In Schema Therapy, introduced by Jeff Young in 1990 and developed and refined since then, there is what can be seen as a very thorough description of the thought system of the ego and its maladaptive results. Schema Therapy is based on the premise that everybody has emotional needs that are universal and present from childhood. These needs include: safety, stability, nurturance, acceptance, autonomy, competence, identity, expression, spontaneity and all within a world with realistic limits.
Psychological health is the ability to get one’s needs met in an adaptive manner.
During childhood we develop schemas, or ways of thinking about our lives and experiences. Schemas can be seen as glasses we wear through which we see things. We often do not realize that our view can be distorted by these glasses or that there is another way to see things. The glasses determine what we notice and may colour and distort our impression of things.
Some schemas, acquired from toxic or traumatic childhood experiences where our needs were not met to a significant degree, are described as early maladaptive schemas and are the cause of difficulties relating to other people, personality disorders and some mental health problems.
Early maladaptive schemas become dysfunctional because they lead us to maintain particular types of attachments, relationships or environments and to view these from our maladaptive points of view. We often distort our view of events in order to maintain our maladaptive schemas.
Young and colleagues identified 18 early maladaptive schemas, although these have now increased. They all represent scenarios where we did not get our needs met and therefore now interfere with our attempts to get these needs met as adults. For our purposes, we can look at the five broad categories that these 18 schemas fit into.
Disconnection and Rejection
There is an expectation that our needs for security, safety, stability, nurturance, empathy, sharing of feelings, acceptance and respect will not be met in a predictable manner.
The typical family of origin was detached, cold, rejecting, withholding, lonely, explosive, unpredictable or abusive.
The schemas that developed were Abandonment, Mistrust, Emotional Deprivation, Defectiveness, Social Isolation
Impaired Autonomy and Performance
There is an expectation that we cannot separate, survive, function independently or perform successfully.
The typical family of origin was enmeshed, undermining of our confidence, overprotective or failing to reinforce us for performing competently outside the family.
The schemas that developed were Dependence, Vulnerability to Harm, Enmeshment, Failure
Impaired Limits
There is a deficiency in internal limits, responsibility to others or long-term goal-orientation. Leads to difficulty respecting the rights of others, cooperating with others, making commitments or setting and meeting realistic personal goals.
The typical family of origin was permissive, overindulgent, lack of direction or a sense of superiority
The schemas that developed were Entitlement, Insufficient Self Control
Other Directedness
There is an excessive focus on the desires, feelings and responses of others at the expense of our own needs in order to gain love and approval, maintain our sense of connection or avoid retaliation.
The typical family of origin was conditional acceptance: we must suppress important aspects of ourselves in order to gain love, attention and approval. Sometimes the parents' emotional needs and desires or social acceptance and status are valued more than our unique needs and feelings.
The schemas that developed were Subjugation, Self Sacrifice, Approval Seeking
Overvigilance and Inhibition
There is excessive emphasis on suppressing our spontaneous feelings, impulses and choices OR on meeting rigid, internalized rules and expectations about performance and ethical behavior, often at the expense of happiness, self-expression, relaxation, close relationships or health.
The typical family of origin was grim, demanding and sometimes punitive: performance, duty, perfectionism, following rules, hiding emotions and avoiding mistakes predominated over pleasure, joy and relaxation.
The schemas that developed were Negativity, Emotional Inhibition, Unrelenting Standards, Punitiveness
We tend to cope with our schemas in one of three ways:
1) schema surrender - accepting it as true
2) schema avoidance - keeping away from anything which reminds us of the schema
3) schema overcompensation - doing the opposite in an attempt to prove it wrong.
Therapy consists of recognizing, articulating and validating - bringing to consciousness - the schema and finding ways to fulfill the unmet needs. To point out the self-defeating nature of the schema and attempt to make the patient more adaptive.
Looked at from the perspective of ego health, these are scenarios where the person did not grow up with the sense of a healthy ego. The solution is seen as the need to adjust the person’s views so they no longer carry these self-defeating beliefs and can adjust to having a healthy and well functioning ego to meet their own needs and abstain from self-defeating behaviour.
It is also recognized that these needs have to be met in a world where we are, after all, competing with everyone else who is also striving to have their needs met. We need to learn to be diplomats and get our needs met by not putting off others who may then strike against us. We need to adjust our ways to make our lives more comfortable and functional.
And all that is true. We DO need a healthy ego in order to operate effectively in the world and to have harmonious relationships with others. That is the foundational structure - that our ego self will be strong enough to be able to tolerate and contain life’s adversities and actually developed enough to be able to step aside and get out of its own way in the pursuit of a meaningful life.
There is no answer here about recognizing the entire faulty thought system in which we have gotten caught to the degree that we cannot operate properly within it. Therefore, we need to be trained to operate properly within it, rather than trying to ditch the whole system altogether and finding another way to attain peace and happiness.
It is like a struggling soldier going into battle. Our job is to make the person a more effective and functional killing machine, rather than to question the whole purpose of the battle in the first place. Whether we want to be in the war at all and whether there is a better way to resolve our differences.
And to keep us fighting, the ego makes a lot of false promises. It promises to give us power, to free us of conflict, to finally experience the hope of specialness, to escape from threat and to find happiness through the body’s pleasure. However, the tactics it uses cannot do any of this. These tactics make our lives more hostile and fearful. We merely perpetuate the cycle of projection, attack, guilt and fear.
As well as specialness the ego also promotes any evidence that we are, in fact, not special. This way we are still attached to the ego as a way to fix it. By seeing ourselves as little, unimportant or unworthy we become even more attached to the ego as we are seeking escape from a sense of inadequacy. Whether we are seeking proof that we are special or lamenting the fact that we are not, we are still tied to the ego’s thought system.
References
Young, Jeffrey, Klosko, Janet, Weishaar, Marjorie. Schema Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide. The Guildford Press, 2003
