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.
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 »
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is often cited as the gold standard treatment for many psychological difficulties, mostly because of the number of research studies demonstrating its effectiveness. It is a “here and now approach” that focuses on how to improve your mental health now and prides itself in not focusing on the past. It tends …
When your schemas activate, it can feel very painful and overwhelming. Often the inner critic joins in as well, making things even more overwhelming. For this reason, a coping mode forms to prevent you from coming into contact with your schemas and critic mode. In schema therapy, a mode is a label for a part …
