Limited reparenting is a cornerstone of schema therapy. It is a style of interacting with clients in which the therapist aims to give the client experiences of having their emotional needs met directly within the therapeutic relationship. The therapist here serves as a ‘healthy model’ or template of caring, self-control, and guidance that, over time, is internalised by the client into their own ‘Healthy Adult’ mode. The core ingredients of limited reparenting include offering care, guidance, empathic confrontation, and limit setting. The aim of this therapeutic relationship is to provide corrective experiences that ‘kick start’ the emotional development of the client. Based on a thorough assessment and conceptualisation, limited reparenting offers a specific roadmap to harnessing the power of the therapeutic alliance to promote schema change.

Schema therapy training programmes tend to focus on the starting phases of therapy rather than on the final phase of therapy. In the early phases the therapist plays a more active part in the therapeutic interventions and in providing a role model of a ‘healthy adult’. In these phases, the therapist generates the client’s mode awareness, while also facilitating opportunities for corrective emotional experiences. These experiences will provide a basis for the development of the client’s Healthy Adult mode. However, it should not be assumed that the end phase will always be smooth or problem free. Often, as the therapy approaches the ending phase, challenges emerge and it can be easy for clients to fall back into old behavioural patterns. In these moments clients may seem unable to continue independently without the support of therapy. This chapter discusses the way in which the end phase might be carried out, how the therapeutic stance of limited reparenting changes during this phase, and how the therapeutic strategies are implemented differently as compared to the earlier phases. Further, we will review some common problems and challenging situations schema therapists might encounter in this end phase.