You Don’t Lack Motivation. You Don’t Know Schema Psychology.
18 Schemas — Identify yours to be set free
Knowing your schema is important because it stops self-sabotages patterns from playing out in your life.
Why do you feel intimated by authority figures?
Why do you mistrust men?
Why do you get needy in a relationship?
Schemas highlight the following helpful information:
- Areas that need to be healed.
- Identify your core needs and feelings that are not being met.
- Enable you to act from the position of a healthy, empowered adult.
What are schemas?
In 1921, developmental psychologist Jean Piaget established the term schema.
A schema is a mental framework that holds knowledge in various categories. A dog schema would have the categories of German Shepherds, Retrievers, Bulldogs, Poodles, etc. That includes the associated information you hold on each breed.
How do they work?
Your schema helps you to interact with the world.
If you see an American Pitbull Terrier, your dog schema pops up along with their breed category information. You know them to be aggressive, so you avoid getting too close.
This all happens in a split second and, unconsciously.
Schemas later developed to include maladaptive schemas. These 18 schemas form when your basic needs are not met as a child. You continue to act from these disempowering schemas as an adult.
As a kid, you compensate for a type of behavior (playing the fool to get laughs and attention) to gain your dad’s love. At work later in life, you have a manager with the qualities of your dad. This triggers your maladaptive schema and you unconsciously act out similarly.
Identifying your schemas is the first step to freeing yourself from their vice-like grip.
What is your schema?
Identify your maladaptive schemas. You have one that is predominant.
1. Abandonment / Instability
You view others as being unreliable and unpredictable, thus affecting connection and gaining the support of others.
Significant others (parents, relatives, teachers, coaches) didn’t provide emotional support or protection. Because they were emotionally unstable, unreliable, not always present, showed favoritism, or were unpredictable.
2. Mistrust / Abuse
You expect people to abuse, humiliate, cheat, manipulate, or take advantage.
Characterized by being the victim.
3. Emotional deprivation
You think others will not adequately meet your emotional needs.
Your parental attention when you were a kid was:
- Absence of attention and affection.
- Devoid of direction and guidance from others.
4. Defectiveness / Shame
You feel defective, bad, inferior, or unwanted. You are hypersensitive to criticism, highly self-conscious, or feel shame around perceived flaws.
5. Social isolation / Alienation
You have a sense of being isolated from the world or don’t feel part of any community.
6. Dependence / Incompetence
You believe it’s others’ need to help you take care of your day-to-day responsibilities. There is a sense of helplessness.
7. Vulnerability to harm or illness
Exaggerated fear that something bad is going to take place and you are helpless to stop it.
8. Enmeshment / Undeveloped self
Excessive attachment with others (particularly parents) at the cost of your sense of identity. You seek approval and unnecessary support, a feeling of being smothered, or a sense of having no direction in life.
9. Failure to achieve
A sense of failure when comparing yourself to others. Beliefs of being dumb plague you or are inadequate.
10. Entitlement / Grandiosity
You feel you have special rights over others, a sense of superiority, are not bound by the rules of society, do what you want when you want, have excessive competitiveness, assert power at the expense of others, or control others.
11. Insufficient Self-control / Self-discipline
Unable to exert self-control in pursuit of your goals or rein in expressions of emotions and impulses.
12. Subjugation
You feel coerced by others and surrender to others’ demands. This may be due to avoiding anger, being abandoned, or fear of retaliation. You give up doing things you like and don’t express emotions, mostly anger.
13. Self-sacrifice
Prioritize getting others’ needs met over your own. Can show up as avoiding guilt by not being selfish or having feelings of resentment towards those you favor.
14. Approval-seeking / Recognition-seeking
Excessive focus on gaining the attention of others, looking to always fit in at the expense of developing your own identity. Your natural tendencies are suppressed. You react to the responses of others.
15. Negativity / Pessimism
Focus on the negative aspects of life, while minimizing the positive.
Expectations that things in your life will go wrong.
16. Emotional Inhibition
You avoid expressing spontaneous acts and feelings to protect against the disapproval of others. You don’t display anger, joy, sexual excitement, your needs or intellectualize.
17. Unrelenting standards / Hypocriticalness
You look to achieve extremely high internal standards of behavior and achievements. Characterized by perfectionism, rigid rules, high moral standards, or striving to be over time efficient to accomplish more.
18. Punitiveness
You think people are to be punished for their mistakes. You have little patience or easily become intolerant.
You know you dominate schema, now what?
How to use Schemas to be free of past influences?
Personal transformation takes place through pattern disruption of the schema feedback loop.
If you keep playing the fool at work and do get the attention of your manager. You view this, not consciously, as a win.
But do you don’t consider the consequences? Your manager, along with other work colleagues, may view this as immature behavior or see it as wasting time.
You grow when additional information comes from the world and this changes the schema you hold. Schemas can be modified through the following :
- Assimilation — applying a schema you already know to understand something new.
- Accommodation — new information doesn’t fit with the existing schema.
After a painful breakup with my partner, I am expanding my friendship circle. My predominant schema is abandonment. It scared me to reach out to new people to form connections. I have been successfully reorientating the narrative of this schema by forming new friendships and connections with others.
Final thoughts
Having a strong desire to grow as a person as opposed to moving away from uncomfortable feelings is a must. Transformation is permanent, and avoiding emotions is temporary.
Schema therapy provides you with another weapon in your transformation tool belt that provides a direct path to growth. It’s through the application, radical transformation slowly takes place.
A loving relationship, a successful writing career, or a bulging bank balance is closer than you think.