Your trainer, Travis Atkinson, took his first schema therapy course with Jeffrey Young in 1994. By 1998, he was working side by side with Young at the Cognitive Therapy Center of New York. He stayed for more than 15 years.
Schema therapy is not just talk therapy. It is deeply experiential. Emotions are more than discussed. They are accessed, felt, and transformed in the room. That kind of work cannot be learned from a textbook. It is transmitted person to person.
Travis was mentored by two of the most influential figures in modern psychotherapy. He had a close bond with Jeffrey Young for more than two decades. He was mentored by the late Sue Johnson, the pioneer of emotionally focused therapy, becoming a certified EFT couples therapist and supervisor. Together with Sue, he helped co-create the first EFT training video for couples therapists working with gay and lesbian couples. His work since 1998 in the Gottman method paid off, and he one of the first Certified Gottman Method Couples Therapists in New York.
Jeffrey Young and Sue Johnson were born the same year. Both were geniuses who transformed how we understand emotion and change in therapy. Travis studied under both for years. Their voices, their clinical instincts, their ways of seeing clients are alive in how he teaches.
When you train here, you get both of them. The precision of Jeffrey Young’s schema therapy. The emotional depth of Sue Johnson’s EFT. Combined in one training, one instructor, one approach.
Travis does not just learn from leaders. He builds the field alongside them. He is a co-author of the Schema Mode Inventory (SMI 1.1), a foundational assessment tool in schema therapy still used by clinicians worldwide. He has developed numerous clinical tools since then to help therapists expand their effectiveness. He co-founded the New York Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy (NYCEFT), helping establish EFT as a force for couples treatment in the New York area. He co-founded the International Society of Schema Therapy (ISST) and, since 2020, is an Honorary Lifetime Member, a rare distinction. Working side by side with Jeffrey Young, he co-created schema therapy for couples.
Now he is doing it again. As Vice President of Media for the Jeffrey Young Schema Therapy Association (JYSTA), Travis is helping honor and extend Jeffrey Young’s legacy. The first JYSTA symposium in December of 2025 drew close to 400 participants from around the globe, an incredible feat for an inaugural event.
When you train here, you learn from someone who helped build the model and who carries the experiential heart of this work forward.