How Can I Benefit from Schema Therapy?
date: 2024-08-11
author: Ivana Mrgan

All you need is love… Right? The Beatles thought (or at least sang) so. From the perspective of Schema therapy, yes and no.
Core emotional needs are perceived as foundations for healthy development. If frustrated or unfulfilled, especially during childhood, they can lead to unhelpful, rigid, and even punitive life patterns called schemas. Imagine sleeper agents that get activated in a specific situation, fuel your frustration and perpetuate the unhealthy cycle.
These patterns can be grouped into broad categories, based on what was lacking:
- Connection and Acceptance, e.g., 'I didn’t feel seen. I was a weird child. If I wasn’t, things would have been better.'
- Autonomy, e.g., 'Being me was just being plain wrong (or punished). I can’t function when alone.'
- Limits, e.g., 'I got whatever I wanted (except healthy boundaries). I am more deserving than others.'
- Reciprocity, e.g., 'I felt bad if I worded my needs/wants. I felt selfish as others had it worse.'
- Flow, e.g., 'This wasn’t allowed. I wasn’t supposed to feel and/or express frustration or unwillingness.'
To illustrate, picture yourself trying to please everyone only to discover you frequently don’t feel appreciated, which makes you irritable and then you are told off as ‘selfish and passive-aggressive’. This could close the cycle of the narrative of ‘others will discard me if I don’t do what they want’ and in effect reinforce the schema of submissiveness and the frequent patterns that go with it. For example, you might act in a passive and submissive way and be overly focused on avoiding punishment.
These patterns can tighten their grip around your sense of self, change the way you integrate new information, and by extension, construct your reality. They can seem helpful in some situations but can become a burden later in life. For example, if your submissiveness schema gets triggered, you will make sure not to get in trouble, but there will be no growth either.
It might be that your themes, beliefs and set of behaviours developed earlier on are triggering different less-than-adaptive coping responses and reactions because of those unmet needs. To make things messier, the same pattern can trigger different coping styles. Let’s work through the rigid idea of “I am incompetent.” and how it can result in different responses:
- Resignation - involves accepting our rigid patterns and giving into them, e.g., as I feel incompetent, I tend to let other people treat me badly.
- Avoidance - involves attempting to live without triggering the patterns. e.g., to protect myself from feeling incompetent, I will avoid any difficult tasks and challenges.
- Inversion - involves attempting to fight off the pattern by opposing it, e.g., although deep down I believe I am incompetent, I will act rudely if someone dares to question me.
It is through these three styles that rigid patterns can exert their influence on your behaviour and work to ensure their own survival and, therefore, the perpetuation of similar experiences.
The goal of Schema therapy is to increase awareness and to help you acknowledge and manage rigid patterns and survival modes that no longer serve you. It also facilitates recognizing, getting in touch, and learning how to approach unmet needs.