidence-based psychological therapy that helps identify and change long-standing emotional patterns, maladaptive coping styles, and relationship difficulties rooted in early life experiences.
Why Schema Therapy is my Primary Modality
Schema Therapy my primary therapeutic modality, which offers a well-researched, integrative framework that helps make sense of complex emotional and relational patterns shaped by early experiences, ongoing stress, and trauma. It provides both structure and flexibility, allowing therapy to be tailored to the individual while remaining grounded in evidence-based practice.
Why I find Schema Therapy so helpful
I find Schema Therapy particularly helpful because it offers a compassionate, structured way to understand why certain emotional patterns and relationship difficulties keep repeating, especially for people who have experienced long-standing stress, trauma, or complex relational histories. Rather than focusing only on symptoms, it works at a deeper level to help clients make sense of their experiences, build healthier coping patterns, and create meaningful, lasting change.
Who Schema Therapy can be helpful for
Schema Therapy can be especially beneficial for people who feel stuck in recurring patterns despite insight or previous therapy, including those experiencing chronic anxiety or low mood, relationship difficulties, effects of childhood or relational trauma, faith-related harm, or long-standing self-criticism and shame. It is also well suited to clients who want to understand themselves more deeply, strengthen emotional regulation, and develop healthier ways of relating to themselves and others over time.
Key Components of Schema Therapy
Identify Early Maladaptive Schemas & Modes
This involves identifying long-standing emotional patterns and moment-to-moment coping responses that shape how you experience yourself, others, and relationships, particularly under stress.
Engage in Experiential Techniques
Experiential techniques help access and work with emotions and memories linked to these patterns, supporting deeper change through approaches such as imagery and chair work rather than insight alone.
Reality Testing and Cognitive Restructuring
This step focuses on examining and gently challenging schema-driven beliefs, helping develop more balanced, compassionate, and realistic ways of understanding yourself and your experiences.
Limited Reparenting and Building Healthier Patterns
Through a supportive therapeutic relationship and practical strategies, unmet emotional needs are addressed while new, healthier ways of relating, coping, and setting boundaries are developed over time.
Schema Therapy for Individuals
Schema Therapy for individuals focuses on identifying and healing long-standing emotional patterns that shape how you see yourself, relate to others, and respond to stress. By addressing unmet emotional needs and the coping styles developed to manage them, this approach supports deeper insight, emotional regulation, and lasting change — particularly where difficulties have been present for a long time.
Schema Therapy for Couples
Schema Therapy for couples helps partners understand how their individual schemas and coping patterns interact within the relationship, often creating cycles of misunderstanding, conflict, or emotional disconnection. By increasing awareness, strengthening emotional safety, and supporting healthier ways of responding to one another, this approach can foster greater empathy, communication, and more secure connection over time.
Areas of Interest
I offer support to adults who may be:
Managing general mental health concerns such as anxiety, depression, stress, grief, or life transitions — whether or not these are connected to faith or ministry.
Navigating confusing, painful, or high-pressure experiences in church or ministry environments, including those recovering from spiritual abuse, coercion, or high-control faith settings, including cults.
Pastors, ministry leaders, and caregivers experiencing stress, burnout, role strain, or relational challenges within ministry or leadership roles.
Experiencing domestic and family violence, coercive control, or destructive relationship patterns — whether in intimate partnerships, family, community, or faith-based contexts.
Experiencing scrupulosity / Religious OCD or distress related to rigid or fear-based beliefs.
Facing workplace challenges, including bullying, power imbalances, role strain, or organisational conflict, and the emotional toll these experiences can create.
Couples seeking support around communication, connection, conflict patterns, recovery after relational harm, infidelity, or navigating values and expectations within relationships.
Inclusive and Client-Led Care
While I have a particular interest in supporting people from faith backgrounds, I welcome clients from all backgrounds. My focus is on providing compassionate, trauma-informed, and ethical psychological care that honours each person’s values, experiences, and goals for wellbeing.
This is a collaborative space, shaped by your needs and values.
Hi, I’m Kylie Walls, a registered psychologist and the founder of Refuge Psychology.
My practice is shaped by professional experience, research, and a long-standing commitment to supporting people navigating complex emotional, relational, and faith-related experiences. I have worked with individuals from a wide range of backgrounds and faith traditions, and I have also held volunteer and professional roles within church and ministry contexts. These experiences have deepened my understanding of the unique dynamics that can arise when wellbeing, identity, and faith intersect — and the importance of care that is both sensitive and clinically grounded.
I have published research on control, attachment, and emotional regulation, and have previously worked as a Domestic and Family Violence Advisor within a faith-based organisation. I began my career as a teacher and later spent time working in photography, but my ongoing interest in people — their stories, relationships, and inner worlds — led me into psychological practice. I bring both professional and lived experience to my work in a way that is clinically grounded, respectful, and client-led.