Why Try Schema Therapy?

Schema Therapy identifies a set of maladaptive schemas and coping mechanisms that people develop, often in response to unmet emotional needs during childhood. These schemas are broad, pervasive themes or patterns that can influence one’s thoughts, feelings, relationships, and life choices. The coping mechanisms associated with these schemas are ways individuals adapt to or cope with these painful experiences, which can often be self-defeating or dysfunctional.

Maladaptive Schemas

1. Abandonment/Instability: The perceived instability or unreliability of those from whom one expects support.
2. Mistrust/Abuse: The expectation that others will hurt, abuse, humiliate, cheat, lie, manipulate, or take advantage.
3. Emotional Deprivation: The belief that one’s primary emotional needs will never be met by others.
4. Defectiveness/Shame: The feeling of being internally flawed, defective, or unlovable.
5. Social Isolation/Alienation: The feeling of being isolated from the rest of the world, different, or not part of any group or community.
6. Dependence/Incompetence: Belief in one’s inability to handle daily responsibilities without considerable help from others.
7. Vulnerability to Harm or Illness: Exaggerated fear that imminent catastrophe will strike at any time and that one will be unable to prevent it.
8. Enmeshment/Undeveloped Self: Excessive emotional involvement and closeness with one or more significant others, often at the expense of full individuation or normal social development.
9. Failure: The belief that one is fundamentally inadequate relative to one’s peers, in areas of achievement, sport, or career.
10. Entitlement/Grandiosity: The belief that one is superior to others, entitled to special rights, or not bound by the rules that apply to others.
11. Insufficient Self-Control/Self-Discipline: Difficulty or refusal to exercise sufficient self-control or self-discipline.
12. Subjugation: Subjugation of one’s needs, usually to avoid anger, retaliation, or abandonment.
13. Self-Sacrifice: Excessive focus on voluntarily meeting the needs of others, often to the exclusion of one’s own needs.
14. Approval-Seeking/Recognition-Seeking: Excessive emphasis on gaining approval, recognition, or attention from other people, or fitting in.
15. Negativity/Pessimism: A pervasive, lifelong focus on the negative aspects of life while minimizing the positive aspects.
16. Emotional Inhibition: The excessive inhibition of spontaneous action, feeling, or communication to avoid disapproval by others.
17. Unrelenting Standards/Hypercriticalness: The belief that one must strive to meet very high internalized standards of behavior and performance, often to avoid criticism.
18. Punitiveness: The belief that people should be harshly punished for making mistakes.

Maladaptive Coping Mechanisms

These schemas are often accompanied by maladaptive coping mechanisms, which are categorized into three primary responses: Surrender, Avoidance, and Overcompensation.

1. Surrender: Involves giving in to the schema and acting in ways that perpetuate it (e.g., staying in abusive relationships, not asserting oneself).
2. Avoidance: Involves avoiding situations that might trigger the schema (e.g., avoiding intimate relationships to avoid abandonment, avoiding taking on responsibilities to avoid failure).
3. Overcompensation: Involves doing the opposite of what the schema suggests in an attempt to avoid feeling or appearing vulnerable (e.g., becoming overly dominant or controlling to counteract feelings of defectiveness, engaging in perfectionism to avoid criticism).

Understanding and identifying these schemas and coping mechanisms is crucial in Schema Therapy, as it allows therapists and clients to work together to challenge and modify these patterns, leading to healthier ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving