I'm also doing schema therapy and I freaked out when I first read about the 'mode' work- it reminded me of all the scary stuff I'd read in the old days about multiple personalities and I thought it would be trying to fragment me when I'm not fragmented.

Is your T using the mode model rather than the schema model? Modes definitely aren't separate 'personalities', although it can sound like it at first. They are parts of ourselves which we shift into at times, like vulnerable child or healthy adult or detached protector. We *all* have some of these modes (even Ts!) and the aim is to slow down the mode flipping, and to strengthen the healthy adult to take charge.
http://www.schematherapy.com/id72.htm

It sounds like chairwork is too much too soon. It took me several months to wrap my head around the modes and recognise which applied to me and which didn't. We did this gradually, sometimes by T wondering out loud if I was feeling more in vulnerable child mode at the moment, and also by doing schema diaries. The first time I tried chairwork was one year in. You have to be familiar with the different modes within you, otherwise how are you supposed to know what they would say? I also found it helpful that it was ok if I was just in one mode during chairwork, and T 'played' the other mode.

The book which really changed my thinking and understanding about 'parts' of ourselves wasn't a schema therapy one, but an internal family systems one:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Self-Therapy...7442685&sr=8-1