Do You Have Trouble Managing Your Anger?

Anger is a tricky emotion. In pure evolutionary terms, anger is our signal to fight a threat, as part of the fight, flight or freeze response (anxiety is the emotion that tells us to freeze or flee).

This is all well and good if you are facing a hungry lion, but not so helpful if your boss has just criticised you, or another driver cuts you off in traffic. But this primitive, self-protective threat response explains why we can react so strongly, violently even, if we feel threatened – in a very crude way, that's what anger is for.

Most of my clients have some kind of problem with anger, roughly falling into two camps. The first group is scared of or uncomfortable with anger – theirs and other people's. If this describes you, it may be because one of your parents was given to angry outbursts, which as a child were very frightening.

That vulnerable child inside you learns to be scared of anger, even when you are – on the outside at least – now an adult. It's also possible that your family were rather buttoned-up, viewing any expression of anger as rude and uncivilised (a very British way to deal with anger!), so you learned to keep your angry feelings stuffed deep down inside you. As an adult, it's now hard to access and express them, even when it's appropriate to do so.

The other problematic form of anger is expressing it too often and too volcanically. This is the cause of domestic violence, bar brawls, violent crime, road/air/trolley rage and aggressive bullying. It's just as harmful as repressed anger, both to those around you and ultimately yourself – you will probably end up in serious trouble, perhaps even prison, if you cannot contain your anger and explode at the smallest provocation.

People with this 'anger style' may come from very angry, combustible families in which everyone was always shouting at/being aggressive to each other. They may also have been hurt, neglected or abused as children, so that child inside is absolutely furious at the world and can't help but express it, even when it's dangerous or destructive to do so.

The angry modes

In schema therapy, when people are expressing anger in a problematic way, we see this showing up as one of three angry modes. If you find yourself blowing up all the time, perhaps shouting or swearing at other people, being threatening or even physically violent, you are in Bully/Attack mode. This is the most problematic angry mode, so a major part of your therapy would involve learning how to respond to triggering situations in a calmer, more rational manner.

Anger-management strategies can be helpful here, as well as longer-term healing of schemas such as Abandonment, Mistrust/Abuse or Vulnerability that can trigger this attack-is-the-best-form-of-defence style of responding to threats or challenges.

The second mode, Angry Protector, is less destructive but still problematic. This is when you express anger in more subtle ways, perhaps non-verbally by scowling or with a closed-off body posture; with sarcasm or cutting humour; angrily complaining about or being harshly critical of other people.

This mode is all about keeping a distance between yourself and others, perhaps because deep down your vulnerable child is scared of attack or rejection. You may also be uncomfortable with any kind of criticism or challenge, so respond with subtle but unmistakeable shows of anger to shut that down.

“Anybody can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

— Aristotle

The third mode is the most helpful, even if it doesn't at first appear that way! This is the Angry Child mode, and is evident in the way a person expresses their anger – often disproportionately to the perceived insult or infraction. You may have a tantrum, smashing or throwing objects (not to hurt others, just to release your anger). You might also get very tearful or upset.

And beneath the anger is always hurt, fear or sadness, so if we were working together I would help you express your anger in a non-attacking, non-destructive way, so we could contact and soothe the hurt, upset or fearful vulnerable child lying just beneath the angry surface. 

When we get people into Angry Child mode, teach them how to express their anger verbally or by doing something safe but physical, like twisting a towel or punching a cushion, they experience a tremendous sense of relief – all the anger literally drains out of their bodies. It can then be deeply healing and soothing to deal with the hurt that lies beneath – over time, your anger subsides as you feel happier, safer, stronger and calmer.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Overcome a Painful Childhood

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As a therapist, one of my first tasks with new clients is helping them understand why they have developed the problems — such as chronic stress, anxiety or depression — that they are seeking help for. It never ceases to amaze me how many people tell me, in our first session, ‘Actually, I had a happy childhood.’ And I think, But you have been depressed, on and off, for 40 years. Where do you think that depression came from?

As we slowly and gently work through the details of their childhood and family dynamics, it becomes clear where all that unhappiness stems from. Perhaps their mother was an alcoholic, so was unable to be the stable, loving, nurturing caregiver that all children need.

Or their father was narcissistic and harshly critical, constantly undermining them or telling them they were not good enough. If that is your experience, every day of your childhood, of course your self-esteem and self-confidence will be eroded. And, sadly, you will start telling yourself, ‘I’m not good enough,’ ‘I’m stupid’ or ‘I’m unlovable’.

This is often how our negative self-beliefs develop — we internalise the harsh, critical or destructive things that family members tell us. And then, after first hearing and then thinking these things for years, or even decades, we just believe that they are true — ‘I’m not good enough’ is not just an unhelpful idea, or confidence-sapping story we tell ourselves. It’s a fact.

Changing negative self-beliefs

In cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT), these negative ways of thinking about yourself are called ‘core beliefs’. And in schema therapy — the form of psychotherapy I specialise in — we see these beliefs as part of a ‘schema’, a neural network incorporating painful ways of thinking, feeling and sensing in your body that fires up whenever you encounter something stressful or threatening, especially if it reminds you of similar stressful experiences from your past.

For example, if your dad left the family when you were young, you might have (understandably) felt abandoned. This could lead to the formation of an Abandonment schema, which fires up in adulthood whenever a romantic partner seems to be withdrawing, losing interest in you or interested in someone else.

Or, if you were the recipient of that horrible, harsh criticism detailed above, you may form a Defectiveness schema, leading you to feel defective/not good enough/incompetent when you fail an exam, or struggle in a job interview. This is perhaps the most common schema I see in my practice — and is at the root of low self-esteem, as well as problems such as public-speaking anxiety or struggling in your career.

Once I have helped someone understand that their childhood was not so rosy, and identified which schemas they have (there are 18 in total and we all have at least a few), we start work on healing those schemas. That essentially means healing the wounds of a painful past, which usually begin forming in childhood or adolescence. If this is resonating with you, and you are one of the millions of people whose childhood was not a happy one, here are a few powerful insights I have garnered from helping hundreds of people overcome their painful histories.

The negative stories you tell yourself are usually not true

Let’s say you have that negative belief about yourself: ‘I’m not good enough.’ (This is incredibly common, by the way — most of my clients believe this about themselves.) You might think this because someone, often a parent, was highly critical, demanding or dismissive of your best efforts, in school, sports or — in the worst-case scenario — just who you were as a person. They made you feel everything you said or did was somehow stupid or wrong.

But, if that was your experience, it says far more about them than it does you. If a father is criticising his five-year-old son for not having the football skills of Maradona, who really has the problem? Your dad, that’s who. So why do you have to believe the nonsense he told you, 40 years later?

Being harshly self-critical will only deepen your unhappiness

Many of us (myself included) absorbed all that criticism from our parents and started to say those mean, hurtful things to ourselves. After all, we thought they were true, so why wouldn’t we call ourselves ‘Idiot’, ‘Pathetic’ or ‘Stupid’? You may even think that’s a good way to motivate yourself or improve your grades or work performance. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way.

There is a huge body of research now proving the link between harsh self-criticism and depression (in a 2019 study, by Zhang et al, the researchers found that self-criticism triggered depression, while self-compassion reduced it). Research also shows that mindfulness, self-compassion and self-kindness are wonderful antidotes to the toxic, self-destructive critical thoughts that cause mental anguish of all kinds.

You are human, with strengths and weaknesses, like everybody else

Many of my clients struggle with deep-rooted, painful and debilitating problems like substance abuse, anxiety disorders, depression or low self-esteem. Often, they are ashamed of these problems, thinking that they make them weak, or uniquely deserving of judgement or blame. So I tell them (often hundreds of times, until it eventually goes in) that these problems are a direct result of their painful childhoods.

They didn’t choose to be ignored, belittled or shouted at, so how on earth can that depression or debilitating anxiety be their fault? And I help them see that problems like these are normal. Human. We all (again, myself included) have strengths and weaknesses; things we are proud of and others that fill us with shame; behaviours that are healthy and others that are not. No need to beat yourself up.

It is never too late to find happiness

There are billions of people living on our planet. Sadly, most of those people will have experienced a painful childhood, in one way or another and with varying degrees of intensity. But, as Paul Gilbert, eminent psychologist and founder of compassion-focused therapy, teaches: Having a painful childhood is not your fault — but it is your responsibility to do everything you can, as an adult, to heal and change.

And we know this is possible — there are countless forms of therapy, wonderful self-help books, loving friends and family members that can help you overcome a painful past. Take it from someone who has helped hundreds of people do just that — it is never impossible, or too late, to change. And if you can live the rest of your life with greater happiness, confidence and self-worth, surely the hard work needed to change must be worth it.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Be Assertive – Even With the Most Difficult People

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Think of the most difficult person in your life. Now imagine you are in conflict with them and need to find a way of communicating that solves the problem. Sounds daunting, right? But there is a simple, easy-to-learn formula that will help you manage even the most challenging people in your life — it’s called ‘assertive communication’ and I will guide you through the simple steps involved so you can make assertiveness your new superpower.

Like all new skills, assertiveness is not easy to learn — and even harder to put into practice. But think of it like learning a musical instrument, or driving a car. At first, it’s really hard and clunky. It takes huge amounts of concentration and you still make tons of mistakes every time you try. But, over time, it gets a bit easier each time you strum that guitar or park in a tight spot.

And then, one day, as if by magic, you try again and it just works. You can play that Beatles tune easily and it actually sounds right. Or you can drive to the supermarket smoothly and confidently, without scaring the life out of your dad in the passenger seat.

We think of this as muscle memory but actually, it’s the development of a neural network in your brain called a ‘schema’. This is a blueprint for how to play the guitar or drive your car that fires up every time you do it. It’s something your brain develops so that it can save energy for oft-repeated tasks (your brain is constantly looking for ways to conserve energy, as it has a vast number of tasks to perform for every second of your existence with only finite energy resources).

The same goes for being assertive. Just practice over and over — starting with the easiest people and situations, before progressing on to the tough ones — and before you know it you have nailed it. Critical partner, undermining boss, negative friend — whoever the difficult people in your life are, you will find relationships with them a whole lot easier and more pleasurable.

Why is it so hard to be assertive?

Before I teach you how to be assertive, we need to ponder why so many of us find this simple skill so daunting. In my therapy practice, I work with many people every week who are unassertive, letting themselves be bullied or steamrollered by more confident, pushy folk. And many of my clients have been bullied as kids, either in the family, at school or both.

This sapped their confidence, making them feel helpless and weak. As I often tell my clients, think of a three-year-old girl being shouted at by her dad. What can that little kid do? She is tiny and her dad is huge. He is much stronger, smarter, more cognitively and verbally skilled than her. She feels scared and under threat — so the threat system in her brain fires up and triggers the fight-flight-freeze response.

She can’t fight, as he is much bigger and stronger. She can’t flee, as it’s her home and she has nowhere else to go. So the only option is freeze — think of a deer in the headlights, muscles quivering with tension but frozen in terror. That’s what happens to us when our freeze response is triggered.

How maladaptive schemas sap your strength

If this happens over and over — as it did for many of my clients — we develop those schemas I mentioned earlier. But these are not helpful schemas, they are what we call ‘early maladaptive schemas’, in this context maladaptive meaning unhelpful.

That poor little girl will probably develop a Subjugation schema, which makes her feel powerless, subjugating her own needs, wants and desires to strong, dominant people like her dad. She may also develop a Mistrust/Abuse schema because she was verbally and emotionally abused throughout her childhood. And maybe a Vulnerability schema, because she feels vulnerable and under threat in the world.

As an adult, these schemas fire up whenever she feels stressed and threatened by someone who reminds her of her angry, bullying dad. She will probably be especially triggered by male authority figures, so a nasty male boss will be like Kryptonite for her. And when those schemas get triggered, she feels intense emotions like anxiety, bodily sensations like a plunging in her stomach, breathlessness and a racing heart.

Even though she is a smart, capable 40-year-old lawyer, mum, wife and activist, in those moments she is three again, powerless to fight back against the critical, angry man who is shouting her down.

Demystifying assertive communication

Luckily, even if we have experienced a destructive, disempowering childhood, as adults we can learn to heal those schemas and deal with difficult people in a more confident, assertive manner. There is a simple model for having difficult conversations that I have taught to hundreds of clients — and used many times with the challenging folk in my own life. Here’s how it goes.

Let’s say you have a tricky coworker, Nancy. She seems to enjoy putting you down and belittling you in front of colleagues, even though you treat her well and she has no reason to attack you. It’s just how she is with everyone (assuming they let her get away with it). In a meeting, when you presented your idea for boosting sales of a new product, Nancy interrupted you, said it was a stupid idea and would never work.

This was, of course, hurtful and humiliating. For the rest of the meeting, you sat there fuming, angry thoughts and feelings churning away inside you like a toxic cocktail in a blender. Normally, that’s where the anger would stay — eating away at you inside, while you thought of a thousand witty putdowns that remained resolutely unsaid.

But not today. Because yesterday you worked with me on a new way of handling the Nancys of this world — using assertive communication to stand your ground and say what you needed to, even if that led to the conflict you so desperately try to avoid. So after the meeting, you (Sarah) march into Nancy’s office, sit across from her and get assertive.

Sarah: ‘Nancy, can I speak to you about the meeting.’

Nancy: ‘Oh, I don’t have time for that Sarah, I’m swamped!’

S: ‘This will only take a minute (refusing to be dismissed). I just want to tell you that when you interrupted me and shot my idea down like that, I really thought it was rude and disrespectful (step 1). Also, it made me look bad and feel embarrassed in front of the team (step 2). So in future, I would appreciate it if you would let me finish and respond in a more respectful manner (step 3).’

N (looking shocked): ‘Oh… um… well… I didn’t mean to upset you. I just come off a bit snappy sometimes. But your idea was a bit lame…’

S: ‘You are entitled to your opinion, of course. But again, in future, I am asking you not to interrupt me or speak to me in that rude way. Are we clear?’

N: ‘Um… I guess. Sorry.’

S: ‘No problem. I really appreciate your apology.’

Take-home points

Did you notice the way you refused to be dismissed and stuck to your guns? Also, that you used a three-step formula: ‘When you said/did A, I really felt B, and in future, I would appreciate it if you did/didn’t do C’

Simple, no? And that’s the point. When you’re being assertive, keep it short and simple. Don’t be tempted to add lots of words, or dress it up nicely. Be polite but firm. You don’t need to be rude or aggressive. Just say what you need to clearly and directly — that’s incredibly powerful.

And even though there is no guarantee that the other person will respond well, they usually do. Also, remember this isn’t a one-hit scenario. If Nancy does it again in the next meeting, you say the same thing again: ‘Nancy, remember when I asked you…’ Sometimes it takes a few reminders for people to get it, but they eventually do.

So, please do try this at home. Start with someone easy and a minor situation, to practice. Then work your way up to the toughest people, one step at a time. You will be amazed at how effective it is.

Good luck! I hope you enjoy your new superpower — and the newfound strength, confidence and self-worth that will start flourishing every time you use it.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Schema Therapy Supervision – Online Sessions Available

Are you a counsellor, psychotherapist or psychologist who is looking to integrate schema therapy theory and techniques into your practice? If so, I offer supervision online via Zoom. Typically, supervision sessions take place monthly, but this is flexible depending on your needs. Areas I can help with include:

• Formulating your clients’ problems in terms of their schemas and modes

• Dealing with complex cases, for example clients presenting with multiple diagnoses

• Therapeutic impasses and ruptures in the relationship, or ‘treatment-resistant’ problems including anxiety disorders, depression, substance abuse, eating disorders and dissociative disorders

• Working with both acute and complex trauma using the schema therapy model

• Using experiential techniques such as chair work, imagery rescripting and relational techniques

• Therapist burnout and managing the impact of trauma and complex cases on your own mental health

Supervision sessions last for 60 minutes and cost £130. If you would like supervision from a complex trauma specialist and Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor, email dan@danroberts.com or use the contact form to get in touch.

Warm wishes,

Dan

5 Things Parents Can Do to Raise Healthy, Happy Children

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Having children is the most profound, beautiful, life-changing and yet terrifying thing you will ever do. Nothing can prepare you for the awesome responsibility of holding that warm little bundle in your arms for the first time. And parenting — especially in those exhausting early years, when you think you will never sleep again — can be tough.

One of the hardest things for all parents is the worry that they will get it wrong and screw their kids up in some way. We will say or do the wrong thing and make them anxious, unhappy, or bereft of confidence. And no wonder — we are now deluged with information, much of it contradictory.

One parenting expert says let your baby cry it out at night; another argues vehemently against this, saying you should never let them cry. One expert recommends strict discipline with your teens; another says befriending and supporting them is best. This guru says be a Tiger Mom; that one says this will only make them stressed-out and destined to fail.

Trust your parenting instincts

Confusing, isn’t it? And in some ways I think the best thing you can do is ignore all the experts (including me!) and trust your gut. After all, some species of human has been raising children on this planet for millions of years. We know, in our DNA, how to raise healthy kids.

But the nature of modern societies means we now live in very strange, artificial, non-human ways — most of us in huge mega-cities, cut off from extended family and community, working punishingly long hours just to make ends meet. And many of us are stressed out, exhausted and stripped of our natural confidence about how best to parent.

Parents have never been under so much pressure to get it ‘right’ — while at the same time so lacking in elder-inherited wisdom about how to let themselves just be natural with their kids. Mums and dads are struggling — and I would like to help.

Lessons from my consulting room

As well as being the proud dad of a strapping 22-year-old young man — and having learned many parenting lessons the hard way over the years — I am also a therapist. I spend my days helping people whose childhoods have not been right for them, in one way or another.

Helping those struggling with chronic anxiety, depression, low self-esteem or a multitude of other life-limiting problems has taught me a great deal about what we, as parents, do to hurt our kids — even if we love them and are doing our best, which most parents are, most of the time.

It has also helped me understand what children need in order to be happy and healthy. After all, as I often tell my clients, babies are born ready to flourish. They are like little acorns, tiny and fragile but bursting with the potential to grow into a mighty oak. All they need are the right nutrients: light, soil, some minerals and they will thrive.

Your kids are just the same. So here are five pieces of hard-earned wisdom I would like to pass on to you, so that you can help your little acorns grow up strong, healthy and ready to flourish in the world…

1. There is no such thing as too much love

It is impossible to love your kids too much. That doesn’t mean you should spoil (see point 5), over-protect or smother them, but these are not the same thing as loving them. I mean hugging them, tight and often. Physical touch is how mammals communicate love, help to calm and soothe each other and build strong bonds (just watch a nature documentary about any kind of monkey cuddling and grooming each other to see how much our closest mammalian relatives need and value touch).

Tell them you love them, every day. And show them you love them, by listening intently; giving them your time, not money or things; play with them, read to them, bath them, be with them. These things feel good for you too, so it’s a win-win.

2. You can develop a secure attachment from day one

Babies are born hard-wired to attach to (usually) first mum, then dad, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts and everyone else they relate intimately to throughout life. And helping your kids develop a ‘secure attachment style’ is one of the greatest gifts you can give them — this will help them form close, loving, nourishing relationships for the rest of their life.

Again, this is about trusting your instincts. You are hard-wired to securely attach to them too. Just do all the stuff above, from the first seconds of their life, and you will both be fine. If you are able to breastfeed, that is wonderful. If not, please don’t feel bad about it — it’s not your fault and you can be physically close in many other ways.

Lots of skin-to-skin contact, soft words, lullabies, (just enough) eye contact, play, hair-stroking… just let yourself be an attentive, loving parent and you will raise securely attached, confident, loved kids.

3. Love your kids for who they are, not what they do

We have a self-esteem problem in Western societies. The (in many ways helpful) emphasis on good self-esteem means that we judge ourselves on our achievements and compare them with our peers. Parents do this too. We praise our kids for their gold stars, or straight As, or sporting prowess. And that’s fine, but I think it gives them the message: ‘I will keep loving you as long as you succeed!’

Instead, we should love them for them. And tell them, over and over: ‘I love you so much just because you’re you.’ With this unconditional love as a baseline, getting the A or scoring the winning goal is just the cherry on top. They already feel loved deep in their bones, so don’t need these achievements to feel good about themselves.

4. Aim to be a ‘good enough’ parent

The brilliant pediatrician and psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott, coined the phrase, ‘good enough mother’. I love this idea and use it with my clients (and myself) often. Parents — especially mothers — feel so much pressure to be perfect these days. But what does that even mean? I try really hard but I’m definitely not a perfect dad (just ask my son!).

Being good enough means trying your best, but getting it wrong sometimes. It means giving points 1–3 your best shot, but some days being a bit frazzled, snappy and impatient. It’s not a big deal. As long as that baseline of love is there, kids are pretty robust. They can handle an occasionally snappy mother or father and still turn out just fine.

5. Boundaries matter too

Although I think we should love-bomb our kids every day of their lives, I do worry about the kind of anything-goes, my little Tommy or Tina is the most special child in the world, I should never discipline them parenting I often witness. Kids need boundaries. They feel safe with structure and routine — especially with things like bath time, bedtime and (broadly) sleep routines.

It also makes them feel safe if they feel like you’re in control — no five-year-old should be the boss of a family! Children should be polite (mostly) and respect their elders. They need to learn not to hit, or bite, or have constant tantrums when they don’t get what they want, to share stuff, to be kind. Again, instinctively all parents know this, whatever the cultural or societal norms of the day.

So there you have it: my recipe for happy, resilient, self-valuing, confident kids. But please don’t turn these guidelines into more reasons to feel like you’re failing or beat yourself up! They are just guidelines. If they work for you, great. If not, do what feels natural to you.

Trust your instincts, go with your gut — and remember that you know how to do this. You don’t need a million parenting books to be a good mum or dad. Just love, value and cherish them and all will be well.

Warm wishes,

Dan

What is the Angry Protector Mode in Schema Therapy?

In schema therapy, we have a number of modes that feel, express or help us deal with anger. If you are in Angry Child mode, the anger will be felt and expressed like a child feels and expresses anger. It will feel intense and stormy, leading to shouting, swearing, breaking things or slamming doors. This is the mode people are in when they act out their aggression in road rage, air rage, etc – the anger is uncontrollable and often lands them in big trouble. Not so helpful, clearly.

The Angry Protector mode is a bit more subtle. As the name suggests, this is a protective part of you, which is always triggered in relationship to others. It can be a bit passive-aggressive, involving you looking grumpy, making snide or snippy comments, or generally showing people you are angry without necessarily telling them how you’re feeling.

Telltale signs

If you want to know how the Angry Protector appears in real life, look at this guy in the photo. Telltale signs that he’s in this mode include: grumpy expression; frowning; mouth firmly set; arms crossed; and generally giving off non-verbal signals that say, ‘I am not happy with you right now!’

But remember that underneath this angry exterior is another part, the Vulnerable Child. This is the part of him that is hurting, feeling criticised, attacked, rejected or abandoned. His Little Self feels overwhelming pain, so this protector mode gets triggered to push you away. You back off, either figuratively or literally, which makes him feel safe and in control. But of course that’s not a great way to manage relationships, because if this keeps happening he will end up isolated and lonely, because he has pushed everyone who loves him away.

Healthy Adult anger

There is a final option for feeling and expressing anger, which is your Healthy Adult. This is the part of you that feels anger in a healthy, proportionate way – not feeling uncontrollable rage if someone is a bit rude, say. In that situation, your Healthy Adult would feel, maybe 20% angry, then express that anger clearly and assertively. You might say, ‘I don’t agree with what you’ve said – and I actually think it’s quite rude, so please don’t speak to me that way.’

Now this is not easy – many of us must spend years learning how to be more assertive – but it is doable (here’s a post I wrote about assertive communication). I have taught many, many people how to be more assertive over the years (and learned those skills for myself!). Schema therapy doesn’t have the monopoly on those skills – cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) or dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) are two approaches that teach assertiveness very effectively.

So if you find yourself – or someone close to you – being grumpy, irritable and generally embodying the Angry Protector on a regular basis, you might need some help from a skilled therapist. I very much hope you get the help you need.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why is Your Attachment Style so Important?

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Humans, like all mammals, are hard-wired to attach to their parents from the moment they are born. When you are a tiny baby, the first person you usually attach to is your mother, followed by your father, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles, friends, teachers, colleagues, romantic partners, and so on, throughout your life.

This ‘attachment system’ in your brain is very powerful, because when you are small and helpless it is literally a matter of life and death whether your parents – usually starting with your mother – love, feed and keep you safe. So attaching to them is absolutely vital.

The first person to really understand this was John Bowlby, a psychoanalyst who argued that all babies have this attachment system and, depending on their relationship with their mother, form either a secure on insecure attachment.

A secure attachment means your mother has looked after you well enough, given you lots of love and hugs, changed you when you were wet, fed you when you were hungry, made plenty of eye contact, sung to you – and all the other things babies need to feel safe and secure.

Attachment and relationships

If your attachment was insecure, your mother – for all sorts of reasons, often because her own attachment with her mother was not secure – couldn't meet your needs as a baby, so you didn't feel 100% loved by or safe with her.

One of Bowlby's  groundbreaking ideas was that the kind of attachment style you developed as a baby would stay with you into adult life. Why is this so important? Because people with an insecure attachment will struggle to form strong, lasting, happy relationships with friends, colleagues and especially romantic partners.

In schema therapy terms, these people may have an Abandonment schema, so constantly worry about being left or rejected by their partner. Understandably, this causes all sorts of problems and makes it very hard to have a stable, happy relationship with anyone.

The good news is that, as Bowlby and later attachment researchers found, you can learn to have stronger attachments – and therefore better relationships – throughout your life. Schema therapy is one of the approaches that is very good at making these changes. If you do have an Abandonment schema, for example, we would work together on healing it so you felt happier, more confident, more trusting and relaxed in relationships.

As I always tell my clients, however difficult things were in your childhood, and however much you are still affected by those experiences as an adult, it's never too late to change. Heal your schemas and you heal the most painful and vulnerable parts of you – this really can be life-changing, as I have seen time after time with the people I work with.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How do Online Sessions Work for Schema Therapy?

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During this stressful time, many of us will be struggling with anxiety or low mood, especially if you are self-isolating or on lockdown, with few chances to leave the house. If you are finding it hard to cope during the coronavirus outbreak, first and foremost connect with your friends and loved ones.

Social distancing is, in my opinion, not the most helpful term right now. Instead, we should all be physically distancing but socially connecting – by phone, social media, Skype, Zoom or any other way that lets us stay in touch with those we love, while keeping them and ourselves safe.

If you need more help than that, do reach out to me or another mental-health professional, who can offer guidance and support during this hard time. I have long worked with clients online via Zoom. It also means I can help people all over the world, which is wonderful. I am offering both short-term and long-term therapy during the current crisis.

Here are a few guidelines about how online therapy works:

1. I use Zoom for online sessions – it has revamped its privacy/security recently, so I am confident it’s a secure and confidential platform for therapy. Using Zoom is very simple. Before your session, I will send you a link via email, which you click on to join an online ‘waiting room’. At the start of the session, I click on your name to begin our session, then lock the meeting to ensure complete confidentiality.

2. I will create a shared folder on Dropbox, so that we can share important documents like an intake form, or notes I want you to read after a session. This means that all communication is confidential (Dropbox also has strict security measures in place).

3. You may feel uneasy about having therapy online. But, having provided hundreds of online sessions over the years, I find it works very well for schema therapy. We get to see each other and hear each other’s voice. And clients tell me they feel safe and connected to me.

4. That said, we need to be flexible to make it work. Exercises like chair work are obviously a bit trickier online! But I do them, regularly, and will explain how to make them work. After the session I will send you an iZettle invoice, so you can pay quickly and securely. And that’s it!

If you have any questions about online session with me, email dan@danroberts.com or use the contact form to get in touch.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Manage Your Coronavirus-Related Health Anxiety

Image from CDC

Do you struggle with health anxiety? If so, you’re not alone. Millions of people around the world face a daily battle with this anxiety disorder. I often tell my clients that, if you’re prone to anxiety, your health is one of the easiest things to obsess about, because of course humans are vulnerable to health problems.

We all struggle with our health, dealing with everything from mild problems like the common cold to serious illnesses like diabetes and cancer. And we are all mortal, so have to accept that one day, our life will end. It’s natural — in some ways even logical — to worry about your health.

Now, of course, we are facing an unprecedented public health crisis. In the UK, as I write this over-70s are encouraged to self-isolate, many businesses have shut down and all schools are closing from tomorrow, we are all being encouraged to adopt social distancing and stay home as much as possible. And I’m sure the restrictions will get more and more severe.

The reality is that Covid-19 is a scary, unpredictable and long-term problem that we are struggling to understand and contain across the globe.

Kryptonite for the health-anxious

So I am anxious. My friends, family, colleagues and neighbours are anxious. Anxiety is a normal, healthy, proportionate response to a global crisis like this. It’s hard for everyone right now.

But I think — as well as the high-risk groups of people who are especially vulnerable to a serious reaction to the virus — this crisis is extremely tough on people with two types of mental-health problem: contamination-focused OCD and those with health anxiety (formerly known as hypochondria). I am going to focus on the latter problem in this story, but there is a huge amount of information about, and help with OCD on the MIND website, if you need it (mind.org.uk).

Health anxiety is one of the anxiety disorders, in which people develop an unhelpful preoccupation with their health. A useful definition I once read is: ‘The catastrophic misinterpretation of benign physical symptoms’.

That means that, if you have health anxiety, you will catastrophise — one of the common forms of unhelpful thinking styles treated with cognitive therapy — about benign physical symptoms. This means that, if you get a tension headache, you start Googling symptoms (always a bad idea!) and become convinced you have a brain tumour.

If your heart rate speeds up, because you’re stressed, anxious or engaging in physical exercise, you are 100 per cent sure you have a heart problem. You notice a tiny mole on your forearm and worry obsessively that it’s skin cancer.

Coronavirus-related anxiety

If this sounds familiar, I feel deeply compassionate for you right now. It must be hell. Every time you look at a newspaper, Twitter or your Facebook feed, you are confronted with frightening, doom-laden headlines about this awful virus that is sweeping through the global population. You, like so many of my clients right now, must be overwhelmed with anxiety.

But you can’t let anxiety dominate your life. This crisis is likely to go on for months, so you need to take swift and decisive action to help yourself. Here are three pieces of advice to get you through this:

1. Engage your rational brain

Because this all feels so threatening, the ancient, emotional parts of your brain have taken over — primarily your ‘threat system’, which is on red alert right now. This system triggers the fight-flight-freeze response to danger. If you’re super-anxious, you are in flight mode much of the time.

One answer to this is to use your rational brain — the frontal cortex — to calm down the parts that are freaking out. This virus is truly awful, but the vast majority of those who contract it will only develop cold- or flu-like symptoms, then make a complete recovery. Many health-anxious clients I have worked with are young, fit, healthy, often vegan and teetotal — some of the healthiest people I have ever met!

If that’s you, remember that it is overwhelmingly likely you will be fine, even if you get it. So stop catastrophising and take sensible precautions to minimise your risk of contracting the virus: social distancing, mask-wearing, regular hand-washing, and so on.

2. Breathe

When the fight-flight-freeze response has kicked in, your breathing goes haywire. Basically, you start breathing like a hot dog panting — rapid, shallow breaths that will make you feel dizzy, tight-chested and breathless. Not good, if you’re already worrying about a virus that targets your lungs.

So you need to slow your breathing right down, breathe abdominally, for roughly four seconds in and four seconds out. Do that for at least a minute, more if possible. I call this ‘compassionate breathing’, but it’s just deep breathing, so you can do it anywhere, any time if you need to calm yourself down.

Trust me: it’s awesome and it really works.

3. Get some help

Please don’t suffer alone. We are all struggling right now and need all the help we can get. There are plenty of charities set up to help with health anxiety and other anxiety disorders. Here are just a few for those living in the UK:

• Young Minds (youngminds.org.uk)

• Anxiety UK (anxietyuk.org.uk)

• OCD Action (ocdaction.org.uk)

If you need more help than this, I would recommend either cognitive or schema therapy. I have helped dozens of health-anxious people with both approaches and they are proven to be the most effective forms of psychotherapy for anxiety disorders. In the UK, you can get cognitive therapy on the NHS, but it will probably be a long wait. If you’re looking for a qualified private cognitive therapist, visit BABCP’s site (babcp.com).

If you would like schema therapy from me, use my contact form to get in touch.

So if you are having a tough time right now, know that help is out there for you. We will get through this. Humans are remarkably resilient. We will develop a vaccine and treatments for Covid-19 are already being trialled.

Wherever you are in the world, sending you love and warm thoughts from London,

Dan

Online Therapy Available During the Pandemic

Image by Jud Mackrill

As we all find a way to manage the coronavirus pandemic as well as possible, I have moved all of my therapy sessions online. I now offer sessions via Zoom. This means I can offer help to people all over the UK, as well as those living anywhere in the world. I am offering both short-term therapy, to help people through the current crisis, as well as my usual long-term schema therapy.

This is an anxiety-provoking and stressful time for everyone. But it can be especially hard for people who already struggle with day-to-day anxiety, or have an anxiety disorder like health anxiety or OCD. If you have experienced trauma in your life, it may also be triggering unpleasant memories for you, or you may be struggling to cope with the flood of scary headlines about the outbreak.

Please take all sensible precautions to keep yourself and others safe and well, especially older people or those in high-risk groups.

If you would like to know more about how online sessions with me work, I explain all the details in this post. And if you would like help getting through this difficult time, email dan@danroberts.com or use the contact form to get in touch.

Warm wishes,

Dan

The Schema Linked to Low Self-Esteem

Image by Lucas Metz

Many of us are overly self-critical, focusing on our perceived failings and ignoring our many strengths and good qualities. For example, you may think you are a failure, or just not good enough in some fundamental way. This kind of thinking is, clearly, extremely unhelpful – and can lead to low self-esteem, depression, eating disorders, anxiety disorders and many other psychological and life-limiting problems.

In schema therapy, we see one or more schemas at the root of these problems, particularly Defectiveness/Shame, which is perhaps the most common schema I see in my clients. This might form in early childhood, for example if you have parents who tell you that you’re slow, or stupid, or a bit too chubby.

You might get bullied by your siblings, or find it hard to measure up to them, especially if you’re the youngest. Or the schema might develop at school, if you have (especially undiagnosed) dyslexia, struggle with one or more subjects, or find it hard to make friends.

How negative beliefs develop

As a child, you might start to think ‘Maybe I am a bit stupid,’ or ‘Why can’t I keep up with the other kids? Maybe it’s true - I am clumsy and useless at sports.’ These thoughts begin to coalesce into deeply held beliefs – the cognitive layer of a schema.

You probably feel your confidence sinking through the floor, or a deep sense of shame at your perceived failings – this is the emotional part of the schema. And you feel those emotions in your body – shame can feel like a horrible prickling sensation in the skin, nausea or tightness in the throat. And this is the physiological part of the schema.

What then happens is that, as you get older, this psychological construct gets triggered by people, situations or events that remind you of the stressful events from your childhood. You fail your driving test and suddenly your Defectiveness schema gets triggered and you are gripped by intense feelings of worthlessness and shame, which are completely disproportionate to the situation (you could just take another test – it’s not such a big deal). This is how schemas operate, which is what makes them so painful and the root cause of every psychological problem.

Schemas can be healed

The good news is that, although they are stubborn and hard to change, schemas can be healed. Using techniques like imagery and chair work, or the attachment-based relational approaches that make up ‘limited reparenting’, we can slowly but surely start to challenge and modify the schema.

We might help to modify some of those unhelpful beliefs about being stupid or useless; work on the unhelpful modes that keep you behaving in self-destructive or self-limiting ways; help you focus on and enjoy your successes, which you probably discount or ignore; keep pointing out your strengths and good qualities, to meet those parenting needs that were not met for you as a child.

Using these techniques and ways of understanding your problems, schema therapy offers a powerful, effective and deeply compassionate way of helping even the most hard-to-treat problems.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Stop Fearing Abandonment in Relationships

Image by Tamara Bellis

Many of my clients show up with deep-rooted fears and sensitivities around being rejected or abandoned. In some ways, that’s a normal aspect of being a human being – fear of rejection is hard-wired into our brain, because for most of human history being rejected from the group was, literally, a matter of survival. Finding yourself alone, outside the village stockade, surrounded by hungry animals and hostile tribes, was not a good place to be.

So we are all sensitive to signs of rejection by friends/colleagues/family, or worries about our partner being unfaithful or leaving us. But for some people, this sensitivity dominates their lives. These people probably have an Abandonment/Instability schema – one of the most painful schemas we can have, which can start to imprint in our brain from birth onwards.

And this makes it especially overwhelming when it gets triggered in later life – because the emotions and bodily sensations we feel might be pre-verbal, pre-cognitive and those of an infant; hugely powerful and utterly overwhelming.

Problems start in childhood

For example, Sonya comes to see me because she is having problems in her relationship. ‘Every time I think my boyfriend is going off me – even a tiny bit – I just freak out and start bombarding him with texts because I feel so anxious. I can’t bear it.’

When we start to explore her history, Sonya tells me that her mother was an alcoholic, so even though she did not physically abandon the family, she was often drunk and emotionally unavailable for Sonya and her siblings.

This speaks to part two of the schema: Instability. Even though Sonya was not actually abandoned, the attachment to her mother was not stable or secure, so she felt abandoned on a daily basis.

Stephen’s case is easier to understand. When he was five his father – who he adored – suddenly left his mother and started a new family. Virtually overnight his dad went from an attachment figure that Stephen loved and relied on to being completely absent from his life.

This clearly was an abandonment, so Stephen’s schema developed then. He now gets fiercely jealous if his wife even speaks to other men – because his schema gets triggered and he is overwhelmed by a wave of jealousy, fear and insecurity.

Healing the core wound

In schema therapy, we work on the Abandonment schema like every other – with a combination of experiential techniques (especially imagery and chair work) and ‘limited reparenting’, where we try to meet Sonya and Stephen’s core needs that did not get met in childhood.

For both people, the biggest need I would be striving to meet would be love and a secure attachment – to me, primarily, but later to other friends, partners and family members. This takes time, but magically we can heal even the deepest, most painful schemas – and help you feel calmer, happier and more secure.

Warm wishes,

Dan

What Are Unhelpful Thinking Styles in Cognitive Therapy?

Image by Tachina Lee

Although difficult life events such as financial setbacks, divorce or family conflict are hard for anyone to deal with, you make these events either easier or harder to deal with because of your thoughts and beliefs about them. This is the basic principle in cognitive therapy, which is why cognitive therapists such as myself place so much importance on understanding the way people think, especially when they are upset.

If you can become aware of your automatic thoughts (which run through your head all day, providing a commentary on things you see, say and do) you can then start to identify unhelpful ways of thinking and try to change them.

What are negative automatic thoughts?

Negative automatic thoughts, or NATs, are the ones most strongly linked to unpleasant feelings like anger, hurt or anxiety. For example, when you feel angry you may be thinking someone has disrespected you, or endangered you or your loved ones in some way. When you are anxious, you may be worried about future threats such as redundancy or health problems.

Either way, in cognitive therapy we see the NATs as the source of your problem, because they are often exaggerated or based on interpretations, judgements or perceptions rather than concrete evidence.

It's also a vicious circle, because when we are upset the volume of NATs increases and we are more likely to use unhelpful ways of thinking rather than perceiving things as they are. Everyone does this, to a greater or lesser extent, and we all tend to use certain kinds of thinking more than others.

If you want to change unhelpful ways of thinking, identifying your own commonly-used thinking styles is a good place to start. Take a look at the following list and see which seem familiar to you.

Unhelpful thinking styles

1. All-or-nothing thinking. This is when you look at things as absolutes: good/bad, success/failure, black/white. There's no room for shades of grey. 

Examples: If I don't get an A on this test I'll be a total failure. Second place is for losers. 

2. Catastrophising. Exaggerating how bad things have been or will be, using words like ‘awful’, ‘nightmare’ or ‘disaster’.

Examples: If she breaks up with me it will be a nightmare. God, this party is bound to be a disaster.

3. Overgeneralisation. You view a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat, or take one situation that doesn't work out to mean that life is always this way. 

Examples: That dinner party didn’t go well – I must be a terrible host. My partner seemed really grumpy with me last night – she’s obviously going off me and thinking about ending it. 

4. Mental filter. You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives. So, if your university tutor gives you a glowing assessment including one mild criticism, that’s what you fixate on. 

Example: My appraisal seemed to go well, but all I can think about is that criticism of my grammar.

5. Discounting the positive. You reject all positive experiences, compliments or praise by telling yourself, ‘They don't count’, or ‘They're just saying that to be polite.’ 

Examples: That’s really kind, but anyone could have done it. We did get the best sales figures ever, but it’s all down to my team – I didn’t have much to do with it.
 
6. Jumping to conclusions. Making assumptions with little or no evidence, in two ways:

a) Mind reading. You assume you know what people are thinking – and it’s usually negative.

Examples: I know this girl thinks I'm boring. I’m sure they’re judging me behind their smiles.

b) Fortune-telling. You think you can predict the future – and assume things will turn out badly.

Examples: I definitely failed that test. I’m bound to be the one who gets made redundant.

7. Permission-giving thinking. Finding excuses to do something that provides short-term pleasure or relief but causes long-term difficulties. 

Examples: I’ve had a really stressful day so I deserve another whisky. I feel a bit down today so I’ll buy that dress/those shoes/that flatscreen TV and worry about it later.

8. Emotional reasoning. This is when you assume something is true because you feel it so strongly, assuming that your negative emotions reflect the way things really are. 

Examples: I’m so anxious I just know this plane will crash. I feel so jealous, I know he’s cheating. 

9. Should statements. Placing excessively harsh demands on yourself, others or the world by using the words ‘should’, ‘must’, ‘have to’ or ‘ought to’.

Examples: I should be happier, what’s wrong with me? I have to lose 10lb or I’m pathetic.

10. Labelling. Calling yourself or others names like ‘idiot’, ‘failure’ or ‘bastard’.

Examples: I’m rubbish at maths – I’m such a failure. That Mrs Jones is such a witch. 
 

Warm wishes,

Dan

The Anger-Management Skills Everyone Needs to Know

Image by Piermanuele Sberni

Pick up a newspaper, watch a movie or the TV news and you'll get the message, loud and clear, that anger is a Very Bad Thing. Road rage, desk rage, trolley rage – if we believe the media then anger is scary, destructive and something we should avoid at all costs.

In fact, the problem is not anger, it's aggression: the unhealthy distortion of a perfectly natural emotion. Like sadness, fear or love, anger is neither good nor bad, it just is.

The problem comes when you express anger in one of two dysfunctional ways: you become aggressive and struggle to control your angry outbursts, using threatening language and behaviour to exert control over others.

When you’re seething inside

Or passive, becoming scared of anger – both your own and other people's – meaning that you give away your power, struggling to impose yourself on the world or fight back when bullied, even though you might be seething inside.

Both distortions of anger can be extremely damaging. The first damages those around you, as you attack or intimidate them. Eventually, of course, if you keep lashing out you cause problems for yourself too – when your destructive behaviour gets you sacked, divorced or arrested.

If you belong to the second group, you mostly hurt yourself – bottling up your anger causes stress, anxiety, depression, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, stroke... the list goes on. 

Assertiveness, not aggression

Either way, you need to learn how to express anger cleanly and healthily – responding with appropriate, proportionate anger in situations that demand it (a rude co-worker; a bullying spouse; a salesman trying to rip you off). Anger gets a very bad press, but if felt and expressed healthily it's a great source of power and strength. The whole evolutionary purpose of anger is to protect yourself and those you love from attack. So the key is to be assertive, not passive or aggressive.

Some of humanity's greatest leaders have been the living embodiment of assertiveness, like Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Both practised non-violence, but transformed the lives of millions of people through sheer determination: they could not be bullied or intimidated, and maintained great dignity in the face of brutality and aggression.

If you would like to be more assertive, next time someone upsets you try this exercise:

1. Get the person's attention. This won't work if they're reading the paper or fiddling with their Blackberry.

2. Describe the behaviour you found difficult. Do this without personalising it or making accusations. Just stick to the facts: 'In that meeting you kept interrupting, talking over me and dismissing my ideas.'

3. Tell them how it made you feel. Use 'I statements' and take responsibility for your feelings: 'When you constantly interrupt me I find it frustrating and annoying.' Avoid emotions like anger, hurt or jealousy, because these will undermine your attempt to be assertive.

4. Check your interpretation and ask them to respond. Your interpretation of events may have been completely inaccurate, so it's very useful to check them against reality. 'Do you think you interrupted a lot? Did you feel dismissive of my ideas?'

5. Listen to the other person's response. Try to be non-defensive (this can be hard, but it will really help) and expect their interpretation to be different than yours. That's OK – they are entitled to their opinion, but you don't have to accept it.

6. Tell them how you would like it to be. This means expressing preferences ('I would appreciate it if you stop interrupting me in meetings'), not demands ('I'm sick of you interrupting – don't ever do it again!').

Of course, this is a bit of a lengthy process. Once you've got the hang of it you can boil it down to a much shorter exchange. And if you do this, regularly, you'll be amazed at the difference it makes to the way you feel and the relationships with your partner, family and colleagues.

Because it's so important, I would like to repeat this: expressing your anger healthily does not mean attacking anyone else, either verbally or physically. That is both unhealthy and destructive for all concerned. Managing your anger is about finding ways to be more assertive, expressing what you really feel and need without lashing out or stuffing your angry feelings.

Warm wishes,

Dan

What is the Detached Self-Soother Mode in Schema Therapy?

Image by Max Tutak

One of the key aspects of schema therapy is working with people’s ‘modes’, which are different sides of their personality that may serve a particular purpose for them. Some of these are known as ‘coping modes’, because they help us cope with difficult thoughts and feelings, interpersonal problems, or stressful events or situations.

And a common coping mode is the Detached Self-Soother, which helps us detach from our painful feelings or cope with a tough situation using a substance or behaviour that is numbing or soothing.

In the UK, our go-to strategy for self-soothing is with alcohol. And, of course, the odd beer or glass of wine with dinner is not a problem at all – I like a nice glass of red myself at the weekend. It’s just when that glass turns into a bottle, or the occasional pint with friends becomes four or five pints, then a daily habit, or in the worst case we find ourselves sliding into addiction.

We can also use behaviours or activities to self-soothe, such as spending hours on Facebook or Instagram; compulsively shopping; gambling; computer games; or endlessly surfing the Web or slumping in front of the TV. Again, none of these activities are bad per se – it’s all about how much we do them and why.

Escaping painful feelings

When we detach with this mode, one of the main problems is that we are avoiding our feelings – and in schema therapy we see that as ignoring/silencing our Vulnerable Child mode. This psychologically young, vulnerable part of us needs attending to, not ignoring. For example, if you feel sad or lonely because you don’t have a partner, it’s important to acknowledge the loneliness of your Vulnerable Child and help him/her feel better by trying to meet someone you can connect to.

Or if you feel really anxious about leaving the house, because you’re agoraphobic, it’s helpful to listen to and try to soothe/reassure your Vulnerable Child, then seek professional help if you need it to overcome your problem.

In neither case would it be helpful to compulsively avoid or ignore your feelings, numbing yourself with alcohol or distracting yourself with a Facebook binge. It’s important to remember that you don’t need to feel bad or guilty for self-soothing in this way. We all have to find ways of coping with painful feelings – and many of us do so using some form of this mode.

At the same time, just because we have done something habitually for a long time doesn’t make it a good idea, or mean we can’t seek to change.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Healthy Ways to Release Your Anger

Everybody gets angry – it’s a normal human emotion, like sadness, fear or joy. And there is nothing wrong with anger, despite its bad reputation and the damage it can cause. Like all emotions, the problem is not the anger, but the ways we either try to suppress and swallow it, or let it come spilling out, harming ourselves and those around us.

One of the main lessons I teach my clients in schema therapy is how to feel, express and so release their anger. And that’s not easy, because most of us have a problematic relationship with this most volatile of emotions – we may have grown up in a family where anger was never permitted expression, so we learned that anger was scary and shameful, to be kept inside at all costs. This means we now swallow our anger, which is not good for our health, physical or mental.

Or we might have grown up in a family that expressed anger too freely or even violently, with lots of screaming, breaking things or hitting. So again we are now probably afraid of anger, seeing it as threatening and unsafe, because we associate bad things with it. We may either have learned to hold it in, or followed our family’s example and now explode all over the place (using attack as the best form of defence against other people’s threatening behaviour), raging at other drivers or screaming at our partners/kids. This too is not good.

Healthy anger-release

I only have two rules for anger expression with my clients:

1. When expressing anger, they don’t hurt themselves.

2. When expressing anger, they don’t hurt anyone else.

Bearing these rules in mind, here are two ways to let your anger out safely and healthily (releasing all the energy from your Angry Child mode, which is the part of you that is so furious). First, try writing an angry letter to the person that has hurt or upset you. This may be your boss, partner, friend, colleague – or a person from the past, such as a critical parent. Write it on a blank Word document, allowing yourself to say whatever you need – swear as much as you like, use capitals and exclamation marks. Don’t censor in any way. When you’re done, print the letter and tear it into tiny pieces or burn it, imagining all that hostility and frustration leaving your body as you do. (And remember this letter never gets sent! It’s just for you and to release all that bottled up anger energy).

Second, get a towel and twist it until it’s really tight. Then keep twisting, saying ‘I am so angry with you!’, ‘I am so *!**!** angry with you!’ over and over, twisting the towel util your arms get tired (this should be hard work!). Make sure you stick with ‘I’ statements and the way they have hurt or upset you, rather than just blaming or attacking. You will eventually find that all the anger drains out of your body and you feel tired. And other feelings might bubble up too, like hurt or sadness. Let them be there and have a cry if you need to. This will help you feel better (and be soothing for your Vulnerable Child, which is the part of you that feels all the hurt, pain or fear that lies beneath the anger).

Warm wishes,

Dan

What is the Detached Protector Mode in Schema Therapy?

Image by Kelly Sikkema

One of the most common ‘modes’ in schema therapy is the Detached Protector, which tries to protect us by suppressing our painful emotions. When we are in this mode we are very much in our heads, being overly rational and cut off from our feelings. I guess if I were to think of the living embodiment of this mode, it would be Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory – someone who lives completely in his head, who doesn’t feel much or understand other people's emotions at all.

So this is a part of us that gets activated when, say, we are upset and fear becoming overwhelmed. Our Detached Protector (unconsciously) kicks in and we change focus from the painful feelings to change the subject, tell a tangential story, or rationalise the way we feel until we're not feeling it any more. Very commonly when my clients are in this mode they will be talking about an upsetting experience without actually feeling that upset in any way.

This part of us almost always develops in childhood, when we may have learned to shut down to cope with overwhelming emotions. A good metaphor for this process is the way a circuit breaker gets triggered when there’s a power surge – it shuts the system down so nothing gets damaged. So something in your brain gets triggered and switches off its emotional circuitry, to protect you from unbearably intense emotion that you are too young and undeveloped to deal with (managing big emotions and self-soothing when they are upset is not something that young children are able to do).

We also call this process ‘dissociation’, which basically means disconnection or detachment from our inner experience or the world around us. The younger you are, the harder it is to regulate your emotions, so if you are scared because someone is hurting or threatening you, the only way to protect yourself is to trigger this circuit breaker in your brain.

From helpful to habitual

This shutting down was both helpful and necessary when you were little, but over time it became a habit and led to an increasing number of problems. For example, imagine that Stephen comes to therapy because his wife is threatening to leave if he doesn’t stop going quiet and withdrawn whenever they have a problem in their marriage. When Stephen comes to see me, he tells me he's deeply worried about losing his wife, who he loves very much. But when they have conflict, he just ‘clams up’ and feels empty and numb inside.

This is Stephen’s Detached Protector kicking in – probably because conflict situations were scary or threatening for him as a child, so he learned this self-protective behaviour. In schema therapy, a big part of the work would be helping him learn to feel and express his emotions a bit more – also to communicate with his wife when things got bumpy. These simple changes could make a profound difference to Stephen’s day-to-day life and even save his marriage!

It's important to repeat that this part of you is a protector mode – it’s not bad or mean in any way. It's just that, like Stephen’s experience, what starts out as helpful and even life-saving becomes a hindrance over time. So with Stephen, it would be important to teach him healthier way of managing his feelings – talking about them to me, his wife or a friend; using deep breathing, helpful ways of thinking or mindfulness techniques to feel calmer and more relaxed, even when conflict flared up. Over time, bit by incremental bit, this could be transformative for him – and, if you have a Detached Protector, for you too.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why Might You Experience Dissociation?

Image by Joseph Frank

Dissociation is a self-protective mechanism in the brain that we all experience from time to time. It’s what happens when you feel overwhelmed and your brain shuts parts of itself down so you can cope with the situation. For example, when people have a car crash, they often report strange things happening, like time slowing down, floating above the scene of the accident, or not feeling any pain despite being injured. These are symptoms of dissociation, as the brain has shut down a bit to help them deal with the overwhelming and upsetting situation.

Think of dissociation like a circuit breaker being triggered. If there’s an electrical surge, a circuit breaker gets tripped to switch circuits off, so no electrical devices get damaged. That’s what happens in your brain when you dissociate.

If you experienced traumatic events as a child, your brain will have shut down to protect you. This was a healthy, ‘adaptive’ response to overwhelming feelings and sensations that your little self could not handle. But over time, dissociation becomes a habitual response, so your brain shuts down even when you experience much milder feelings, like a little anxiety.

Symptoms of dissociation

Unfortunately, dissociation causes various problems for us – we may feel spacey, empty, numb or weird in some other way (this is called ‘depersonalisation’). We might go blank, or struggle to hear what someone’s saying to us. Some people say everything looks far away, or it’s as if they are looking through a thick glass wall at the world (known as ‘derealisation’). When we dissociate we struggle to concentrate or remember important information. Not helpful if you are in a meeting, or about to take an exam.

You might experience dissociation when your anxiety is high – it’s a common symptom of panic attacks, for example. Or when you feel threatened in some way, your schemas getting triggered by a stressful event or situation that reminds you of something threatening from your past. I recently wrote a post about the ‘Detached Protector’ mode which we work with in schema therapy – this is a dissociative mode.

The good news is that dissociation can be treated – I have helped many people with dissociative problems using schema therapy – so find a good therapist who understands dissociation and can help you be more present in the precious, unfolding moments of your life.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How Schemas Distort the Way We See the World

Image by NASA

I recently watched a report on the Guardian website about ‘flat Earth theory’, on the growing number of people who believe that the Earth is not in fact a sphere, but a flat disc. It’s intriguing and well worth watching, but I think it also tells us a great deal about the way schemas can distort the way we see the world (whatever shape we think it is).

Here is a photograph of the Earth, taken from space by an astronaut on the Apollo 17 mission. I would say that looks very much like a sphere, a view backed by every serious scientist in the world. There is no doubt or debate about this, it’s just a simple scientific fact – as is the way that all large objects in space form spheres because of the shaping and smoothing effect of gravity.

So how do the Flat Earthers manage to ignore the overwhelming evidence against their passionately held position? We could ask the same question about climate-change deniers, or anti-vaxxers – both groups fiercely defend their views despite clear scientific evidence to the contrary.

How schemas work

One way to explain this is to think about schemas and how they affect our thinking. If you have a Defectiveness schema, say, you might strongly believe that you are stupid, even if you do well on your GCSEs, or get a 2:1 in your degree. You may believe you are ugly, even if your partner, friends and family tell you again and again that you are in fact very pretty. That’s because the schema affects the information-processing systems in your brain, distorting the way you think.

Schemas affect our memories, belief systems, our imagined view of the future and the way we interpret sensory information such as what we see or hear. When triggered, they distort the way we think about ourselves, our actions, what people say to us and what we read or see on the internet.

So if you have a Flat Earth schema, it tells you that all the supposed scientific evidence is part of a grand conspiracy to fool and control you. It tells you that Newton’s theory of gravity is nonsense, that you should believe spurious theories on YouTube or in your Facebook feed more than genuine, evidence-based facts and information. Sadly, we are currently seeing this sort of thinking more and more, which also explains Trump and the rise of populism around the world.

As a (fairly) rational person and evidence-based practitioner, this worries me deeply, as it is doing great harm to our world – for example, denying climate change at the very moment humanity needs to take drastic action to keep the planet inhabitable for humans and other species. But if you understand the way that schemas work, it’s not surprising that people hold bizarre or impossible-to-prove beliefs.

After all, because everyone has schemas everybody does have distorted or unhelpful beliefs, even if we don’t think the Earth is in fact a big, blue Frisbee suspended in space…

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Look After Your Vulnerable Child

Image by Ben Hershey

One of the most important ideas in schema therapy is that we all have different 'modes' – aspects of our personality that get triggered in different situations. For example, many of us have a demanding mode that pushes us hard to achieve and be successful.

Because this mode pushes us too hard, it can lead to stress, exhaustion or burnout, because our drive to achieve exceeds our internal resources and so we struggle to cope with the relentless demands. 

Another part – the most important one in schema therapy – is the Vulnerable Child mode. We call this Little Dave, or Sue, or Steven, and so on (mine is called Little Dan) and it's the part that holds all of our vulnerability, anxiety, unhappiness, loneliness, feelings of rejection or being bullied, depending on our experiences as a child.

For example, if your parents were harshly critical of you throughout your childhood, this part will feel defective and incompetent – as if nothing you ever do is good enough. If one of your parents died or left the family when you were young, your Vulnerable Child will feel abandoned and, as an adult, you will be hypersensitive to being left or rejected by those you love. 

In schema therapy, we work hard to look after this part of you – to help him or her feel protected, safe, cared for. In fact, we try to meet those core needs that were not met when you were a child. So if your parents were flaky or untrustworthy, as your therapist I would work very hard to be a solid, dependable, trustworthy person for you.

If one or both of your parents was cold and unloving, I would try to be extra-warm, friendly and kind. In this way (as well as using all of the schema therapy techniques, especially imagery) we would, over time, heal your Vulnerable Child – and help you feel calmer, stronger, more confident and secure. It's quite magical to watch this transformation take place – even with the deepest, most sensitive wounds.

Caring for yourself

Of course, you don't need schema therapy to start this healing process yourself. Learning to be kinder and more compassionate to yourself is a good start – take a course in mindfulness, visit a Buddhist centre near you or check out Dr Kristin Neff's website, where there are many free resources on self-compassion training.

Yoga is another great way to heal your mind and body, as is reading one of the many wonderful self-help books available – try Loving-Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, by Sharon Salzberg; or Get Your Life Back: The Most Effective Therapies for a Better You, by Fiona Kennedy and David Pearson, for starters. If you are using alcohol, drugs or food to deal with painful emotions, you may need help to tackle your compulsive behaviour.

It is my strong belief that, whatever has happened to us in our past, it is never too difficult or too late to change. You may not be able to do this on your own – if so, seek help from me, another schema therapist or any psychotherapist sufficiently well trained and competent to tackle deep-rooted problems. 

Ultimately, healing yourself begins with a decision – that you are worthy of love and happiness; that you do not want to spend the rest of your life suffering because of painful experiences that were not your choice, not your fault in any way. We only have one life, so it's up to all of us to make the most of it, however hard it has been up to now.

Warm wishes,

Dan