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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Facebook https://www.facebook.com/The-Red-Flag-Project-103442091937249
Check out what’s new on our LEARNING HUB
Schema Chemistry Recorded Webinar
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
Healing the Vulnerable Child Webinar
Register your interest for our new Know Your Schemas course
Justine tends to overcommit to things. After agreeing to do something, she often regrets it and lands up with a schema hangover because there are big consequences to changing her mind and saying no, and getting out of what she has committed to do can sometimes create a big drama.
Since the last episode, she has been reflecting on how much an unrelenting standards schema contributes to people’s stress and sense of being rushed. She was wondering if unrelenting standards might be playing a role in her recent feelings of stress and sense of being rushed because it’s a sneaky schema that could pop up anywhere.
In this episode, Gemma and Justine dive into what it takes to change or modify an unrelenting standards schema. They discuss various criteria that might indicate that your schema is playing out and offer advice on what you can do to overcome perfectionism, retrain your brain, and start doing things differently. Stay tuned for more!
Show highlights:
- Justine gives an example of where she tends to overcommit to things and explains why she thinks it was unrelenting standards and not her self-sacrifice schema playing out.
- Changing a schema requires constant observation, reflection, and problem-solving.
- Gemma recaps what goes on and how it feels when you have an unrelenting standards schema.
- Some criteria for where to start with consciously changing or modifying a schema.
- Procrastination could indicate that your schema is playing out.
- How avoidance ties into concerns about not being good enough.
- You need to know what triggers your schema.
- It is best to focus on one thing at a time to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
- You can use the shame, anxiety, or embarrassment you feel in certain situations to your advantage to overcome your schema.
- How to retrain your brain and coach yourself through changing the way you do things.
- You can train your mind to overcome perfectionism.
What to expect from the new Know Your Schemas course that will come out soon.
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
Schema Chemistry Recorded Webinar
Ask us a question or suggest a topic by emailing: justineandgemma@goodmood.com.au
Healing the Vulnerable Child Webinar
Register your interest for our new Know Your Schemas course
We are talking about the unrelenting standards schema today.
The unrelenting standards schema is closely related to perfectionism. People with an unrelenting standards schema tend to have very high expectations of themselves that do not change, regardless of the situation they are in. They are constantly striving for standards, and when they don’t meet them, it can be very distressing. Some people become so good at meeting high standards that their lives become extremely stressful.
Recovery from most schemas can be an ongoing process because the brain will always respond when triggered and return to a place it has been many times before. With therapy or coaching, the strength of the signal will weaken, the pain of your experience will lessen, and you will be quick to observe your schema and deal with it.
In this episode, Gemma and Justine explain what an unrelenting standards schema is, what lies underneath it, and where it originates. They also get into how it feels, how different people cope with it, and ways to normalize it. Stay tuned for more!
Show highlights:
- What does it feel like to have an unrelenting standards schema?
- There is sometimes a secondary schema lurking beneath an unrelenting standards schema.
- When you have an unrelenting standards schema, you could feel a lot of internal pressure and become anxious. It could also impact you physiologically.
- Many people misconstrue what perfectionism is.
- How do people with an unrelenting standards schema feel about failing?
- The schema can manifest in different ways. Gemma and Justine give some examples of how it might show up.
- An unrelenting standards schema is often an attempt to prove oneself and can be accompanied by deep, uncomfortable feelings.
- How do people with an unrelenting standards schema cope?
- People with an unrelenting standards schema often feel defective or flawed and tend to lack self-compassion.
- What does it mean to surrender to a schema?
- How does an unrelenting standards schema originate?
- Justine and Gemma discuss the messages they received about themselves while growing up and explore the origins of their schemas.
- Perfectionism can have positive effects on some people and affect others negatively.
- Never compare yourself to others, and be prepared to take risks.
What to expect from the new Know Your Schemas course that will come out soon.
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
Schema Chemistry Recorded Webinar
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
Healing the Vulnerable Child Webinar
Register your interest for our new Know Your Schemas course
Books mentioned in the podcast: Books by John Bradshaw
We are doing a mailbox episode today!
Someone we will call Sam sent in a thoughtful and vulnerable email after listening to and resonating with something we mentioned in our episode on narcissistic mothers.
Sam is an overseas listener who grew up with two narcissistic parents. He has a brother and a younger sister who he describes as his mother’s narcissistic “mini-me”.
In the podcast, we mentioned that being parented by a narcissist could squash your natural light, and someone with that psychological history might not even know who they truly are. Sam resonated with something similar when he first learned about the inner child and heard of the chronic emptiness felt by those who have had to assume inauthentic selves in early childhood as a result of conditional love. He has been living with a similar ache which is sometimes debilitating- even with medication and a healthy lifestyle. So he asked if we could do an episode on recovering that squashed light and share some advice on how people with chronic depression can regain their vitality.
Stay tuned for more.
Show highlights:
- People raised by two narcissistic parents develop other modes of coping, which could mean creating a false self.
- Gemma and Justine discuss why Sam feels so empty.
- How do people develop an inauthentic self?
- Justine and Gemma dive into the schemas that might be within the darkness Sam feels.
- Children suppress themselves to adapt to whatever situation they are in and survive. That usually produces secondary schemas.
- What is the inner light Sam refers to, and what happens to children when that inner light gets squashed?
- Justine shares examples of the things she is careful not to do because they might inhibit her children’s freedom, authenticity, and lack of self-consciousness.
- People raised by narcissists tend to develop a sense of under-entitlement.
- Where should you start with trying to figure out who you are?
- It is crucial to create connections with other people.
- Schema therapy can help you heal and reconnect with your authentic self.
- Justine and Gemma discuss the course they are currently working on, called Know Your Schemas. Register your interest at https://goodmoodclinic.com.au/kys and buy the course at a discounted rate.
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
Schema Chemistry Recorded Webinar
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
Healing the Vulnerable Child Webinar
Register your interest for our new Know Your Schemas course
Recommended book: Reinventing Your Life by Janet S. Klosko and Jeffrey Young
Today, Gemma does a solo episode on what you need to know if you have an abandonment schema and find yourself getting triggered in a relationship.
We, as humans, are wired to be cared for by others and form strong physical and emotional attachments. We depend on our early attachments, so if those attachment needs are unfulfilled, interrupted, or severed, we could develop an abandonment schema.
An abandonment schema can wreak havoc in our relationships, especially romantic ones. It can get in the way of thinking clearly and making healthy decisions when we start a new relationship. It can even capture our emotions entirely and send us down all kinds of rabbit holes.
In this episode, Gemma dives into three different categories people fall into when they have an abandonment schema and get triggered in a relationship. Stay tuned to find out how to work out what is going on with you if you have an abandonment schema and feel anxious about a new relationship.
Show highlights:
- People in the first category get triggered because their partner’s behavior is observably problematic, and they are reacting to something real.
- Gemma gives examples of problematic behavior in a partner that could trigger someone with an abandonment schema.
- If you have an abandonment schema, you have to be able to analyze what is going on in the early stages of a new relationship.
- Gemma explains why people tend to sabotage a relationship when their partner is predominantly reliable and the relationship is generally good.
- Some examples of situations in which your reactions could create secondary problems.
- Gemma discusses the various modes of operating people in the second category use to cope with their abandonment schema in a new relationship.
- Doing active healing work around an abandonment schema can be helpful. Gemma explains what that means.
- With the third category, it can be helpful to have the input of a third party to figure out what is going on.
- Gemma summarizes the three different categories.
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
Schema Chemistry Recorded Webinar
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
Healing the Vulnerable Child Webinar
Register your interest for our new Know Your Schemas course
Gemma and Justine both have a history of working in mental health settings in psychiatric research. A while back, someone referred to Gemma by a psychiatrist arrived with a diagnosis of treatment-resistant depression and all query bipolar disorder. Working with Gemma over time, he understood what was driving his mood and chronicity from a schema perspective. He also realized how his history of complex trauma impacted how he generally felt in life. None of that had been considered in his previous treatment plan. Instead, there was a focus on labels and diagnoses.
In a recent conversation with Gemma, he reflected on how unhelpful that diagnostic labeling had been for him. He is not depressed currently and has never had bipolar, even though he had been diagnosed with it.
In this episode, Justine and Gemma explain why you are not your diagnosis. They dive into the pros and cons of diagnoses and talk about how schema therapy can help people gain a deep, nuanced, and accurate understanding of why they feel the way they do. Stay tuned for more!
Show highlights:
- Gemma explains how schema therapy helped her client develop self-compassion, distance himself from his inner critic, and tap into his emotions.
- In episode 26, Gemma talks about chronic depression and how the label of treatment-resistant depression is unhelpful and feeds into our sense of defectiveness.
- Justine explains her approach, what she does, and what she notices about her clients when they go to her for therapy.
- What is important to Gemma and Justine, and what are they interested in when helping their clients?
- Why can a diagnosis sometimes be harmful?
- Why do many early wounds and overt traumas tend to be mentioned but left untouched in mental health settings?
- Justine explains why she and Gemma suggest that people simultaneously hold in mind two different ways of understanding what is going on with them.
- Gemma and Justine discuss the pros and cons of diagnoses.
- Having a diagnosis does not necessarily mean you have a protracted and unrelenting difficulty.
- Some questions you need to ask regarding self-development aimed at reducing your symptoms.
- Sometimes, depressive symptoms can get triggered by a subjugating or undermining relationship dynamic. (That mostly applies to women.)
- Schema therapy is transdiagnostic, so it can help people with limiting diagnoses like depression and bipolar disorder.
- Gemma and Justine discuss bipolar 2 disorder and the current epidemic of bipolar 2 diagnoses.
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
Schema Chemistry Recorded Webinar
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
Healing the Vulnerable Child Webinar
Today’s episode is an encore replay of Episode 20, which was a popular episode for our listeners.
We have another podcast in our series on narcissism for you. For today, we will stay with the topic of the narcissistic parent and discuss the types of relationships you might be having with your narcissistic parent and the kind of dynamics you might find within that relationship. Clinically, we tend to see four categories of those kinds of relationship dynamics. In this episode, we will go into some detail about each of those categories. Stay tuned for more.
The first dynamic that we see quite often is where you get stuck in constantly clashing with your parent. In the second category, you don’t fight very much with your parent, you tend to accept things as they are, and you do a lot of internalizing. The third category is the estrangement category, where we see those who have deliberately chosen to cut themselves off from their narcissistic parent. And the fourth category is where you attempt to manage your narcissistic parent. Sometimes, some of those categories tend to overlap. Be sure to listen in today to find out more detail about each of the four different categories of relationship dynamics that you might find yourself in with your narcissistic parent.
Show highlights:
- Gemma summarizes the four categories of relationship dynamics.
- Sometimes, you might flip between the different categories from moment to moment and from interaction to interaction.
- Gemma and Justine discuss the first category of constantly clashing with the narcissistic parent in more detail. They also share some examples of how that dynamic could play out within families.
- What triangulation is, and how it could occur in families where there is a narcissistic parent.
- The children are not always treated in the same way by the narcissistic parent.
- Gemma and Justine discuss the second category, where the child internalizes, believes, and surrenders to the messages they get from the narcissistic parent, in more detail.
- Realizing that you have a narcissistic parent can lead you to have feelings of anger or even denial.
- How to deal with your anger after you come to realize that you have a narcissistic parent.
- Gemma and Justine discuss the third category, where they see people who have decided to cut themselves off from their narcissistic parent.
- Even those who have cut themselves off entirely from their narcissistic parent still need to work on the relationship because they have unfinished business with that person.
- Looking at the last relationship dynamic, which Gemma and Justine call the management mode.
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
Schema Chemistry Recorded Webinar
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
Healing the Vulnerable Child Webinar
Recommended reading:
Reinventing Your Life by Jeffrey Young
The Abandonment Recovery Workbook by Susan Anderson
Today, we are talking about passive aggression.
Passive aggression is covert aggression. It is a form of hostility people carry inside themselves that they express indirectly to make a point. We tend to use it when we are not being honest and authentic to express our anger, frustration, or resentment in a roundabout way.
When someone uses passive aggression, they are not expressing what they truly feel. It can be toxic if they use it as their main relational style. That may be hard and sometimes confusing for the person on the receiving end.
Passive aggression is a dysfunctional way of dealing with anger. In this episode, Gemma and Justine unpack the details of passive-aggressive behavior and examine it from a schema perspective. Stay tuned to learn all you need to know about passive aggression and find out what to do if you struggle with it in your relationships.
Show highlights:
- Gemma and Justine explain what passive aggression is.
- Why do people behave passive-aggressively?
- A lot of avoidance is tied to passive aggression. Gemma explains how that differs from other forms of avoidance.
- Passive aggression is a dysfunctional way of communicating anger. Justine and Gemma share some examples of what that might look like.
- Passive aggression can sometimes be a covert bid for power or an attempt to get back at someone.
- An example of how passive aggression could get used as a toxic expression of disapproval.
- How can backhanded compliments, sarcasm, or gossiping be used passive-aggressively?
- Chronic patterns of passive aggression can be hard to deal with in romantic relationships.
- How does a passive-aggressive person typically behave?
- What kind of schemas could someone with a lot of passive aggression have?
- Justine and Gemma discuss various entry points to treating schemas and share tips for overcoming passive-aggressive behavior.
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
Schema Chemistry Recorded Webinar
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
Healing the Vulnerable Child Webinar
Recommended reading:
Reinventing Your Life by Jeffrey Young
The Abandonment Recovery Workbook by Susan Anderson
We are revisiting the abandonment schema today.
Some of Gemma’s clients are considering returning to the dating world again, so they asked her to talk some more about the abandonment schema and how it relates to dating.
Abandonment is a huge topic! In schema therapy, the abandonment schema is one of the core schemas. It is a very primitive and primal schema. It is possibly the most central schema for all mammals, so it is common.
Schemas are abiding and deeply-entrenched core beliefs that direct our lives. They become the lens through which we see our lives and influence our decision-making and what we focus our attention on. Schemas can give us a framework for understanding ourselves and others and interpreting what is happening in the world.
In this episode, Gemma dives into the abandonment schema and explains what you need to look out for in your relationships, especially romantic relationships.
You will find this episode helpful if you are in the dating world and looking to find a new partner. Stay tuned for more!
Show highlights:
- Schemas are emotionally-laden constructs, so when they are triggered you feel it in your body.
- The abandonment schema can originate very early in life.
- Our genetics influence our temperament and how we deal with abandonment and separation.
- How does abandonment develop in childhood?
- Having an abandonment schema means fundamental insecurity in your attachment system.
- An abandonment schema can sometimes overlap with other schemas or give rise to secondary schemas.
- If you have a profound and flooring reaction to a trigger, it could be a schema.
- How does abandonment affect our love template and adult life when seeking a romantic partner?
- We get drawn to what is familiar, so when left to our own devices, we tend to radiate to what we know.
- Why do people with abandonment schemas get stuck in relationships with unavailable partners?
- Gemma explains what unavailability might look like in a partner.
- You cannot do the healing for someone else- especially when you have to heal yourself.
- Gemma does a recap on the coping styles people use to cope with their abandonment schema.
- When we surrender to our schema, we tend to become blind to the red flags.
- What can you do to cope with or change an abandonment schema?