Schema? I Don’t Even Know Her! How Getting to Know Your Own Lifetraps Can Change Your Life.
In this blog post I explore a lesser known offshoot of CBT called Schema Therapy. This therapy works with our internal world or system of “parts” to help us solve some of the ways we sabotage ourselves without knowing why we do it.
Have you ever flipped from one emotional state to another for no apparent reason? Or found yourself reacting disproportionately to a minor irritation? Or randomly ended a friendship or relationship, but can’t put your finger on why you did it, and now feel lonelier than before? These may be signs of you switching between Schema Modes. Schemas are the negative life beliefs we carry around that can make us feel terrible and stop us from living our best life.
Schema Modes are “persistent patterns of behaving and feeling that always cause the same type of problems” (Jacob, Van Genderen and Seebauer, 2015). If you like, Schemas are the theory, and Modes are the behavioural practices. Schema Therapy combines cognitive behavioural therapy, depth psychology (the origin of experiences in our early years), psychodrama and Gestalt (approaches which put us in touch with our emotions) and Humanistic/Client-Centred Therapy (which focuses on human needs and the ways in which we are thwarted from fully realising our potential).
As this article suggests, Schema Therapy has a lot of crossovers with the Internal Family Systems (IFS) approach but uses different terminology. Schema Therapy and IFS work with the “parts” of our personality. We all experience ourselves very differently at different moments, and in general the parts or modes we experience include:
Vulnerable and Angry Child Modes – feeling weak, inferior, sad or full of rage etc. Child Modes are the part of us that didn’t get our needs met in childhood.
Dysfunctional Parent Modes – this is our internal bully – the part of ourselves that puts us down or puts pressure on us. These parts usually develop because of bullying experiences from significant attachment figures such as parents, or from being bullied at school.
Coping Modes – These are the survival strategies we develop to cope with uncomfortable feelings or to hide our discomfort from others. These can range from avoidant strategies such as hiding away from the world, using substances to calm us down or at the other end of the scale behaving aggressively or super confidently to mask the fact we feel weak or inferior.
Healthy Adult Mode – This is the part of us that has its shit together; it solves problems, nurtures relationships and generally organises things like a boss.
Happy Child Mode – The part of us that likes to play and have fun.
Schema Therapy is an approach that helps us to recognise which “parts” or Modes are currently causing us problems in order to change them, and cope with life to ensure our needs are being met.
Each of the Modes listed above have different “types”, for example the Vulnerable and Angry Child Mode has types that include abandonment or instability, social isolation, mistrust and abuse, defectiveness and shame, emotional deprivation and dependency or incompetence. This will often show up in statements such as “I often feel completely alone” or “I feel weak and helpless” or “I have the feeling that no-one loves me.” The types of emotions that show up include anger, rage, defiance and impulsivity. Or if our mode is the Spoilt Child type it may show up as procrastination or avoiding responsibilities or acting with a sense of entitlement and expecting others to “pamper” us (because this is how we were treated as children).
Our personal history can shine a light on how these Modes came about. Usually, they are long-term, deeply ingrained patterns. (Young and Klosko, 1993) Changing such patterns can be painful – we have to confront them, understand them and then consistently make efforts to change them.
Change usually involves a number of stages:
Labelling and identifying your lifetraps
Understanding where in childhood they came from and then really feeling the wounded child inside you
Building a case against your lifetrap
Writing (but not sending) a letter or letters to whoever helped cause your lifetrap
Forensically examining the lifetrap or mode pattern in extensive detail
Breaking the pattern
Keep going with it
A full list of the various Schemas and Schema-Modes that can show up for us can be found here.
Schema Therapy is an exciting but lesser-known extension to CBT. As a therapy it works over a longer period of time, typically 2 years, and utilises the therapeutic relationship to help clients to see how their Schemas and Modes activate and play out in day to day life. Schema Therapy can be a great adjunct to EMDR or trauma focused therapy too.
