Understanding Schema Therapy and Its Principles

What is Schema Therapy?

The term “schema” means an outline or framework. We use schemas all the time in our daily lives as we cluster groups of similar information together and behave in certain ways based on our defined groups. For example, we may behave the same way around all doctors based on what we know about doctors as a group.

In your own life, you operate within a self-defined schema or “self-schema,” which means you have a framework within which you define yourself and, like an actor in a play, you interact with others while always “in character.”  As a police officer, for example, you’d remain in uniform and treat everyone around you like a potential criminal, even when you’re off duty.

The problem is that you may have developed a maladaptive schema or created a self-schema base on earlier life experiences that no longer works for you. Unable to get “out of character” and live more authentically yourself, you may have dysfunctional relationships, restricted behaviors, and even depression or anxiety because your self-schema and their related behaviors aren’t working within today’s everyday life.

This is where schema therapy comes in. Your therapist trained in schema therapy can help you identify maladaptive self-schemas and learn to change them. They can also assist you in noticing the times when you are behaving in ways that fit a script you no longer need.  There are techniques used in schema therapy to help you gain more insight into how to live your most authentic life.

Origins of Schema Therapy

Jean Piaget introduced the concept of the “schema” in 1923. He indicated that people could have procedural schemas (e.g., scripts we act out) and representational schemas (including stereotypes and self-schemas). Psychologist Jeffrey Young later founded schema therapy, which combined elements of cognitive behavioral therapy, psychoanalysis, Gestalt therapy, and constructionism to help those with personality disorders.

Young indicated that people could develop maladaptive schemas after traumatic or abusive childhoods, leading to specific ideas, behaviors toward others, and beliefs about themselves that were based on negative early life experiences. If you developed a schema that “I am ugly” in early life, for example, you might operate within that self-schema throughout your life. The negative consequences can affect your self-esteem and ability to form relationships.

Basic Principles of Schema Therapy

The principles of schema therapy involve several components. In some cases, you can use cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to identify your maladaptive schemas and then work with your therapist to see how to reorganize these thought patterns, changing your behaviors as you adapt to a different self-concept.

For more chronic or challenging emotional issues (such as eating disorders, addiction, personality disorders, and other chronic mental health issues), it is harder to change lifelong, entrenched patterns of coping. This means that schema therapy will need to be more advanced.

Theoretical components of schema therapy involve four concepts:

1. Maladaptive schemas – Schemas are mental structures consisting of organized patterns of thoughts, beliefs, or behaviors. Most maladaptive schemas develop in childhood and stem from one of several clusters of familial dysfunctions in early life. Schemas affect how we see ourselves and the world around us.
2. Maladaptive coping styles – When we have maladaptive schemas, we will cope with them in various ways. Avoidance, counterattacks, overcompensation, and surrender are all ways of coping within a particular schema. When we cope in these ways we can inadvertently exacerbate the situation we had hoped to avoid. For example, you might handle loneliness by staying away from people because your self-schema says you will be rejected.
3. Modes or mind states – These are roles you take on based on your combined self-schemas. You might take on the mental state or role of being a vulnerable child based on the combined schemas of abuse, defectiveness, and abandonment.
4. Unmet basic emotional needs – If you have unmet needs during your early life, maladaptive schemas develop. Some unmet needs include a lack of autonomy, connection, and reciprocity.

Most of us have at least some maladaptive schemas that affect our daily functioning; however, many who have had traumatic or dysfunctional childhoods have such entrenched feelings of low self-worth and lack of value that other forms of therapy cannot easily help them. This is where schema therapy can help.

Maladaptive Schema: Understanding the Concept

Maladaptive schemas are present-day thoughts and behaviors that are firmly rooted in past experiences. Negative schemas often mean we remember bad or unfavorable things more often than we do positive or flattering things. Our experiences in the present time tend to validate our innate negative self-schema – something that doesn’t happen if our self-schemas are positive.

Negative self-schemas, particularly in light of present-day stressors that activate them, will often lead to depression. These schemas are similar to negative biases and prejudices directed inward. If you had a negative self-schema and received verbal feedback on a project, for example, you would selectively remember the negative feedback and ignore or reject the positives you heard.

Your schemas affect the roles you play, your reactions to the environment around you, and your perceptions of people and events that happen in your everyday life. You can’t be authentically positive or take in emotional “nourishment” from loved ones if you have a schema that says you aren’t worthy of accepting it.

Schemas are divided into 5 domains based on the unmet needs associated with them:

• Disconnection or rejection – This domain includes schemas caused by early parental abuse or emotional deprivation in which the child feels defective in some way or at risk of being abandoned. The unmet needs include nurturance, stability, empathy, acceptance, safety, and security. The five schemas in this domain include mistrust/abuse, emotional deprivation, social isolation, defectiveness/shame, and abandonment/instability.
• Impaired autonomy – This happens in an enmeshed family when the child cannot separate from their parental figures; they grow to feel that they cannot function independently or be successful in life. The parents are often overprotective and undermine the child’s desire to feel confident. Schemas that come from this include vulnerability to harm or disease, lack of development of the self, extreme dependence, and feeling like one is a failure.
• Impaired limits – This happens when the family does not instill responsibility or put limits on the child. Lack of emotional love is replaced with overindulgence and permissiveness. The child can develop a sense of superiority but will fail to own up to their failings. The two schemas that come from this are entitlement/grandiosity and lack of self-control or self-discipline.
• Other directedness – This happens in families where the child must focus on the desires and feelings of others – often at the expense of getting their own needs met. They must do this to receive the love or approval of their parental figures or to avoid retaliation. Feelings are suppressed or invalidated, leading to one of three schemas later in life: subjugation, approval-seeking/recognition-seeking, and self-sacrifice.
• Overvigilance and inhibition – This involves extreme suppression of spontaneous impulses, feelings, and choices in favor of increased rigidity, rules, and performance expectations. The family tends to be dark, rigid, and lacking spontaneity. The children grow to be perfectionistic, worried, and pessimistic. The four schemas that come from this include punitiveness, negativity or pessimism, emotional inhibition, and hyper-criticalness, or living with unrelenting high standards.

These schemas can be looked at objectively and, through schema therapy, you can learn how to unfold these rigid patterns and live more freely, replacing maladaptive schemas with positive ones.

Schema Therapy Techniques for Treating Maladaptive Schemas

The therapist can help you uncover the different schemas under which you live. The goal is to take the various modes (schema collections) and see how they impact your life.

One common mode is the vulnerable child. As a vulnerable child, you would feel alone and rejected; you would be at risk for major depression, feeling unwanted or unworthy, or feeling pessimistic about the world. Behaviors you and your therapist would work to change include distancing yourself from loved ones, taking on alter-egos to escape insecurity in your world, and pushing others away despite feeling lonely.

Your therapist (and you) may instead recognize the angry child.  This is the part of you that feels very rageful, jealous, or pessimistic about life. You could feel like breaking things or hurting someone. You and your therapist will reparent this child, helping her feel more supported in her anger.

The impulsive child mode engages in reckless driving, addiction, cutting, gambling, suicidality, or unsafe sex. You may blame others for your issues and feel like throwing a grown-up tantrum. Your rebellious, impulsive child will need to be reined in by you and your therapist.

You may play parental roles in your life as you cope with everyday stressors. Your detached parent may be overwhelmed and numb, while your punitive parent may decide that you need some form of punishment. The goal of schema therapy is to have a healthy adult parent that can allow you to succeed in relationships and life.

The main techniques used in schema therapy include behavioral strategies, cognitive approaches, and experiential therapy. The therapist may temporarily play a parental role or you may test the validity of your schema. You can talk to the impulsive or detached parts of you or engage in psychodrama. Role-playing can help you try on new skills or strategies. Guided imagery may be used to see yourself differently. You may journal or use flashcards to help you sort out your thoughts.

Schema Therapy For Trauma: A Comprehensive Approach

Trauma in early life can leave you with maladaptive schemas. When you engage in schema therapy for trauma, you can identify the parts of yourself that internalized the trauma. You can see how your traumatized, vulnerable self might engage in self-destructive behaviors.

Through chair work, you can “talk” to an empty chair or role-play in ways that address your unmet needs or traumatic events in early childhood. Over time, you can address the trauma and the negative schemas that arose out of it; ultimately, you can reparent the damaged self and emerge as a competent adult.