Guided Imagery: Building the Healthy Adult Mode

Image by Sharon McCutcheon

One of the key aims of schema therapy is to build your Healthy Adult part (or ‘mode’ in ST language). This is the part of you that is calm, compassionate, strong, rational and resilient. For most of us, this process is not easy – especially if you have a trauma history and so struggle to feel or access these inner resources. But it is doable, for anyone, if you get the right help and support.

That’s why my latest recording for Insight Timer is a guided imagery that will help you do just that. Just click on the button below to listen to the recording, Imagine a Happier Future – Guided Imagery.

I record these meditations, guided imagery, talks and breathing techniques for my clients and as part of my Heal Your Trauma project. They are free for anyone to listen to – with an optional donation, if you would like to support the project.

I hope you find the imagery helpful – and do feel free to try any of my other recordings on Insight Timer, which I will keep adding to over time.

Warm wishes,

Dan

What is the Self in Internal Family Systems Therapy?

Image by Nikolay Frolochkin

I have been involved with the counselling and psychotherapy world, on and off, for almost 30 years now. In that time, I have both trained in and personally experienced a wide range of therapy models. And one of my favourite models is internal family systems (IFS) therapy, which is currently experiencing an explosion of growth and popularity around the world.

I think this is because people resonate with IFS on a deep, instinctive level. It just feels right. The founder, Dr Richard Schwartz, developed IFS in the 1980s and his warmth, kindness and humility are the foundations of this groundbreaking approach to psychotherapy. With thousands of practitioners now following in his footsteps around the world, IFS offers us a way to work with complex, hard-to treat problems like trauma that is powerful and highly effective but also respectful, non-pathologising and deeply compassionate.

IFS and schema therapy: similar but different

There are many similarities between IFS and schema therapy, but also some key differences. One of these is that, in schema therapy, one of the key aims is building your Healthy Adult mode, which is seen as weak and in need of support and enrichment at the beginning of therapy (like building up an under-used muscle). In IFS, this rich inner resource is called your Self; and it’s seen as something you are born with, so just needs accessing, rather than building.

There are many ways to think about the Self. One is that it’s the seat of your consciousness, or your essential nature as a human being. Another is that this is just a way of describing your deepest, most valuable qualities, such as confidence, compassion and courage. In fact, there are eight ‘C’ qualities attributed to the Self:

• Calm

• Curiosity

• Clarity

• Connectedness

• Compassion

• Courage

• Confidence

• Creativity

Why your self is like the sun

Because the Self is a bit hard to describe in words (and is much better experienced, in an IFS session, meditation or in various other ways), we use various metaphors to try and convey this somewhat hard-to-grasp concept. One metaphor is to think about the Self as being like the sun. So even when the sky is black and stormy, or covered in a thick blanket of cloud, if you were to fly above those clouds in a plane, you quickly see that the sky is always blue up there, with a bright sun shining down.

If you substitute ‘parts’ for ‘clouds’, you can see that even on a day when your parts are very activated (and you are feeling some kind of intense emotion, like being stressed, upset, angry, lonely or hurt) and your Self seems to be lost, it’s always there, waiting, ready to offer you all of those wonderful qualities listed above. I find this a very comforting idea, especially on days when I am feeling triggered and struggling with some of those feelings. I know that, deep down, my Self is calm, loving, kind, compassionate and peaceful, even if that’s hard to see when emotional storms are raging.

How do we access the Self?

Although describing the Self is a bit tricky, the good news is that experiencing it is not. For starters, any time you felt any of those ‘C’ qualities above, you were feeling what’s known as ‘Self-energy’. I would add other qualities to that list, such as kindness, altruism, insight, equanimity, generosity, strength, resilience and, perhaps most important of all, love.

We all feel these things, to a greater or lesser degree. If we have a trauma history – and especially if it’s a bad one – it might be harder to feel some of that stuff, which is totally understandable. Your days might be dominated by all sorts of negative feelings like fear, rage or pain. In IFS language, those feelings come from your Exiles, which are the young, wounded parts of your inner system carrying all the pain caused by whatever happened to you as a child.

‘We all have what IFS refers to as the “Self” – our core, our essence, our internal compass that possesses inherent wisdom and healing capacity’

Frank G Anderson MD

But remember that sun-behind-the-clouds metaphor – just because it’s hard to access your Self doesn’t mean it’s lost, or was never there to begin with. It will just take a bit more time, patience and probably the skilled, loving help of a good trauma-informed therapist to find and access these qualities – letting the sun shine into your life.

Also remember that any time you are, say, practising mindfulness or metta meditation, you are accessing the Self. Whenever you read a book or watch a documentary or listen to a podcast, and feel some kind of peace, or inner warmth, or have a lightbulb moment of insight, that’s your Self. So it’s kind of everywhere, all the time, if you just know how to see and experience it.

Your mind and body are self-healing

And this is all good news if you’re struggling with the legacy of trauma, or any other kind of psychological problem. Because whether you call this aspect of your inner world the Self, Healthy Adult, neural networks in the brain, Buddha Nature (or even soul, if you are a spiritual person), it doesn’t really matter. We know that you, like every other person on this planet, have powerful and innate healing systems in your mind, brain and body.

And so, as I often say in these posts, everything can be healed, however bad your experiences were and whatever wounds they caused in you. I hope that helps, a little, and know that I will be here, writing, teaching and offering all of the wisdom I can, from all of the wonderful teachers I have encountered – and, of course from my own Self – to help you on your healing journey.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Do You Worry That You're Not Good Enough?

Image by Ayo Ogunseinde

How do you feel about yourself, deep down? Do you like yourself? Feel good about your achievements? Think you are doing OK, day to day?

Or, like so many of us, do you feel that you’re not good enough – unworthy, not likeable, not achieving much with your life, or somehow bad or wrong at your core? If you do feel this way, you will probably lack confidence, perhaps struggling with low self-esteem. You might have a tough time with public speaking, or being assertive when you need to set limits or put your foot down.

You may also externalise this inner dislike, by not liking what you see in the mirror – your appearance, body or weight. This is especially common among my female clients, as are the eating disorders that often go with this way of thinking. So it may lead to restricting food, or even being bulimic, as you desperately try to achieve an – often impossibly demanding – ideal weight or body shape.

You are not alone

If you do feel this way, I want to reassure you that you’re definitely not alone. Most of my clients feel this way. In fact, most of the people in my life feel this way! It is so common, even in people who seem on the outside to be super-confident. Trust me, on the inside many of them feel very differently, but have just learned how to act like a confident person.

In schema therapy, we see this not-good-enough feeling stemming from a Defectiveness schema. This is the most common schema I see in my clients – almost all of them struggle with it (as do most of the therapists I know, including this one!). The schema usually forms when we are children, often as the result of trauma, abuse or neglect. It might be one or a series of big things, like being shouted at or spanked on a regular basis (spanking makes kids feel hurt, humiliated and powerless, which can easily lead to a Defectiveness schema).

Or it may be more subtle. Maybe your sister was really smart and high-achieving at school and you just couldn’t keep up, no matter how hard you tried. Or you had highly demanding, pushy parents, who called you names like ‘lazy’ or ‘bone-idle’, because you could never match their unreasonable expectations for you.

Schemas can be healed

Whatever the cause of your schema, it’s important to understand that it can be healed, because all schemas can. A schema is just a neural network in the brain and, because your brain is plastic (which means mouldable, like clay), with new learning and experience, you can weaken those unhelpful connections and build a new network. (If you’re interested in the science behind this, try reading books like The Brain That Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge MD).

This is the basis of schema therapy – and all other forms of counselling and psychotherapy, even if they call the healing process something different. Over time, you can learn to think, feel and behave differently. We can help you with that public speaking problem, or get you to realise that your body is actually perfectly healthy and beautiful, just as it is.

It is never too late to do this, so please don’t think you are too old to change. Reading blogs like this one, or self-help books, having some form of therapy, finding a loving, supportive partner – these are all great ways to start healing those painful schemas. So why not start today?

Warm wishes,

Dan