Have you ever found yourself moving quickly from feeling calm and capable to suddenly feeling small and worried? Or maybe you’ve gone from feeling playful and relaxed to blowing up with anger. This happens when your mode changes due to a triggering situation. In this blog, I’m sharing one of the ideas I use most …
Which Mode is Driving the Bus? Schema Therapy Modes Read More »
Have you ever noticed that when you feel angry, you don’t always feel and act the same? Or perhaps you’ve noticed that when other people direct their anger at you, you can have very different reactions to their anger. Sometimes when other people are angry you feel scared, sometimes you feel put down, sometimes you …
Beyond Furious: Decoding the Modes Behind Your Anger Read More »
If you struggle with social connection due to a disconnection or an inability to express your true feelings or thoughts, including pleasant emotions, you may have the emotional constriction schema. You may: Have a sense of pride in being stoic or call yourself a “rational person” Strongly believe that “Showing emotions means I am weak/vulnerable”, …
If you believe that your feelings are dangerous and can cause damage or result in serious consequences, you may have the fear of losing control schema. Yalcin et all (2022) defines this schema as “The excessive inhibition or disconnection of spontaneous emotion, action, or expression, due to a fear that one would otherwise lose control …
The Fear of Losing Control Schema: my feelings will cause damage Read More »
Most people are aware of thoughts that cross their mind. These thoughts guide them, prompt them and even narrate their actions. You might notice some of these thoughts are critical of you, and the things you do and think. When this occurs, an inner critic mode is present. In schema therapy, this voice is called …
Critic Modes: Is your inner critic punitive, demanding or guilt inducing? Read More »
Strengthening your Healthy Adult mode means that you learn how to meet your core emotional needs in a healthy and balanced way.
Do you have someone in your life who seems perpetually stuck, complains a lot, and blames others for their situation? Perhaps this person states that they are powerless to change and that things can’t get better for them because of their circumstance.
They may also reject any suggestions that could help shift them out of helplessness and move them towards change. You may find they get angry at your suggestions and tell you that if you cared you wouldn’t even say these things. If so, you have met someone with the Helpless Surrender Mode
In modern parenting, parents often think about how to meet their child’s emotional needs. But how often do we consider our emotional needs as adults or whether our core emotional needs were met sufficiently by our caretakers when we were children? Many of us may not even be in contact with what our core emotional …
Learning how to identify what you need emotionally can be hard. Especially if you have been cut off or dissociated from your needs for a long time. This is often the case when we have been using our coping modes a lot or all of the time. If you find knowing what you need hard, I recommend you make …
What does little you need? Learning to take care of your vulnerable part. Read More »
Overcontroller is a label used to explain some of the overcompensation coping modes in schema therapy. When you are in an overcompensation mode you act, think and feel like the opposite of your schemas are true. Overcompensation modes serve to make you feel less vulnerable to whatever pain is in your vulnerable child mode and …
Making sense of the overcontroller modes in schema therapy Read More »
