Category: Schema Treatment Suggestions

Treatment Suggestions for the Entitlement and Superiority Schema

1.Recognize and list the consequences that will occur if you do not change your behavior of entitlement.

2. Develop empathy and concern for others through active listening. Recognize and list the damage and potential damage you might create when misusing power over others.

3. Learn assertive communication through suggested reading. This will help to replace overly aggressive behavior with more assertive responses.

4. Stop selectively focusing on your assets and minimizing your flaws. Develop a more realistically balanced view of yourself by honestly listing your strengths and weaknesses.

5. Follow the same rules as everyone else. Recognize that you do not have special rights.

6. Treat people respectfully and as equals.

7. List past situations in which you behaved in an entitled way and then had negative consequences because of this behavior.

8. Recognize and list times of your parents’ overindulgent behavior towards you in your childhood.

9. Actively discourage yourself from an over-emphasis on status and other superficial evaluations in judging yourself and others.

10. List the excuses you use to avoid accepting limits.

Treatment Suggestions for the Enmeshment Schema

1.Identify and list your own personal preferences and natural inclinations rather than doing what you think are others’ preferences.

2. Challenge the idea that is preferable to be enmeshed than to have your own identity. List and explore the advantages and disadvantages of developing your separate self.

3. Identify and list how you are both like, and different from, your parental figure(s).

4. Select partners and friends who do not foster enmeshment but respect and challenge your independence.

5. Explore and list experiences you find inherently enjoyable. Think about all your preferences in music, movies, books, food, and activities.

6. Use EMDR to reprocess memories of disagreement with parents. Eliminate the negative thoughts and self-perceptions created by these experiences.

Treatment Suggestions for the Emotional Inhibition Schema

1.Express both your positive and negative emotions with significant others.

2. Find ways to get reinforcement for expressing your emotions rather than reinforcement for restraining your emotions.

3. List the advantages of being more emotional with others.

4. Find balance on a spectrum of emotional expression rather than seeing self-expression it as an “all-or-nothing” behavior. Make it your goal is to reach a middle position.

5. Recognize and list the positive consequences of expressing your emotions. Notice that you can use your judgment about expressing emotions which then allows you to feel more comfortable and willing to experiment with expression.

6. Also, try to engage in an increasingly higher amount of activities for fun.

7. Challenge your negative predictions of what might happen if you are more emotionally. Write down both what you predict will happen if you express your emotions and then what happens when you express your emotions. Then compare the predicted results with the actual results.

Treatment Suggestions for the Emotional Deprivation Schema

1.Write a letter to the emotionally depriving parent(s) expressing the deprivation uncovered in therapy exercises. Do not send the letter but use it as a tool for expression.

2. Learn to challenge the emotional deprivation schema by finding and experiencing warm, empathic, and protective environments where you can get many of your emotional needs met.

3. Find and choose good quality partners and friends. Also, identify your own needs, and ask to have these needs met in appropriate ways.

4. Decrease an exaggerated sense that others are acting selfishly or depriving you. Do this by discriminating gradations of discrimination and then ask yourself what logical rational reason someone might have to act this way.

5. Find and choose nurturing partners and friends and actively seek intimacy.

6. Keep from responding to mild levels of deprivation with anger or self-questioning. Also, end withdrawing or isolating behavior when feeling neglected by someone.

7. Learn assertion skills and other methods of communication to evaluate others’ abilities to listen to you as well as to express your needs.

8. Identify times of emotional deprivation in childhood. Use EMDR to eliminate the negative feelings and self-perceptions created by emotional deprivation.

Treatment Suggestions for the Dependence and Incompetence Schema

1.List everyday tasks, situations, responsibilities, and decisions for which you depend on other people.

2. List challenges, changes, or phobias that you have avoided because you are afraid of them.

3. Systemically force yourself to tackle everyday tasks and decisions without asking for help. Take on challenges or make changes you have been avoiding. Start with easy tasks first.

4. Decrease the idea that you need constant assistance from others to function.

5. Increase independence by problem solving and making decisions on your own. Take credit for your accomplishments and do not quit if you fail at something.

6. Challenge the view that depending on others is a desirable way to live by listing how this dependency can negatively impact your life.

7. Recognize that excessive dependence on others has a cost of limited self-expression. List ways that limited self-expression could harm your life.

8. Learn relaxation, meditation, or other anxiety-reducing techniques during times of stress that comes with attempts at independence.

9. Confront family members who encourage your dependent behaviors. Also, keep from complaining if your partner or boss refuses to help you enough.

10. Create a list of behaviors that gradually lead to more independence. Complete the list while doing relaxation techniques.

11. Use EMDR to reprocess negative experiences when a parent was overprotective. Also, use EMDR to deal with current day “failures” leading to independence.

Treatment Suggestions for the Defectiveness and Shame Schema

1.Challenge the idea that you are defective by examining and listing the evidence for and against personal defectiveness.

2. List and remember your personal assets to reduce any significance you assign to perceived flaws.

3. Learn that what are flaws are usually behaviors learned in childhood and can be changed.

4. Recognize that thoughts of defectiveness are usually inappropriate self-perceptions that are formed by the critical language of significant others.

5. Identify memories of criticism by parents. Use EMDR to eliminate the negative emotions and self-perceptions created by this criticism.

6. Examine and nurture relationships that hold the potential to enhance your positive self-perceptions.

7. Choose relationships that are supportive rather than critical. Find and select partners who love and accept you.

8. Find a balance when dealing with criticism. Accept valid criticism and try to change accordingly. Dispose of false criticism by affirming to yourself internally that the criticism is false.

9. Set limits with critical people and do not tolerate maltreatment.

10. Self-disclose to people you trust. The more you share and are accepted, the more you will overcome this schema.

11. Decrease the overcompensating behaviors of trying to appear perfect, achieving excessively, demeaning others, or competing for status.

Treatment Suggestions for the Admiration and Recognition-Seeking Schema

1. Express your true self rather than continuing to seek the approval of others. Do this by learning and using assertive communication methods.

2. List the pros and cons of maintaining this schema.

3. List the advantages and disadvantages of discovering who you are and what it would be like to live that way.

4. End putting an emphasis on money, status, or popularity. These things keep one from enjoying life fully.

5. Do experiments to find and explore your natural inclinations. Notice the positive thoughts and feelings that come with this exploration. Practice adding these inclinations in your life.

6. Notice when people disapprove of your behaviors and then learn to tolerate the disapproval. Accepting these situations as a routine part of life.

7. Learn to tolerate the feelings of withdrawal that come with giving up approval seeking behaviors. Find and then substitute other healthier forms of gratification.

8. Use EMDR to reprocess times of seeking parental approval and not receiving it.

Treatment Suggestions for the Abandonment Schema

1. Challenge any exaggerated view you have that other people will eventually leave you, die or behave unpredictably.

2. Watch how you respond to the temporary separation from others. Attempt to stay calm and not catastrophize the event.

3. Decease the unrealistic expectation that others should be endlessly available to you and totally consistent with you.

4. Learn to accept that other people have the right to set limits and establish separate space.

5. Watch for and reduce any behaviors you use to make sure other people in your life remain by you.

6. Challenge and decrease the view that you must do what other people want you to do so they do not leave you.

7. Actively choose partners who can make a commitment to you and become more comfortable in stable relationships.

8. End pushing partners away with jealous, clinging, angry or controlling behaviors.

9. Walk away from unstable relationships quickly and learn to tolerate being alone.

10. List times that you have experienced abandonment in your life, especially I childhood. Use EMDR to eliminate the negative emotions and self-perceptions created by those events.