Dr Gemma Gladstone speaks on how to start reparenting yourself
NOTE: For access to Gemma’s 2.5 hour “Healing the Vulnerable Child” webinar please contact her directly at justineandgemma@goodmood.com.au
See how this relates to romantic/intimate relationships – go to Justine and Gemma’s Course on Schema Chemistry & Love traps Course
Go straight to THE RED FLAG PROJECT course for women
Visit our website THE GOOD MOOD CLINIC
Ask us a question or suggest a topic by emailing: justineandgemma@goodmood.com.au
In schema therapy, the therapist sometimes engages with the client in different ways through limited re-parenting as part of the therapeutic relationship.
Today, we will be talking about how we can re-parent ourselves. Re-parenting is something almost everyone can do because we all have the necessary emotional resources within us.
If you take the time to tune in, you can easily tap into your inner emotional resources and help yourself through re-parenting. In this episode, we dive into what reparenting means, how you can do your own re-parenting, and what you need to consider when thinking about re-parenting yourself.
If you are dealing with mental health issues or recovering from core schemas around abandonment, emotional deprivation, mistrust abuse, defectiveness, or any other schema set up early in life, you will gain a lot from this show. Stay tuned for more!
Show highlights:
- It is important to understand that our personalities are not made of just one single unit. We all have many parts of ourselves.
- In schema therapy, we sometimes refer to the vulnerable child mode. It is similar to the inner child and is the part of the self that holds all the emotional pain from childhood.
- Gemma talks about reactions to triggers that could activate the vulnerable child mode and evoke an exaggerated emotional response.
- We need a framework within which to talk about re-parenting and consider what we can do to help the parts of ourselves that are struggling.
- First, we need to become aware that parts of ourselves are cut off and struggling.
- Gemma explains what happens to us when we are young and bad things happen.
- How and why dissociation works as a survival mechanism.
- Gemma explains the concept of moral defense.
- Re-parenting ourselves is all about rediscovering, connecting with, and reclaiming the lost parts of ourselves.
- Some barriers to connecting with the wounded parts of the self.
- Some starter points to re-parenting yourself.
- Start noticing your triggered feelings.
- Part of re-parenting is learning to soothe yourself in healthy and appropriate ways.
Welcome to another episode of The Good Mood Clinic Podcast!
Go straight to THE RED FLAG PROJECT course for women
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Today, we are talking about red flags.
The Netflix movie, The Tinder Swindler, shows an extremely nasty example of an emotionally unavailable man. The movie is scary but riveting. It tells the story of a con man who persuades women he meets on Tinder to lend him large sums of money. Even though the character in the movie is an extreme version of what an emotionally unavailable man might be like, it helps to make things clear when we take his personality apart and scrutinize it from a schema perspective.
In this two-part series, we deconstruct the program of someone emotionally unavailable. In today’s episode, we dissect the personality of the con man in the movie from a schema perspective. In Part 2, we will take a closer look at the dynamics of what is going on with the women- or the victims. We will also break down and explain what happens psychologically with the victim-blaming and bitterness targeted towards those women.
Learning to recognize red flags early on will help you make better decisions when trying to find a partner or help you understand what might be going on with the person you are dating. Stay tuned for more!
Show highlights:
- Nowadays, con men and women have more means, resources, and avenues to exploit and manipulate people than ever before.
- The character in the movie quickly screens his victims and feeds into their idea of what love and romance should look like.
- We explain why the movie character probably has a narcissistic personality disorder and falls into the anti-social psychopathy spectrum.
- The movie character has a strong sense of self-importance and a massive ego.
- We discuss the various schema modes of the movie character.
- In schema therapy, anti-social traits get correlated with the psychopathy spectrum.
- What does the person in the conning and manipulative mode do to achieve their goals?
- Most people do not expect to come across anyone with a dominant mode to intentionally con and deceive others. Gemma shares a clue to look out for that would indicate that someone has that mode.
- When challenged, or called out, the movie character quickly switched from a charming to an angry and threatening mode.
- Although he had many red flags, the guy in the movie was adept at quickly building a sense of trust and intimacy with his victims.
- Why does it become harder for people to look at red flags rationally after being love-bombed?
- It is vital to trust your gut feelings if things do not add up or you feel confused.
Welcome to another episode of The Good Mood Clinic Podcast!
Go straight to THE RED FLAG PROJECT course for women
Visit our website THE GOOD MOOD CLINIC
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Check out what’s new on our LEARNING HUB
For confidential information, counseling, and support service go to https://1800respect.org.au.
Ask us a question or suggest a topic by emailing: justineandgemma@goodmood.com.au
In our last podcast, we spoke about what an abandonment schema might look like generally when dating someone. Today, we follow that by taking a more specific look at the different coping styles people tend to use when their abandonment schema gets triggered in a dating situation.
Our schemas get triggered when certain things happen. When triggered, strong emotions arise, and we feel compelled to respond in a certain way to cope. Schema therapy clearly explains three common responses people have after getting triggered. One of them falls into the broad category of avoidance. Another is surrendering or resigning to what happened. The third is overcompensating, sometimes also referred to as counterattack.
In this episode, we discuss the three different ways people cope with the intense feelings that surface when their abandonment schema gets activated. We give some examples of what each response might look like, focusing particularly on those that come up when an abandonment schema gets triggered. We discuss ways to change your response patterns, explain the importance of learning to understand how you react and talk about the potential consequences of the different coping styles. Stay tuned for more!
Show highlights:
- Justine shares one way you can change your response patterns after getting triggered.
- Justine and Gemma discuss the surrender mode and explain how it affects people and their relationships.
- The surrender mode can sometimes flip over into avoidance.
- How do you know when you are surrendering to your schema?
- How does a healthy build-up to a relationship look?
- Gemma and Justine talk about the overcompensating response pattern.
- What does it look like when we over-compensate?
- What tends to happen when we overcompensate?
- Gemma explains how to not react when in counterattacking mode.
- What happens when you are on the receiving end of an overcompensating counterattack?
- Justine and Gemma talk about what tends to happen when you have the avoidance response with an abandonment schema.
- Avoidant coping patterns can be hard to break. Gemma explains what keeps people stuck in those patterns and how schema therapy can help overcome them.
Welcome to another episode of The Good Mood Clinic Podcast!
Go straight to THE RED FLAG PROJECT course for women
Visit our website THE GOOD MOOD CLINIC
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/theredflagproject._/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/The-Red-Flag-Project-103442091937249
Check out what’s new on our LEARNING HUB
For confidential information, counseling, and support service go to https://1800respect.org.au.
Ask us a question or suggest a topic by emailing: justineandgemma@goodmood.com.au
Welcome to the first episode of The Good Mood Clinic Podcast for 2022!
When making new year resolutions, most of us tend to think about things we can improve in our lives and the patterns we would like to change. One of those patterns usually relates to relationships. Justine has already had several sessions this year with people who want to break their relationship patterns so that they can finally meet someone emotionally available and have a proper relationship.
Our schemas tend to hinder our relationship radar and keep us doing the same thing over and over. If you have an abandonment schema and would like to meet someone available, you have to take responsibility for the choices you make and look at how your schema impacts your choices. If you want to avoid becoming a victim, you also need to be accountable for the role you play in your relationships.
The abandonment schema is the oldest and most primal schema you could have. In this episode, Gemma and Justine dive into the abandonment schema and discuss how it affects people when they date. They explain how an abandonment schema develops, what it feels like, and what tends to activate it. Justine also talks about what she does to help her clients prevent their abandonment schemas from getting triggered when dating. Listen in today to learn how to take responsibility for your abandonment schema and find out how your abandonment schema could trip you up when dating.
Show highlights:
- The abandonment schema is a common theme in many of Justine’s sessions.
- To do online dating, you have to be in the right mindset.
- Your abandonment schema might get activated early on when dating someone. Justine talks about various problems that could occur when that happens.
- How does an abandonment schema form when we are very young?
- What does an abandonment schema feel like?
- Gemma and Justine discuss the core belief carried by an abandonment schema.
- What tends to trigger an abandonment schema?
- Some strategies to prevent your abandonment schema from getting activated when dating someone.
- Learn how to cope with red flags and obstacles that might arise when dating someone.
- How to detect early signs of narcissism in the person you are dating.
- It is vital to flush out potentially avoidant people or individuals who may be catfishing early on.
Welcome to another episode of The Good Mood Clinic Podcast!
Go straight to THE RED FLAG PROJECT course for women
Visit our website THE GOOD MOOD CLINIC
Check out what’s new on our LEARNING HUB
For confidential information, counseling, and support service go to https://1800respect.org.au.
Ask us a question or suggest a topic by emailing: justineandgemma@goodmood.com.au
Some of the ways we think and some of our behavioral tendencies are called schemas. Schemas could be described as the lens through which we see the world. They are closely related to our ingrained core beliefs but tend to be a little broader than those.
Schema therapy makes things very clear and gives us some easy-to-understand labels to describe our behavior. Justine and Gemma have found schema therapy useful for problem-solving and understanding what is going on beneath the surface in relationships.
In this episode, they dive into the area of relationships and look at how early schemas can overlap with people’s attachment styles to form the antagonistic push-pull relationships in which so many of us seem to find ourselves. They describe the anxious and avoidant styles of attachment and discuss some general terms that could help us think in terms of schemas rather than larger categories of behavior. Stay tuned for more!
Show highlights:
- There are four categories of attachment styles.
- Gemma discusses the secure attachment style.
- Literature tells us that 50% of the world falls into the category of secure attachment. Gemma and Justine discuss whether or not that is accurate.
- Gemma and Justine describe and discuss the anxious and avoidant attachment styles.
- How the anxious and avoidant attachment styles fit in with schema therapy models.
- Anxious and avoidant people often tend to get together and cause each other a lot of pain.
- Why anxious types often tend to be women and avoidant types tend to be men.
- Anxious and avoidant relationships tend to be nuanced. Gemma and Justine discuss some of the nuances and explain the best approach to ensure that your emotional needs get met.
- People have different ways of coping with their unmet core emotional needs.
- Schemas tend to overlay and present in varying degrees with the anxiously attached person.
- People who are avoidantly attached often tend to use avoidance across other areas of their lives as well.
- Attachment styles tend to present on a continuum.
- Gemma and Justine will be doing a live webinar on schema chemistry on the 26th of November at 10 o’clock Sydney time. It will be recorded and will be available on the new RedFlag.com website.
The Demanding, Punitive & Guilt-inducing ‘Parent’ Modes
These parent (or ‘inner critic’) modes are learned thoughts and beliefs (about yourself and others) which are negative in nature. They might sound like this: “I’m ugly, I’ll never get anywhere in life; I’m worthless, I’m not as good as others; no one could love me; I’m useless if I make mistakes; I’m boring, I’m going to stuff it up again, I’m just not good enough, If I don’t put other’s first I’m a selfish person, I’m responsible for other people’s happiness” and all sorts of other harsh and negative or unrealistic words. These are the messages from your inner critics or dysfunctional ‘parent’ modes. It is your voice speaking, your inner dialogue, the words or phrases you say to yourself in a tone and manner that is judgemental, demanding or nasty. But you weren’t born with these thoughts, they were all learned, directly or indirectly from your earlier experiences. These parent modes come from messages you received from parents and other early life events like bullying or other forms of social learning.
We all, depending on our natural temperament, internalised or introjected these ‘messages’ during our formative years and they became woven into the fabric of our evolving personality. That’s why we don’t tend to question them – because by adulthood, they are a fundamental part of our identify.
In schema therapy we divide the inner critic into three types: one is a fear-based part (we call this the “demanding parent” or critic), another is a nasty, mean part (we call this the “punitive parent”) and the third is a ‘guilt-tripping’ part – the guilt inducing parent mode or critic. This distinction is important because in therapy we target these parts in different ways and they can affect a person’s mental health to different degrees.
The Demanding Parent Voice – your inner perfectionist!
The demanding parent mode is fear-driven because it tells you that if you don’t do something or be something, then everything will fall apart. This part is unrelenting in its effort to get you to be better in some way. “Don’t stop studying because if you do you’ll fall behind and then you’ll fail and then you will be unemployable and have no money…….” “You have to look perfect all the time because if you don’t you’ll never meet anyone and you’ll be alone forever!” “Whatever you do don’t make a mistake because if you do others will see that you are an imposter and that you don’t have what it takes!” Basically, if you don’t follow the ‘advice’ of your demanding parent then you are doomed to failure or loneliness or some other sort of misery. People who are very perfectionistic have a strong demanding parent mode. They have huge amounts of anxiety which they manage by attempting to control every outcome with all sorts of coping behaviours (eg, being a ‘workaholic’; a ‘control-freak’; doing all the work and not delegating anything; checking their work excessively and countless more). If you’re a perfectionist you may have already realised that your inner critic never shuts up and you’re always listening in for its updates.
The Punitive Parent Voice – the nasty side!
The punitive parent mode is not fear-driven and it’s not trying to frighten you into doing something because it believes (albeit flawed) you need it. Punitive parent is a nasty voice that is demeaning and tells you that you are worthless, useless or defective in some way. This voice is often formed from direct and blatant verbal/psychological abuse from care-givers or others who hurt you in some way. It can also be formed because you did not receive positive messages about being valued, ‘seen’, respected & loved. It can often come about from a combination of early experiences where the child felt unseen and worthless because their emotional needs were not met. It’s important to remember that we are not born into the world with a sense of self-worth (psychologically speaking). We develop this sense of worth only if we are cared for in a way that makes us feel emotionally understood and validated. We need to be seen as a separate person with our own needs – physical, emotional and social.
Someone with a strong punitive parent mode may believe deep down that they don’t deserve good things, that they are worthless and unworthy of love. The person may feel as though they deserve punishment and they display signs of self-loathing such as self-mutilation and suicidal fantasises. Sometimes the punitive parent voice can be extremely strong and can cause people to hurt themselves or try to take their own lives.
Generally speaking, the louder this voice, the more at risk a person is of suffering from recurrent or persistent depression. It is the presence and strength of the punitive parent voice which often predicts how people cope over time and how much they struggle with persistent low mood. People with chronic or recurrent depression often have a strong punitive parent mode.
The Guilt-Inducing Parent Voice – the, if I win, then you will lose dilemma!
There is also another type of inner critic voice which we call the ‘guilt-inducing’ critic or parent mode. It sounds something like this: “If I ever put myself first, others will suffer”; “If I can’t always help others, then I’m lazy and selfish”; “If I say no to a request, then I’m just being self-centred”; “I am the one that has to help, it has to be me!”; “Disappointing others is unbearable for me, I feel so guilty” and so on, you get the picture!
Basically, this style of inner dialogue usually develops when a child grows up being somehow responsible for one or more of their care-takers or another ‘vulnerable’ person within the family unit. There is usually some type of pattern whereby the parent or parents gave the child a message that they must somehow take care of or protect the parent. These messages can be either direct in nature (eg, direct requests or directions from parents that the child must be responsible or take care of them), or indirect (eg, more subtle messages where the child learns that a parent needs to be taken care of or protected). In this regard one or more parents are very likely to be dependant on the child, either emotionally or physically. The parent does not have to directly make the child feel guilty explicitly, as the guilt is often more gradually and subtly acquired by the child. The ‘guilt-inducing’ voice can also come from experiences where a parent did try and manipulate the child’s emotions and actually make them feel guilty to a greater or lesser degree. This can be a more robust or toxic form of the guilt-inducing parent mode. For example, whenever the child or adolescent attempted to be independent of separate from the parent, the parent may have responded with messages which implied that the child would ‘hurt’ them, it they were to ‘separate’ and attend to their own needs (eg: “I don’t know what I’d do without you, I’d never survive without your help”; “go out with your friends if you like, I’ll just sit at home feeling lonely all night”; “It’s OK you have your own life to live, I’ll manage somehow I suppose”). As you can see, the development of the ‘guilt-inducing’ parent mode can be quite complex and can develop gradually over the years without any apparent parent-child conflict or trauma. If you have a strong ‘guilt-inducing’ parent mode, then you will generally have a lot of trouble setting healthy limits with others and even agonize over letting others down or saying no, even when you have to. Guilt is a very familiar emotion for you!
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Your own demanding, punitive or guilt-inducing parent mode can come out and be directed towards other people, like your partner and your own children. If this is happening you need to gain insight into when it happens because ultimately it will destroy relationships. A child who grows up with a demanding or punitive parent will harbour a lot of resentment towards their parent and will have a strong angry child mode that they will have to work on.
In relationships, critic or parent modes can play out with negative consequences. For example, you may feel yourself flip into punitive parent mode if you feel the need to harshly berate your spouse if they have not done something to your standard, or you may say harsh, critical things to your child when you feel they are not listening to you. Afterwards, when you calm down, you might see that you have been excessively harsh or unreasonable and you may regret your words.
Fortunately, we can do something about all these types of inner critics! The goal of working on the demanding parents is to tame it, to dilute it down to an acceptable level where it helps you instead of hindering you. Because the punitive parent voice does not help you in any way, the goal is to override it in therapy with proven strategies. In schema therapy we can use all sorts of creative ways to destabilize the punitive parent, so that it’s ‘presence’ is either fully eradicated or reduced significantly. One of the key antidotes for all forms of inner critics is of course self-compassion. In Schema Therapy we refer to this as the ‘Healthy Adult’ mode. In schema therapy we want to heal the childhood vulnerabilities that believe the negative critical voices and also bolster the self-compassionate part of the person – their ‘Healthy Adult’ mode.
In schema therapy, the therapist can use different experiential methods including chair-work to externalise the inner critics to see how they play out in a client’s life and also how they might hinder progress in therapy. Being able to identify your inner critics and the types of message they express is an important first step towards healing in schema therapy.
Vulnerable Child Modes
Child modes are parts of self (or representations of the self) which came into being in childhood in response to the parenting you received and other experiences you encounted. Think about the concept of the ‘inner child’ that many therapists have written about. The term Vulnerable child (VC) is a general one used to described a part of the self which harbours all the emotional pain belonging to childhood. All the emotions, beliefs and behaviours which came about due to negative childhood experiences and relationships belong to the VC mode. The pain associated with physical, emotional and sexual abuse; abandonments and losses; and dismissive or neglectful parenting styles, are all stored here – within the VC mode.
There may be many different, more specific types of the VC modes, such as the ‘abused child’, the ‘abandoned child’, the ‘lonely child’, the ‘grieving child’ and so on. The VC is where all the unmet needs of the child reside. It very much depends upon your own personal childhood experiences, as to how you identify your VC part or parts. An essential part of therapy is to reconnect with and heal the VC mode, with the guidance of a skilled therapist experienced in the art of imagery re-scripting. With the help of your therapist, you will be able to meet and reconnect with these parts which you have previously cut off or disavowed in order to cope and get on with life.
It is very normal for people to want to ‘forget’ or dismiss aspects of their past in an attempt to get on with life and avoid feeling hurtful and uncomfortable emotions. However, when we do this we leave behind parts of us which continue to feel rejected and outcast and they can unconsciously influence the way we feel, the partners we choose and all manner of decisions we make.
There may be many ‘child’ representations of the self within all of us. That is, a person may have many painful or vulnerable inner children – so to speak. The thing to understand is that these ‘child parts of self’ often tend to get stuck in a time warp – as though they are stuck or trapped in the past (with only an awareness of what happen back then). Finding, reconnecting with and healing vulnerable child parts is an essential part of good schema therapy. It is only when we do this, that a person is able to truly accept and love themselves in a way that promotes long-term healing and real-life changes.
Angry Child Mode
This mode comes about as a natural response to not getting your childhood needs met or having them violated through mistreatment. It is the (child) part of self that feels the injustice of the unmet needs and gets angry because the needs were not met. During childhood, the anger was understandable. After all, if someone mistreats you, or stops you from doing something you really want to do, the normal human emotional response is anger. So the angry child mode is the part of self that develops out of wanting to defend or protect the child who was being mistreated, abandoned, invalidated or unloved. The underlying intention of the angry child is understandable, but it tends to be a disorganised and unhelpful mode when activated in the adult person.
You can usually tell if someone is in angry child mode because their anger outburst is excessive and appears to be disproportionate to the triggering event. Angry child mode often surfaces quickly after the person feels hurt, anxious or fearful. Angry responses come in to ‘over-compensate’ for an emotional need not being met.
The angry child wants to get a need met (they want understanding and connection) but they go about it in an unhelpful or primitive way (ie, it may look like a tantrum). For example, you could feel very hurt by a friend not returning your call and then flip into an angry mode. This anger usually feels very hot, intense, impulsive and out of control. In relationships, the angry child mode is triggered a lot. A person may feel abandoned by their partner and then pick a fight with them and get very angry, instead of expressing their true feelings of hurt. The angry child mode can be a destructive force in relationships and won’t win you any friends at work either. When the angry child mode is extreme and escalates into acts of impulsive (verbal or physical) aggression then a person may be in ‘enraged child’ mode. It is scary to be on the receiving end of the enraged child mode. The ‘trigger’ for the angry or enraged child modes is always some type of threat, criticism, abandonment, rejection or mistreatment – either real or imagined. The angry child mode is not an effective, healthy adult way of getting one’s needs met or resolving relationship disputes. If left unchecked it will most likely destroy relationships and leave you feeling very isolated and lonely.
Impulsive or Undisciplined Child Mode
A similar child mode is the undisciplined child mode. This part of self has developed either from a lack of discipline during childhood (ie, giving in to the child and poor limit setting) or the opposite whereby the childhood environment was very stern, rigid and strict with harsh discipline. So therefore, as a child – you either heard the word “no” too infrequently or not at all, or you heard it way too much. This is the “I want what I want, when I want it” mode and is usually quite strong in people struggling with addiction and other impulsive behaviours. Whenever we say to ourselves “I deserve this, I know I shouldn’t but I’m having it anyway” – we are usually in some degree of undisciplined child mode. Again, a person in this mode is usually trying to get some need met, but is probably going about it in an unhelpful way. One of the long-term negative consequences of having a strong undisciplined child mode is that it affects your ability to regulate yourself and your emotions in a healthy adult way. It is also linked with a sense of poor autonomy and a dependent personality style.
Happy / Contented / Authentic Child Mode
There is a mostly positive, ‘feel good’ child mode – referred to as the happy child mode. Can you think of times from your childhood when you felt free to express yourself, felt joyous and silly while also feeling safe and nurtured. Do you have times when you feel like that now? This might be your happy child mode – a part of you to be fostered and further developed. Sadly, some people don’t have any recollection of ever feeling this way in childhood because their early years were too marked by experiences of neglect, abuse or hardship. Therapy can help these people create a more positive, free, compassionate and joyful side of themselves. Intentionally, we can also help a VC part evolve into a happy or contented child mode.
Avoidant or Protecting Modes
These modes develop usually gradually during childhood or adolescence as ways to protect the self and safe-guard the vulnerable child modes against harm and emotional pain. These modes can develop quite consciously with the person making a decision to act in a certain way, but they can also develop out of conscious awareness without the person being fully aware of the mode. These modes function to protect the vulnerable child (VC) mode from feeling the pain associated with the original unmet or violated childhood needs. These modes try to avoid painful schemas being triggered and if schemas are triggered they attempt to short-circuit the pain. A common protecting mode is the ‘detached protector’ which is a part of the person that detaches from ‘real’ connection and from inner needs. This mode is a part that is very cut off from emotions and it is difficult to have any authentic connection with a person in this mode. This mode can actively block therapy because it does not want the person to feel vulnerable at all – because being vulnerable is risky and potentially dangerous. There are other typical protector modes such as the Angry Protector and the Avoidant Protector. A person in angry protector mode is not easy to be with. They typically present as cynical, irritated, annoyed, and with defensive body language (ie, it might look like a wall of anger). The function is again to protect any vulnerability from being exposed or experienced and the angry protector is often very successful at keeping people at a distance. Often a challenge to work with in therapy, this mode often makes the person terminate therapy early – feeling very disillusioned. The therapist (if unaware of the function of the angry protector mode) may actually be relieved when the client does not return. This is very unfortunate, because after all, the angry protector is just a mode and it can be addressed and modified just like any other. Unlike the angry child mode, the function of the angry protector is to keep people away so that the VC cannot be seen. Sadly, the mode is often very successful. An avoidant protector mode attempts to keep the person safe by avoiding situations where painful and vulnerable feelings might be activated. This mode is extremely risk averse and simply avoids to keep the VC safe from activation. When working with your therapist, you might be able to come up with your own names for any protector modes that you have. If another name fit, then use it. Another very common avoidant/detached mode is the ‘detached self-soother’. This mode engages in compulsive or self-stimulating behaviours to soothe and distance the person from painful and tough emotions. We all engage in a little (or a lot) detached self-soothing from time to time, but it becomes a problem when its a repetitive pattern that interfers with our life or relationships, Common examples include excessive use of food, drugs or alcohol to numb or avoid painful feelings; binging or excessive time spent on social media to the exclusion of other important areas of life; compulsive use of gambling, internet porn or gaming; excessive ‘doona therapy’; shopping; ‘adrenaline junkies’ and compulsive sex (sometimes).
Over-Compensating Modes
There are a variety of typical over-compensating modes whose function is to fight against the feeling of certain schemas. Someone in an over-compensating mode may believe and behave as though they are the (dysfunctional) opposite of their inner thoughts and feelings (the opposite of the schema). As a way of coping with the messages from the punitive or demanding parent, these modes function to create an alternate reality by turning things on their heads. A very common over-compensatory mode is the ‘self-aggrandiser’. Here the person flips into a mode that has the external displays of the narcissist. They may act in a way that is superior, self-absorbed and self-important. They may sing their own praises, be demeaning to others and need to be ‘top dog’. The function of this mode is to convince themselves that they are OK and not inferior and to keep the negative punitive messages at bay. Also, if they can see others as inferior, then it is easier to see themselves as superior. If they can be intolerant and critical of others short-comings, then it’s much easier to be oblivious to their own. The self-aggrandiser can reject their own feelings of defectiveness by seeing that defectiveness in other people (or perhaps projecting it onto them). One big down side is this mode is its inability to get core emotional needs met. This mode tends to repel other people (particularly healthy people). Another common type of over-compensating modes is the ‘over-controller’. It might come in a few varieties (such as the perfectionistic or the suspicious type), but this mode is characterised by a need to have your hands on ‘the controls’ at all times. Underneath, the person is often very anxious and/or afraid of losing control and feels that they need to gain control and certainty to feel secure and good about themselves. The underlying fear is often that bad things or harm will happen to them (or others) if they relinquish control. This part of self is preoccupied by detail and is a micro-manager of life. Routine and rigidity is common-place and it’s very hard for this part of self to relax and let go. Highly correlated with dysfunctional perfectionism and negative mood, the ‘over-controller’ is not a pleasant mode to reside in! Another mode which over-compensates is the ‘bully and attack’. This is a threatening mode whereby the person in it believes that they need to ‘attack’ to survive or defend themselves (or a belief about themselves). The person can be intimidating and nasty in this mode and is trying to make themselves believe that they are powerful and get rid of any feelings of shame. In fact, a shame inducing event or a perception of being ‘ridiculed’ can trigger this mode in many people who are prone to it. The function of the mode is usually to let the other person know to “back off and watch out!” and to make them feel small and afraid. Sometimes, it is because the person was the victim of domestic abuse as a child and/or was raised by a cruel and violent parent. In this mode the person may be attempting to prevent being abused or to defend against perceived humiliation. In its extreme form, a person in this mode is sadistic, abusive and dangerous. People who regularly flip into this mode tend to have poorer psychological insight into what is happening and can often blame others for their own actions. There are other less common over-compensating modes which have been identified, more typically within forensic populations