How to Transform Your Life-Limiting Schemas

Image by Darius Bashar

What is a schema? This is a question I have been asked many times in the five years that I have been working as a schema therapist. And my answer usually starts like this… A schema is like a blueprint in your mind, to help you do things quickly and easily that you do a lot. So you probably have schemas for making tea, tying your shoelaces, riding a bike, driving a car, reading a book, and so on.

Think about it like this – if you go to make a cup of tea, you don’t have to thumb through your tea-making handbook every time. You just think, ‘Make tea,’ and you do. That’s how schemas work. And your brain forms many (probably thousands) of these schemas, because it’s always trying to save energy. Your brain uses a great deal of energy as it’s working hard to run your body/life all day – research shows that although it represents just 2% of your body weight, it accounts for 20% of your body’s energy use..

Each schema saves a little bit of energy, so all of these tea-making, shoelace-tying, bike-riding, car-driving, book-reading schemas are very helpful indeed.

Not all schemas are helpful

In the 1990s, Dr Jeffrey Young developed schema therapy – one of a number of new, ‘third wave’ cognitive therapies springing up around the world. Central to his model was the discovery that there are 18 schemas, which are not very helpful. In fact, these schemas can be really painful for us, causing a great deal of problems in our day-to-day lives.

Let’s illustrate this with the most common schema, which is the ‘core schema’ for virtually all of my clients (and the person writing this), Defectiveness. I always tell people that this is the ‘not good enough’ schema, because it’s the one that gets triggered when you have low self-esteem, lose confidence, think we are boring, stupid, weak, rubbish or any other harshly self-critical way of perceiving yourself.

This speaks to key concept number one: that once you have a schema, you will always have it (unless it’s healed), but it won’t always be active. Sometimes your schemas go dormant, which is like them going to sleep. Then something stressful or threatening happens and the schema gets triggered and wakes up. As schemas comprise cognitive, emotional and physiological elements, this means that your thinking can become distorted or otherwise unhelpful, you feel intense feelings like anger, anxiety or hurt, which show up in your body as a burning in your chest, knot in your stomach or a sinking, heavy feeling all over.

How schemas form

So how do these painful schemas develop? Take that Defectiveness schema – if this is one of yours, it probably developed when you were a child, often between the ages of four and six, which is when we start to get ‘cognitive’ as children. Maybe your older brother was way better at everything than you, so you started to think , ‘I’m rubbish at everything - what’s wrong with me?’ Or you had a harsh, critical parent who always told you that you were lazy, or stupid, or a waste of space.

Both through your thoughts about yourself and negative messages received from people around you, the schema started to form in your brain. And neuroscientists teach us that, ‘neurons that fire together, wire together,’ meaning if you think a certain thought 10,000 times, you develop a powerful neural network in your brain, to make thinking that thought easier/energy-saving. And then, 30 years later, you don’t even know it’s a thought, this is just a fundamental truth for you – that you’re lazy or stupid, or some other bad thing.

How schemas heal

I know, this can all seem a bit depressing. But the good news is that schemas can be healed. In fact, there is a whole model of psychotherapy – schema therapy – devoted to exactly that outcome! In my therapy practice, we heal people’s schemas in many ways – through our warm, safe, compassionate relationship; by rewriting a negative, self-critical life story to make it a much kinder, more compassionate (and truthful) story; using techniques like ‘imagery rescripting’ to process painful memories and so gradually weaken the schemas they would otherwise feed on a daily basis.

Helping people with their painful, life-limiting schemas is also one reason I founded Heal Your Trauma. And is one reason I am writing this post – because knowledge is power, so reading blogs like this, attending my webinars, or of course any other helpful/healing resources you come across will all contribute to healing your schemas, rewiring your brain, healing childhood trauma, or whatever words we use to describe it.

I hope that helps – and do watch this space for future posts on this topic.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why You Keep Falling in the Same Hole – and How to Stop

Image by Ian Taylor

My first counselling training began almost 30 years ago – way back in 1994. Although I was very young (probably a bit too young, in hindsight), I absolutely loved it. The three-year training, in Psychosynthesis – a humanistic/transpersonal model – was so stimulating and exciting. I had never experienced anything like it.

And I remember one of the trainers reading a poem to us and then using it as a metaphor for therapy, which has stuck with me ever since – I recently tracked it down and learned that it was Portia Nelson’s There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery. I have used this poem/metaphor with hundreds of my clients, so think you will find it helpful. Here’s how it goes.

Part 1: Falling in the hole

Imagine that you’re walking down a road on a lovely sunny day. You feel fine and are enjoying your walk, not heading anywhere special, just ambling down the road. Then, bang. Without warning, you fall into a huge hole in the road.

You lie there, bruised and winded at the bottom of the hole, thinking to yourself, ‘What the hell was that? Where did that stupid hole come from?’

Eventually you manage to climb out of the hole and go on your way, shaken, sore and confused.

Part 2: Falling in the same hole

Months go by. You walk down the same road every day. And every single day you fall into the same damn hole. It’s like Groundhog Day – you never see it coming and it always takes you by complete surprise. You start really hating that hole…

Part 3: seeing the hole but still falling in

Eventually, something changes. Now when you walk down that road, you realise that the hole is there. You even see it as you walk towards it, but – and this is the most maddening bit – you still fall in! And when you find yourself, battered and bruised at the bottom of the hole, you think to yourself, ‘This is making me crazy now! How can I see the stupid hole but still fall in every time? Argh! So annoying!’

Part 4: Hole-enlightenment day

This goes on for way too long. You now hate the hole with a deep and abiding passion. Until, one day, something miraculous happens. On this special day, you walk down the usual road. You see the hole coming. You walk closer. And closer. And closer. Until, just as you’re about to fall in again, you think to yourself. ‘Wait a damn minute. I know you, hole! And do you know what? I have had enough of the falling. And the bruising. And the being shaken.’

So you do something quietly wonderful. You see the hole, decide to walk around it, then do just that. On you go with your journey, feeling deep-down-in-your-bones happy and proud of yourself.

So what does all that mean?

Here’s why I have told that story hundreds of times over the years. It’s because this is how the therapy process – and any kind of personal growth – works. At first, you get triggered by things you don’t even know are there, or are triggers, or even what a trigger is! So of course you keep falling in the same wretched holes, because you don’t know they exist.

Your holes might be the same as mine, or they might be different. So one of my holes/triggers is narcissistic people, especially men. People with this kind of personality can often be harshly critical, or demeaning, or shut you down rudely and insensitively. And one of my family members did that to me a lot as a child. So just being around a person like this is triggering for my young, hurt parts – because they expect to be hurt again.

It took me a long time (and a lot of therapy) to learn this, but now I know that this is one of my holes so I – mostly – manage not to fall in.

Achieving hole-enlightenment

Of course, the oh-so-glorious day is the one where you see the hole but manage not to fall in this time, instead walking around it and carrying on, with a huge smile on your face. But that takes time. It takes a lot of learning. A great deal of compassionate support. And all of this is especially true if you have a trauma history because, sadly, you will have more holes than most people, they will be bigger and deeper, and it will be even harder to learn not to fall in.

But, as I am always explaining in these posts, just because it’s harder for you doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I passionately believe that everyone can heal, including you. That’s because we have a range of life-changing, trauma-informed therapies at our disposal now, as well as a wealth of knowledge about the mind, brain, body and nervous system, what happens to them during trauma – and, crucially, how to heal those wounds.

If you would like to know more about all of this, start by reading my website and Heal Your Trauma Blog, which contains a huge amount of information about trauma and mental health in general. You could also come along to my first Heal Your Trauma webinar, What is Trauma and Can it Be Healed?, on Saturday 26th February, 2022. You can book your place, for just £49, using the button below.

I hope to see you there – and good luck with those holes!

Warm wishes,

Dan

What is Internal Family Systems Therapy?

Image by Thomas Koukas

If you have a trauma history and are looking for a therapist to help, it can be bewildering. There are so many counsellors and therapists out there, offering a smorgasbord of therapy models, each claiming to be the best. As a specialist in treating complex trauma, I would advise you to find someone who knows what they’re talking about – ask them whether they have trained in trauma therapy and exactly how they would help you with your trauma history. If they don’t have a convincing answer, please find someone else.

I would also recommend finding a trauma-informed therapy, such as EMDR, trauma-focused CBT, compassion-focused therapy, sensorimotor psychotherapy, somatic experiencing therapy, schema therapy or internal family systems (IFS) therapy. As an Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor and Internal Family Systems-Trained Therapist, I specialise in these two approaches, which are both excellent, trauma-informed therapy models.

In this post I would like to focus on the last one, IFS, because it offers a wonderful way to heal your trauma, whatever you might have been through and however bad your symptoms are today. IFS was developed by Dr Richard Schwartz in the 1980s and, unlike most therapy models, emerged from the things his clients were telling him. Dick (as he likes to be called) Schwartz tells the story of his clients saying, over and over, ‘A part of me wants to date this guy but another part really doesn’t like him,’ or, ’Part of me wants to binge-eat cake, but a big part of me knows that’s not a good idea.’

We all have parts

Dick came to realise that his clients were giving him a glimpse into their internal world – and the many different parts of them who lived there. This idea, ‘multiplicity of self’, is at the heart of IFS. Because even though we feel like we’re just us – I am Dan, or you are Carol – that’s not how the brain constructs our personality. Instead, we all have different parts, who think differently, want different things and often have conflicting impulses. (Date the guy/don’t date the guy; binge/don’t binge).

This isn’t weird, or the sign of deep psychological issues, it’s just how we all are. And in the IFS model, we have two different kinds of parts: exiles and protectors. Exiles are the (usually) young, wounded parts of us, who carry all the painful thoughts, memories, feelings and experiences from key times in our life. They are called exiles because they are often exiled in your internal system – meaning shut away, because their feelings are deemed too powerful and overwhelming for us.

Managers and firefighters

And the parts that shut them away are called protectors – they help protect those young parts from being hurt, but also keep them shut away so they don’t overwhelm you. And there are two types of protector: managers and firefighters. Managers do a job, like be perfectionistic, worry obsessively or people-please. Their job is to be proactive – anticipating threats or painful triggers to help you avoid them.

Firefighters are reactive. So the part that drinks, or binge-eats, or cuts, or smokes weed, or gambles is a firefighter. They use any tactic available to quickly extinguish the pain felt by young, wounded parts.

Who you are, deep down

Finally, we all have a Self. This is not a part, but you, deep down – a good metaphor is the sun (Self) behind the clouds (parts). Always there, but sometimes obscured by activated parts, thinking, feeling and doing stuff frantically all the time.

So the goal of IFS therapy is to find and heal the exiles; free the protectors from their tiring, stressful jobs; and help you access ‘Self-energy’ so you can feel calmer, stronger, happier and more at peace.

I use IFS with all my clients and they love it. There is something about the model and this way of working that just resonates with people on a deep level. And it works! Even with the most stubborn, hard-to-treat problems like complex trauma.

I will be writing more about this and other models in this Heal Your Trauma Blog – and you can sign up for the HYT newsletter below, to make sure you never miss a post or one of our events.

I really hope that helps – and wishing you strength, courage and perseverance on your healing journey.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Watch My New Heal Your Trauma Video: What is Trauma?

We hear the word ‘trauma’ used often these days – in the mainstream media and on social media, by experts, celebrities and normal, everyday people who have gone through traumatic events. But what do we mean by psychological trauma? Which kinds of experiences can be traumatic for us? What are the short- and long-term effects of those experiences? And, crucially, can traumatic wounds ever be healed?

In the first of a series of short webinars I will be recording for my YouTube channel, I attempt to answer the above questions. In this 20-minute webinar I explain:

• Why I think that the standard clinical definitions of trauma are too narrow

• Why traumatic events don’t necessarily cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD)

• How trauma affects every level of your mind-body system

• And, most importantly, why it is never too much and never too late to heal, whatever you might have gone through and however wounded you may be as a result

I am currently working on a series of full-length webinars for my Heal Your Trauma project, which you will be able to watch either live, or access the recording to watch at a later date. In the meantime, do check out my YouTube channel, listen to my guided meditations on Insight Timer, and you can sign up for my newsletter, using the form below, so you can be the first to hear about these resources as I make them available.

I very much hope you enjoy the webinar and find it helpful.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why Every Part of You Deserves Love and Compassion

Image by Jude Beck

One of the key discoveries in neuroscience over the past 20 years has been that we are not one, homogenous self – we are not just ‘Sally’ or ‘Jim’, even though it very much feels that way. Instead, this new theory argues for a ‘multiplicity of self’, which basically means we have lots of different parts of our personality. And in some ways, this is just common sense.

You might have a part that wants to diet and lose weight, but another part that really wants that extra bowl of ice cream, or slice of cake. You may have a part that hates all the boring, humdrum stuff of daily life (vacuuming, washing up, doing your tax return) but another part that helps you get all that stuff done, however much you don’t want to.

Disliking parts of yourself

In schema therapy, we call these different parts ‘modes’. In other models of therapy, they are called parts, sub-personalities or self-states, but it’s essentially the same thing. And something I often see in my therapy practice is that people might dislike or even hate some of their modes, while liking others. For example, we might get really frustrated with the mode that has us reaching for the ice cream, even though we’re desperate to lose weight and know we will feel guilty and ashamed after wolfing another bowl.

We may also hate the part of us that makes us feel vulnerable, or overwhelmed with emotions when we’re at work and want to appear cool, calm and professional. In schema therapy, we call this mode the Vulnerable Child; and we then name it ‘Little Sally’ or ‘Little Jim’. We all have this part – I have a Little Dan inside me – and it is the emotional, vulnerable part of us, that gets triggered by stressful or threatening people or events.

This part of you also holds a lot of upsetting memories from your childhood, as well as images, body sensations, emotions and beliefs. For example, your little self might believe ‘I am worthless’ or ‘I am unlovable’, because that’s how you felt as a child. Nobody wants to think that way, or feel painful emotions like sadness, anxiety or shame that these beliefs might trigger in you. So you may try to ignore this part, or detach from it and all those upsetting feelings, shutting it away in a part of your brain you try hard to avoid.

Self-compassion is a superpower

But here’s the thing – whether you love, hate or ignore this part of you, it’s always there. As I often tell my clients, it’s like disliking your left hand. How ever much you might hate it, find it annoying, want to get rid of it, your hand is still there! So it’s much better to develop compassion for this part (and all other parts) of you. There is a huge amount of research now showing that self-compassion is a superpower when it comes to healing past hurts (if you’re interested in that, check out Kristin Neff’s work at self-compassion.org – she is the world’s leading researcher/expert on self-compassion).

Sadly though, it’s not easy to be compassionate to yourself. You may have been taught as a child that this was weak or self-indulgent. If you experienced trauma when you were young, this may be especially hard, as you learned to cope by shutting that little part of you away in a room somewhere, so the last thing you want is to think about him or her, let alone be kind to that part of you.

But here’s a technique to help you along the path to greater self-compassion. As ever with techniques I will teach you, there is no right or wrong, no doing it well or badly – just have a go and see what happens.

1. Change posture. Let your shoulders roll back so your chest is open. Then lengthen your spine – sit upright but relaxed, with your head, neck and spine in alignment.

2. Breathe. Take deep, slow breaths in and out — roughly four seconds in, four seconds out, but find a number that works for you (two in, two out; three in, three out…). We want nice diaphragmatic breathing, so let your stomach rise and fall with each breath. This activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which in turn activates the ‘rest-and-digest’ response, the opposite to fight-flight-freeze.

3. Use supportive touch. Gently place a hand over your heart, touching yourself the way you would a friend who was upset — in a friendly, supportive manner. Feel the warmth under your hand and imagine it trickling down until it reaches your little self inside. Imagine that’s a warm, kind, healing energy that soothes this frightened or upset part of you.

4. Add compassionate self-talk. Now talk to your little self the way you would to that troubled friend. Try to use a voice tone that’s warm, slow and reassuring. Say things like ‘Oh, Little Sally/Jim, I know you’re struggling right now – I really see how scared/upset/angry you are. But I want you to know that you’re not alone. I’m here with you. I care about you. I’ve got you. And we will get through this together...’

Try using this technique every time you feel hurt, sad, upset, anxious or otherwise ‘triggered’ by life events. As with any technique, remember that it may take time to be helpful. It’s like yoga or meditation – there’s a reason they call those having a ‘practice’. So practice every day until it starts to help you feel kinder to and more accepting of yourself.

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

5 Myths About Mindfulness Meditation

Image by Katerina Jerabkova

It's wonderful that mindfulness has gained so much popularity in recent years – it's hard to read a newspaper or Sunday supplement without finding a story extolling the benefits of meditation. Unfortunately some of these stories are not entirely accurate, and many people have misconceptions about what meditation is and how it can help.

Here are five of the most common myths and misunderstandings I hear about meditation, to help you gain a clearer insight into this potentially life-changing technique:

1. Meditation is just for Buddhists

Not so. Although mindfulness meditation is a 2,500-year-old Buddhist technique, it is increasingly used in Western psychological, medical, educational and business settings. If you learn meditation from me, or another therapist, you are essentially learning a technique, like using thought records to challenge unhelpful thinking.

Although I do have a strong interest in Buddhist psychology and philosophy, I only talk about that to my clients as far as they are interested in it. So you don't have to believe in any form of religion to benefit from mindfulness, all you have to do is sit quietly for a short period every day and watch your breath. That alone is proven to have a raft of benefits, from reducing stress and anxiety to lowering blood pressure. Simple.

2. You have to clear your mind of all thoughts

Again, no. If your mind is empty of all thoughts, you have a very unusual mind indeed. We are always thinking – even when we sleep – so the idea that we should somehow magically stop thinking when we meditate is neither helpful nor realistic. Instead, if we are trying to focus on our breath, say, when we find our mind carrying us off into thinking about lunch, we notice that and gently bring our attention back to the breath.

Again, again, again – it might happen 100 times during a 20-minute meditation, but that's not a problem at all. In fact, this is the practice, because each time you notice and bring your attention back, you are strengthening your ability to focus, which is the whole point of meditation.

3. You have to meditate somewhere quiet

In some ways, this is true – it's helpful to meditate in quiet places, for example at home in the early morning. But mindfulness is a skill we are trying to cultivate for when we need it – on the Tube, in a meeting, in a shopping centre. So the more you practice in everyday situations, the more that skill is available to you when you most need it – like your toddler having a meltdown in the supermarket.

I often meditate on the Tube, because it can be an unpleasant place – noisy, packed with people, hot, glaring lights... Far better to close your eyes and focus on sounds, say, than ride along grimly trying to ignore it all.

4. Meditation should always make you feel relaxed

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There's a saying in Zen meditation: 'Just sit'. This means just meditate, every day: hard/easy, enjoyable/frustrating, relaxing/no change. It doesn't matter, because we meditate for the long-term benefits of daily practice.

If you do it most days for a period of time, you will probably feel calmer, more grounded, less stressed, happier, more able to deal with stressors without reacting impulsively or unhelpfully. That's why we do it (and why I have, most days, for six years now – and will for the rest of my life).

5. Meditation is New Age hocus-pocus

It's true that meditation conjures up images of bearded, be-sandalled folk, incense and crystals. But mindfulness meditation, as well as having that 2,500-year history behind it, has been rigorously studied and researched in prestigious medical establishments since the 1970s.

There is a huge body of research proving its effectiveness for a wide range of psychological problems, such as stress, anxiety and depression; and for medical problems like chronic pain and high blood pressure.

Warm wishes,

Dan

What is Cognitive Therapy?

Image by Toa Heftiba

I offer cognitive and schema therapy at my private practice in East Finchley, North London and via Zoom – but what exactly is cognitive therapy and how does it differ from other approaches? Having trained in different schools of counselling and psychotherapy (including humanistic, integrative and cognitive therapies), in my work with clients I draw from the best of each.

All the major schools of thought are full of wisdom and have a great deal to offer but – for the vast majority of psychological problems, including stress, anxiety, depression, problems with anger, assertiveness and low self-esteem – it seems clear from all the evidence that cognitive therapy is the most effective approach.

Having helped many people with their problems, I also know from personal experience that cognitive therapy is an excellent way to help people feel better as quickly as possible. And when you're unhappy or unwell, that's clearly very important. Cognitive therapy works well as a short-term approach – typically 10 to 20 sessions – and schema therapy is extremely effective longer-term work, from 25 sessions to a year or more.

Schema therapy is designed to help people with longstanding or hard-to-treat problems. It will be helpful if you have tried other approaches but nothing has worked; or your problems are very wide-ranging, affecting your work, relationships or family life.

How cognitive therapy works

The central idea in cognitive therapy is that our unhelpful thoughts and beliefs strongly influence the way we feel and behave. For example, when you are depressed you may think very negatively about yourself and your life. You may also feel guilty or hopeless, and be consumed with regrets as you look back at what hasn't worked in your life.

This type of thinking, which is called 'rumination', is not helpful because it brings your mood down and rarely leads to effective solutions. So one of the first tasks in cognitive therapy for depression (or any other problem) is to identify these 'negative automatic thoughts' so you can begin to seek more constructive and realistic ways of thinking.

The great thing about cognitive therapy is that it's based on common-sense ideas and is designed to be a 'DIY therapy'. So I will teach you how to use these techniques yourself, between sessions and whenever you feel stressed, anxious, down or otherwise unhappy. You can then become your own cognitive therapist, able to withstand the stressful or challenging periods we all must face throughout life.   

So is cognitive therapy purely a short-term approach?

No, this is a common misconception. Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is a highly effective short-term approach – many problems can be significantly improved with a course of therapy lasting between 10 and 20 sessions. But it's worth noting that cognitive therapy was originally designed by Aaron Beck as a 20-session treatment for depression; and for more long-lasting issues a longer-term approach is necessary, which will take as long as you need.

For example, if you have low self-esteem, you may well have struggled with deep feelings of insecurity or a lack of confidence for decades. So it's very difficult to change the way you feel about yourself in a few weeks or even months. It's better to be patient, helping you feel better in the short term before tackling the deeper-level beliefs that fuel low self-esteem.

This means looking at the deeper issues that led you to become unhappy, which almost always points to difficult experiences in childhood or adolescence. I will then help you understand why these early difficulties still cause problems in your work, family and romantic relationships. This will help you heal childhood wounds and become happier, stronger and better able to enjoy those relationships and your day-to-day life.

Isn't CBT just about filling in lots of forms?

Another common misunderstanding. Although it is very useful to record your feelings, thoughts and behaviour so you can begin to spot patterns and make some changes, cognitive therapists value warmth, authenticity and a strong therapeutic relationship as much as other practitioners.

In fact, in my opinion, the relationship between therapist and client is always the most important ingredient of any successful therapy. Making you feel safe, respected and valued is of great importance to me – any techniques must always come second to that.

Some people find it very helpful to write down their thoughts; others less so. So any good cognitive therapist will be flexible and find the approach that best suits the person in front of them. It's also important to remember that cognitive therapy is a collaborative approach.

This means that we will work as a team, first figuring out what caused your problems in the first place and then which factors might be maintaining it. We will then agree on the best ways to solve those problems in each session and over the course of your therapy.

Of course, I am happy to explain more about how CBT works when we meet. You might also want to read up on CBT – if so, I recommend the Overcoming... series of books, which focus on different problems. So for depression, read Overcoming Depression: A Self-Help Guide Using Cognitive Behavioural Techniques, by Paul Gilbert; for anxiety, try Overcoming Anxiety... by Helen Kennerley; for self-esteem problems, read Overcoming Low Self-Esteem... by Melanie Fennell.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Dealing with Self-Criticism

Image by nicontents

What makes you unhappy? Why do you get angry, stressed, anxious or depressed? Do you struggle with a lack of confidence or self-belief? And do you ever feel dissatisfied and convinced that there must be more to life than this, if you only knew how to achieve it?

The answers to these questions are as unique and multi-layered as humanity – I cannot know you, the wounds you may carry from childhood, or the ways in which your family shaped you, both good and bad. And I wouldn't presume to know, without spending time with you and hearing your story.

But the more time I spend helping people become stronger and happier, the clearer it becomes that a harsh, unkind inner voice lies at the root of many of my clients' problems. This 'inner critic' is often so powerful that people cannot distinguish its voice from their own.

We are all many people

But the human mind is exquisitely complex. We are not just James or Jane, but many people: we are parents, siblings, colleagues, bosses, lovers, friends, sons and daughters. We are both our adult selves – reasonably strong, capable and with a logical world view – and our child selves.

These younger versions of us are often vulnerable, dominated by powerful emotional needs and demands, with no sense of fairness or logic. When we lash out with rage or are broken-hearted and bereft, we have regressed into these younger parts of us, until we can find a way back to our adult selves.

And one part of us, which often speaks louder than the others, is our inner critic. Depending on our upbringing, the way our parents behaved with and spoke to us, and the beliefs we now hold about ourselves and the world, this critic may be mild and persuasive, like a kindly teacher.

Or it might be vicious, an inner bully that attacks us every time we fail, focusing on our weaknesses and belittling our strengths and achievements.

Driving a fear of failure

I often tell my self-critical clients to imagine someone standing next to them, muttering harsh words into their ear throughout the day. How might that make you feel? Depressed, perhaps, because you're clearly a terrible person with no redeeming qualities at all? Or anxious, because you live in constant fear of getting it wrong?

So transforming your inner critic is vital for good mental health. One way to do this is to use techniques adapted from Buddhist psychology, which Western mental health professionals such as myself are now embracing because they work so well. Read The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions, by Christopher Germer, if you would like to know more. 

Warm wishes,

Dan