As a Psychologist, I wish everyone knew about this therapy

At some point in therapy, with almost every client I have, they will say something that makes me think ‘Aha — a schema!’. Schema therapy is perhaps the most intuitive and interesting type of therapy out there, and I’m often surprised that we don’t discuss it more often in writing on mental health and therapy. For myself, I have found it an incredible framework to look at how we see the world and respond to the people around us — and understanding the schemas that we possess means we can then work around them.

So what is a schema? It might be helpful to think about it as a filter that you put over your eyes that affects how you see and respond to the world. For example, if i’ve had unstable relationships in my life — from a parent leaving early on, to family members coming in and out of my life, followed later by friendships breaking down or turning sour, I might have an ‘abandonment’ schema — meaning I’m particularly sensitive to situations where people might be leaving or even looking like they are distancing themselves.

The really interesting part, though, is how we respond to this schema. For some people they will overcompensate — meaning they might do lots of things to try and avoid abandonment (eg. pleading, lots of contact, being overly nice or affectionate to ensure the person stays). For others, they might surrender to the schema, and either become really depressed (since they are sure they have lost the person), or even abandon the person before they have a chance to do it themselves (eg. cutting off contact, picking fights). All of this is unconscious — often we don’t really know what we are doing until it is done.

There are about 16 schemas, the most interesting of which are summarised below. A more comprehensive list is on Jeffery Young’s Schema Therapy website, which has links to resources and his great book on schema therapy.

Neglect/Abuse: This is common for people who have been in situations where they have been either harmed or ignored/neglected when growing up — either way their emotional needs weren’t met, or they were actively the subject of harm. For individuals with this background, it is likely that they see the world through the filter of harm — that even relatively neutral situations (eg. performance management at work, someone bumping into you in a crowd) can trigger this schema. For those who overcompensate, this can look like getting into a fight or argument with the ‘agressor’ — for those who avoid or surrender, it can result in them becoming extremely fearful and upset — often, from the outside, for little or no reason.

Subjugation — This is common for people who have been dominated or had a controlling parent, or influences in their life who have not necessarily given them a lot of freedom or agency. It often goes hand in hand with the Self Sacrifice schema, where the person may chronically put others needs before their own. With this schema a person will be quite submissive, and find it really hard to stand up to people. They may have small outbursts occasionally, and will describe feeling trapped and overwhelmed — often this is as a result of not being able to comfortably ask for their needs to be met.

Defectiveness/Failure: This schema arises from a lot of criticism and comparison in childhood — often inadvertently from parents who are more ‘old school’ and really want their kids to succeed, and so compare them to others who are doing better. It also goes hand in hand with the Unrelenting Standards and Punitiveness schemas — essentially a person will have some deeply internalised beliefs about how they should be in the world, and the consequences if they don’t achieve these standards. For those who are overcompensating, this schema can look like working long hours and often sacrificing things like health or family life for success — being driven by the need to ‘prove’ themselves and feeling empty and hopeless when they do not achieve, for some reason (eg. illness or circumstance). Those who surrender to this schema will perhaps never try for anything, work in jobs below their ability level and buy into the schema that there is something wrong with them, or that they are a ‘failure’.

For myself, I love the idea of these common threads running through our lives that have been shaped by our past. It means that we can contextualise our responses to things — eg. ‘Of course I have a defectiveness schema — things were chaos when I was younger and my parents weren’t really there for me, but also had high expectations!’ — but at the same time it gives us the opportunity to moderate our response. Once we can understand our behavior in the sense that we might either be overcompensating or surrendering to a certain schema or way of being, that gives us the opportunity to do things differently.

It is also not about blaming our parents — generally our parents were doing exactly what they thought was best for us at the time. It is more about understanding how some of the things we were taught, or how some of our ways of being, have affected how we see the world — understanding that our parents were doing the best with what they had, but also considering what else we may have needed at the time.

Schema therapy itself is quite a deep process where you unpack with a trained therapist the specific situations and memories that ‘set’ the schemas up for you (of which there will be quite a few), and then go through a process of ‘reparenting’ where a lot of those injuries are resolved, or at least put into context. It is similar to EMDR in terms of the idea of memory processing and integrating your memories beliefs about the world — in fact the first part of setting up EMDR reminds me a lot of doing a schema inventory. I would definitely recommend doing this part with a therapist (especially if you have a lot of complicated memories) — but I would also say that just reading through the list and becoming aware of the types of schemas is useful too.

Often the first step of transformation during therapy is ‘insight’ — the ability to stand outside ourselves and observe our own reactions to things, and to understand that our reactions might not be reflective of the world, or might be shaped by our past. Schema therapy gives that framework and that understanding that we don’t necessarily have to be at the mercy of our past — that we can actually choose how we respond to difficult or painful things. Here are some examples of what this might look like:

John has Unrelenting Standards, Defectiveness and Failure schemas — after overcoming a learning disability when younger, he has always felt like an imposter and has worked very hard to prove himself to the world — getting several degrees and working his way up to higher management. Unfortunately, his family life suffered as a result of his over-investing in work, and his marriage broke down — shortly after he developed nerve problems and needed to take 6 mths off work. John found himself very depressed during this time, and felt like he was worthless, lazy, hopeless and shameful, as he was without support and also unable to ‘prove’ his worth or value when he wasn’t able to work or use things that he normally did to cope (eg. exercise or study). Through working with his schemas and understanding how his upbringing shaped his perception, John was able to find self worth in ways other than his work (though work continued to be very important to him), was able to care for himself more (through taking time off when needed and seeing friends) and was able to maintain his ambition, without necessarily being terrified of failure. His depression resolved itself and he experienced a much higher quality of life after this.

Sarah had Subjugation, Self Sacrifice and Abandonment schemas. She was finding herself overwhelmed as a mother, wife and daughter — constantly putting other’s needs before her own, feeling terrible as she felt she was never doing enough for others, and also that she wasn’t being very effective as she was pulled in several different directions. Worst of all, sometimes this would all build up and she would have angry outbursts at the people she cared about the most — sometimes she would have a couple of glasses of wine and burst into tears as she felt so overwhelmed with things. She worried constantly about losing the people that she loved because they would get sick of these outbursts and leave. Through working through her schemas (which had developed in childhood, when her mother was sick and there was a lot of expectations on her to look after her siblings), she began to see the value of setting respectful boundaries and assertive communication. She became aware of the situations that she might be overcompensating in, and the effect this had on her (feelings of exhaustion, resentment, frustration and hopelessness). Over time, she was able to change how she responded to situations — was able to understand that, even though she wanted to please and avoid conflict, in the long run this would just lead to more issues and get her further away from where she wanted to be.

Aaron had a Neglect/Abuse and Defectiveness schema — he had experienced a chaotic and violent upbringing and was struggling in his day to day life and relationships. He was constantly in conflict with those around him at work, and was often getting into verbal altercations with colleagues and managers. He wanted to be in a relationship but found that it was hard to form a connection — in particular he found himself focusing on bad experiences he’d had in the past where partners had cheated or been dishonest with him, and getting paranoid or accusatory. As a result, he was stressed and depressed, and felt that he was stuck in his life but wasn’t sure why. Through working on these schemas, Aaron was able to put some of his responses into context — to understand his ‘threat response’ to certain situations and why some scenarios (such as dating or being performance managed at work) could be stressful and threatening given his past. He learned how to appraise a situation realistically (taking off the Neglect/Abuse filter) and how to establish better and more trusting relationships.

Its also good to mention that most of us have at least a few schemas — and that it is only occasionally that these are activated. For example, I might have an abandonment schema that really only gets switched on when my partner is travelling for work, or when a friend doesn’t text me straight back. Most of the time we aren’t really troubled by our schemas, as we have developed strategies to work around them (like the person who works hard to avoid the Defectiveness schema, or the people pleaser who is working hard to avoid Abandonment) — but it is when we can’t work around them any more that they tend to pop up.

So what is the take home message? Be aware of your schemas — embrace them, if need be. They have emerged from our life experiences and understanding them gives us valuable information about what is important to us and what makes us tick. If understanding them isn’t enough and you are finding that they are running your life, seek some professional help. Trained schema therapists can walk you through each schema and help to resolve them for you — mapping each one back to where it first started, and creating a new template for you to work from. Good luck!