I chose to blog about schemas in this post. My intentions were to create a two-part segment (perhaps three) with this being the second. However, schemas kept popping up in both my personal and professional lives, and I’m taking it as a sign.
Schemas are beliefs about how we see ourselves, others, and the world. They are neither fleeting nor easily altered. Schemas are entrenched and at times, so inconspicuously interwoven, we cannot comprehend the depths they reach. Think Jacques Cousteau. James Earl’s voice. That deep.
Here are some basics about schemas:
1) Everybody has them
2) The source of most start very early in life
3) There are healthy schemas
4) There are unhealthy schemas, a.k.a. maladaptive schemas
Personally, I think of maladaptive schemas as a big pot of gumbo. Mumbo-jumbo gumbo. There are emotions, memories, sensations, thoughts, and various other ingredients tossed in throughout our lives. Our pot of gumbo sits on the stove top, simmering, until someone or something comes along and cranks the dial and turns up the heat. Whoa! What happened? Our gumbo is boiling and things are bubbling up to the surface that had floated way down to the bottom of the pot.
During these times, we notice our schemas, or at least we notice our REACTIONS to our schemas. However, our pot is always simmering, so what is happening between these bouts of intensity? How do maladaptive schemas even develop?
Although this may appear bass-akwards, I’m going to briefly address maladaptive schema development. I’ll cover it more in part two.
During our childhood and adolescence, we have basic needs. Food, water, shelter, affection, nurturing, protection, empathy, understanding, safety, and guidance. Huh? Ahh yes, the emotional needs. Many adults swear up and down, “I had a great childhood!” because their parents did not abuse them or blatantly abandon them. At times we realize that a parent was physically there, but emotionally absent. A child may have been overly protected, controlled, or placed on a pedestal. Of course, some of us experience severe incidents of trauma or prolonged abuse and neglect that lead to the development of pervasive and/or multiple maladaptive schemas.
Dr. Jeffery Young developed schema therapy, co-authored Reinventing Your Life, and has a website with several tools for practitioners or the general public for self-assessment. I’ll post a link at the end. Schema therapy is an offshoot of cognitive-behavioral therapy, and attempts to address the source of our vulnerabilities. Dr. Young came up with eighteen maladaptive schemas: Abandonment/Instability, Emotional Deprivation, Entitlement/Grandiosity, Defectiveness/ Shame, Subjugation, Unrelenting Standards/Hypercriticalness, Mistrust/Abuse, Self-Sacrifice/Recognition-Seeking, Social Isolation/Alienation, Dependence/Incompetence, Vulnerability to Harm or Illness, Enmeshment/Undeveloped Self, Failure, Insufficient Self-Control/Self-Discipline, Approval Seeking, Negativity/Pessimism, Emotional Inhibition, and Punitiveness.
Although schema therapy is typically used with adults, a recent publication, Counseling Children: Core Issues Approach, applies schema therapy among the child and teen population.
Although schema therapy is typically used with adults, a recent publication, Counseling Children: Core Issues Approach, applies schema therapy among the child and teen population.
Okay, let’s check on our simmering pot of mumbo-jumbo gumbo. Why do we even keep this glob of voodoo on the stove?
Because we are human, and the human species are creatures of comfort. We hold tight to what we know, even when it is unhealthy. We seek out, sometimes unknowingly, people who will fit our schemas (healthy and maladaptive), because they allow us to perpetuate our schemas and how we see our self, the world, and others. Makes you wish you were a dog, doesn’t it?
This is what we do to keep that gumbo simmering. We distort our thinking. We choose self-defeating patterns. We develop unbalanced coping styles. In regards to coping styles, there are three, following the primitive and well-recognized fight, flight, and freeze response. In relation to schemas, we overcompensate (fight), avoid (flight), or surrender (freeze). Some of us prefer one particular style, others like to mix it up, which is especially fun for our partner! Each coping style presents very differently, but stems from the same maladaptive schema.
Let’s use the emotional deprivation schema as a model. An emotionally deprived person believes his or her emotional needs will never be met. With this schema, a self-defeating pattern would include choosing partners who are not emotionally available, giving, or willing. If using overcompensation to cope, this person resembles someone with the “little man syndrome,” provoking fights with their partner. They may be emotionally demanding of friends, family, and their partner. Essentially, this person behaves in the complete opposite of the schema in order to hide or prevent a trigger.
Avoidance appears to be self-explanatory. Yet many may not realize they are employing this coping style. Traumas are buried involuntarily. Using emotional deprivation again, a person may avoid intimate relationships or perhaps use illegal substances to numb thoughts, fears, or feelings. Avoidance, therefore, can be based cognitively, behaviorally, and/or emotionally.
Lastly, we have the surrender coping style, which parallels the primitive freezing instinct. This stems from the body’s physiological response of immobilizing under duress, perhaps, for example, standing in front of a saber tooth tiger. In most instances, you would essentially surrender to the trauma and be eaten. The same concept applies in modern day reality.
A person with emotional deprivation who surrenders to his or her schema chooses partners who are incapable of providing for their emotional needs, which only reaffirms his or her belief that emotional needs will never be met. The person with this coping style never asks anyone to meet his or her basic emotional necessities .
Depending on how strong the particular schema and/or severe the trigger, we may use an onslaught of coping styles. The older we get, we tend to develop into major league pitchers, honing our skills, coming up with sinkers, curve balls, sliders, and the deadly heater (all coping styles) to throw off batters (healthy/unhealthy partners and/or triggers).
If you managed to get through this lengthy blog without being utterly confused or falling asleep and doing a face plant on your keyboard, congrats! Here is what is wonderful about schemas: They are a tremendous tool for self-awareness, provide another means to conduct psychoanalysis on others (if you are into that), and most importantly, will actually help you strengthen your relationships with others.
It is the natural tendency to strive towards healing. By identifying and developing an awareness of your schema, the battle between self-defeat and healing can begin. Once you recognize your schema, you can begin the process of discovering where it developed and how it has stewed, bubbled, and boiled over the years. You begin to notice your reactions to your schemas and in time, begin to separate the reaction from the reality.
Take the time to learn more about these schemas by visiting Dr. Young’s page. There is too much information to write about and post on a blog which is not entirely devoted to schema theory. Yet many have written about maladaptive schemas and his work. You can find his page HERE
I have also attached the Young Schema Inventory in a separate PDF file on this blog page in the right hand column, along with a scoring guide.
If you would like the link for the inventory for the Young Schema Inventory can be located HERE
Have fun, more to come soon!
