Transcription
So, what I want to do is I want to kind of get this into my head a bit better, yeah? All right. So Jess did a discussion which went for about half an hour explaining the this conceptualization of schema therapy, and I think I've almost got it in my head. All right. The purpose of this discussion is to make sure I've got it in my head! Yeah. So I want you to kind of help me out where I stumble.
Okay. So the premise of this is that we're all walking around with a vulnerable child, and that vulnerability is peculiar to me. Peculiar to me is vulnerability, and it's different to your vulnerability, and it's based on, you know, the whole milieu of experiences I had as a child. Okay. So that's, so that's I've got that in me, and I'm getting around and mostly coping, okay? But then something happens, okay? Something happens. So there might be something happening in my environment, yeah? Okay. That kind of stirs up something in my vulnerable child. So we call it a trigger, is probably the easiest way to do it. Something would trigger the vulnerable child. Or cue. So there's some sort of external cue. It would be probably an invalidation. So someone says something that makes me, that hurts my feelings, it makes me feel bad about me. What doesn't say something that sort of, sort of an invalidation happens, and that stirs up something in me. BANG! So now I'm stirred up, all right? So now I will reflexively react in some way, okay? And that's where these different schema modes come in. So, for example, I might attack back. Bully attack. And that might be my 'go to'. That just might be how I, how I get around my life, and I bully attack most of the time. So I think I'm with you there. So something happens in my external environment, and I go to which ever it is, and I'll have more or less default mode.
Would you say that you mostly use one or two of of these? Most people probably have, I'd say, average, maybe four modes. You'd see their top four in terms, and they're kind of default cluster. It would depend on kind of maybe one or two fight or one or two flight, depending on what your preference is. Most of us have a bit of a compliance surrender in there, but that's pretty far down the totem pole. But what would I, just want to point out what we actually called it is mode flipping, okay? So something would happen in the environment, that's that punitive parent that comes in to see you. "Stuffed up! I told you these would happen! You always stuff up!" That's that's what we hear. That's what the vulnerable child hears. So the internal voice of that kind of ongoing kind of script of all that negativity, that's your first mode. That then triggers or kind of draws out that vulnerable child. So we're flipping a vulnerable child. "Oh god, that hurts! No, I don't want to feel this!" And so we flip into a coping mode. This is reflexive. So then, then I flip into whatever mode, and then I survive the situation, or otherwise. So that gets me through the situation. So I've got my 'go-tos' that I tend to go to. And what I guess what I took from this is we're probably doing a lot of this stuff by default, and we're mindless of it. As we don't label for it, it's just 'stuff we do'. So I guess one thing about understanding these different modes is now one can go, "Oh, hang on, you know, I'm being a perfectionistic overcompensator, and I'm not getting any sleep, nor attending to my other stuff because I'm so overcompensating with work or whatever." I can recognize that in myself, and now what I can do is try and turn that down a bit. And that, I guess, that's me engaging in healthy adult?
No. So let's say I stuff up at work. The voice in the back of my head says, "You always stuff up. You always make mistakes. You're never good enough." That triggers a vulnerability. I then flip into perfectionistic overcompensator. "Let me fix it! Let me fix it!" And maybe I go on a bit of a kind of a roll with that for a bit because I'm so in my head, and I'm so focused, I'm trying to fix it, that I don't catch myself kind of going into, usually the perfectionistic overcompensate. You can see a bit of a burnout spiral. And then I'll get to a point where you go, "Hang on a minute. This isn't working. This isn't making me feel good. This isn't actually taking my vulnerability away. It's masking it, but it's not addressing it or it's not dealing with it." And I get that voice in the back of my head that says, "Jessica, slow it down." Right. So it's what my healthy adult starts to kick in and goes, "Whoa, hang on a minute. Stop. Have a look at what you're doing. Are you doing that thing again where you go over the top and you try and fix everything all the time?" Yes. Okay. Does it, does that work? No. Right. What do you need to do? For me, my self-soothe strategy is usually as a go-to: go make a cup of tea. It's as simple as that. It's me being able to say, "This isn't working. It's not a long-term solution." Yes, I can engage my skills to try and resolve the problem, but I don't need to be perfectionistic about it. There's a difference between kind of compensating for a problem and overcompensating for a problem. So the healthy adult is the one that probably helps me to kind of rein that be realistic and drag it from dysfunctional back into functional. Yes, go get the problem solved. Don't you give up because it allows your flipping into compliant surrenderer, but to actually be able to kind of go, "You don't have to be perfect at all times. That doesn't make you more lovable. That's not going to fix the vulnerability." Make sure you need to care for the moment. Recognize that you're feeling triggered by that voice in your head or by the mistake that you made, but flipping a perfectionistic overcompensating isn't the only way to resolve this.
So we've got, in terms of the activation of the of the pain, or when the vulnerable child gets cued, are you saying that is it's a representation of the punitive parent? Happens in your environment? Is that what the representation? It could be. It could be. Make for some people, it's as simple as they drop their pen and someone noticed, and that's enough to trigger to kick off off that punitive parent. But for others, it will be they tried really hard. The kid who takes the maths test up to dad and says, "Look, I got about 95% on my math test." And dad says, "Well, where's the other 5%?" That's gonna be kind of a manifestation of, we're kind of, it's another thing that would be fueling those dysfunctional parent modes that happen in your in your day-to-day world that stir you up. He's an echo of that sort of the punitive parent? Yeah. It's gonna be either, it'll either be treated by something that happens internally. So you've dropped your pen, maybe you're the only one that sees it, but that's still enough for your punitive parent to kick off about it: "I'm so stupid." Or someone else can actually say something or point out and me, maybe they meant it as a completely innocuous, "Oh, I see you dropped your pen." But we then internalize it of, "I think I'm stupid. I've made a fool of myself." So for some people, that punitive parent or inner critic has got a megaphone. And I say this when I'm working the patients from a schema point of view, that inner critic is so loud that it can take something as simple as dropping the pen and turn it into this almighty catastrophe that leads to this kind of massive spiral of vulnerability.
I think this is an important point because what you're getting at here is, I mean, this is sort of the bleeding obvious as well, but there is a be very variation amongst people about how sensitive. What some people, you know, they sort of practically bulletproof it seems, and other people kind of, you know, are in a tizz at... dropping their pen. We look at how much temperament has to do with that. Temperament is the earliest forms of personality. It's what we're born with as babies. Looking after kids, you see some kids are really easy to settle, they go to sleep, they'll eat whatever you feed them. And then you've got other kids that will cry and everything, then we're going to sleep and hard to settle. They're more emotionally sensitive. So that comes down to temperament. And where we see these sort of model apply, which originally was developed for borderline personality disorder, mind you. More is people who've experienced BPD would also have a hypersensitive temperament. And the research that shows that a normal person, I hate that word, but for the sake of explaining the research, what experience between 30 to 100 emotional events per day. That would mean that throughout of course per day, there'd be 30 to 100 things that would maybe kind of tap into this a little bit, okay? But someone with a hypersensitive temperament, the research, they have up to 300 emotional events. That's brutal, all day long. They're tripping into various cues that stir them up. Yeah. These things just, it's almost like you've got someone with third-degree burns. They are so raw and so exposed. And every single neuron is a nerve pathway is open to getting triggered or getting cued or something happening.
I think what can happen in my experience is when when people are so sensitive, they can almost be 'on the look out' for the next thing. So they're sort of collecting stuff that other people might not even notice because they're maybe attempting to try and defend themselves. But it has the opposite effect because you just get more. It's the confirmation bias. That's it. If you buy a car, and it's the white Mazda, then all of a sudden you start seeing all the other white Mazdas that are on the road. Same sort of thing as these. If you perceive yourself as being flawed, then you will probably the information in your environment that reinforces this idea that you're flawed. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
So I think, I think I've got a reasonable grasp. Maybe you can just just flesh out the angry child? Because I'm with you on the vulnerable child. Are you saying that the vulnerable child reflexes to anger, and that's where one of these these modes kicks in? Sometimes it goes from vulnerable into fight-flight-freeze. These ones are a way of trying to deal with a vulnerability and almost create distance from the vulnerability. Whereas these two are more linked. So when we feel vulnerable, if let's say you've purchased something from a store and it's not working, and you've got to go back and fix it, right? And then you'd have that kind of... you take it back to the store and they say, "You just not using it. The product is broken." Okay, we only last week that were broken the minute I got them home. You need to replace them, okay? Which is different to angry protect it, which is more like if you start yelling and swearing with the idea of pushing people away. But that's not what you need in this situation. What you need is to actually draw people in to get your needs met. You don't need to protect yourself from the people of the store as you're drawing the mean. So I need my hospital help type into there and engaging by these things. So to come in to make sure you're regulating your angry child, because if you walk your masters tantrum, they're probably not going to be true willing to engage with you. Whereas if you can kind of walk in there and assertively express the, "I bought these keys, mercy, they're not working. I would appreciate these really fund or really exchange or whatever." And if they're being dismissive, say, "Look, like I've got my rights in terms of customer service and blah blah blah." All that stuff with me. If you're not getting an answer, okay, can I please speak to a manager?" And you've got healthy adult appropriate ways. Okay.
So now I'm just going to the biggest reason why I like presenting these model to my patients, and usually I do this in a group setting because it's the sort of work that I do, is if you don't know it, you can't change it. So this model for me is all about developing insight and awareness and noticing patterns. In terms of actually making changes to all of these modes, I strongly encourage people that you need someone who is actually a schema therapist to work through this schema therapy with you. It's a very unique, almost niche area of therapy that thankfully is growing in Australia. It's huge in the US and in Europe, but it's relatively new for us over here. There are more and more people who are getting this model and able to work within kind of this conceptualization. But for the patient, the person who's experiencing this, and everyone experiences this to some degree, everyone's got a vulnerable child, everyone's got an angry child, everyone's gonna have a bit of an inner critic. We've all the voice in the back of our head that says, "That was stupid." It's just a question of how loud is that, how strong is that, how much does it interview your day-to-day life? So you've gotta have awareness in order to create change. Yeah.
So the awareness, this is where having some more fulness of what's going on. And presumably, if but you can, you can listen to this reporting and you can sort of have that framework in your mind, okay? But then having the mindfulness sort of in real life, okay? So that's how things are practice, right? So this is where you, you don't think what happened last week with you spend a therapist, and it sounds like you were using detached protector in this instance, and then you would be like, "Oh yeah, it was okay." Okay. And then you collect enough data that you start to make those realizations, I guess. And I mean, if you contracted some some illogical list at the top, awareness, it's more than cheating into yourself and having that awareness of what's happening within you, around you. Okay. Okay.
So, so if I, if I'm someone who is getting stirred up a lot, so something with high sensitivity, and if that is, that's very likely, I mean, could be temperamental, okay? Or it could be intuitive experiences, or probably both. So they're not got a lot of old trials going on, okay? And you know, I'm having some difficulties, that's where I want to see someone to do some screaming, okay? I would learn this plural, yeah? Okay. And then I understand the well-known in the language, but also I can relate to these emotional processes that are occurring in me, and that lets me realize I'm doing things that are maybe maladaptive, okay? And then I can try and reinforce so the healthy adult babies. And then hopefully, there's less getting stood up. So the vulnerabilities are still lit up. It's more about managing it. So when it does get stood up, you've actually got a response that actually helps you to process the vulnerability instead of masking vulnerability. Yes. This is what keeps us human, okay? So the treaty's is still going to be out there, the queues is still going to be out there. But it's knowing that when you do get hewed, how are you gonna resolve that? Because this stuff can work in the short-term, but none of this is a long-term strategy. None of this is functional over the long periods of time.
So I can kind of do put Skin Therapy into a broader context. Well, let me try, okay? At the at one end, well, so let's say at the bottom, at the root, you've got, you know, did this stuff that happened in childhood or whatever happened, because that's the root. So you might do to trauma focused work to deal with that, maybe all right? Or you might not need to. Because you might just work here at the schema level. So there's one people evidence, right? All our guests or a sort of that, you know, because I guess there's a warning distress manager, and that that's a client to the site or what we compliments this, you know, so - you commanded you to stress better, that Ben allows you to we're here unless you didn't. What will be nothing but a really talented same a therapist, it's gonna have enough tricks up their sleeve, and we need to give you through. Use a lot of what we call experiential techniques. So stuff like savvy takes a cognitive behavioral therapy. It's lunch. It's much more kind of pen and paper and think about these and go and do these. And so though there's more kind of instructional working the session, and then kind of the practice that happens outside of the session. Where schema therapy, but this very strong experiential component to it, where the therapist can actually work with the patient in the session to create change. An example of that would be something like memory scripting, where you take the memory and you effectively rewrite the ending. An incredibly powerful technique that can deal with the trauma. So schema, so people don't necessarily need to go into the trauma work first, sort of can be encompassed with you if you've got a scam a therapist who knows those particular Saturday things. And that Deborah scripting is that's kind of about like a, what, what would a good parent have done in that situation? What, what kind of should have happened in that situation? What did the vault Nate? It's about addressing the means of the vulnerable child. And ideally, we want to kind of train the patient to be able to learn how to meet their own needs.