How to Manage Your Inner Critic – and Quieten Self-Critical Thoughts

Image by Mike Burke

I recently wrote a post about the Inner Critic, arguing that this part of us is much maligned and misunderstood. A quick refresher: in schema therapy, it has long been argued that this critical part, especially in its more punitive form, was a very bad thing.

Traditional schema-therapy theory argues that this harsh, mean part of us is the internalised voice of a critical adult from childhood and so needs to be shut down, silenced, or even banished from your internal system (which essentially means silencing the stream of self-critical thoughts).

I get the logic of this, but the theory doesn’t seem to stand up in my consulting room. I have spent years working with my clients’ various parts (known as modes in schema therapy) and even tried fighting back against the Punitive Critic, as I was taught, using chair work and other techniques to help protect people from this inner bully.

And you know what? It didn’t work. Sometimes that Punitive Critic went silent for a bit, but it always came roaring back, especially at times when people felt vulnerable or threatened. And I also grew increasingly uncomfortable about confronting part of the person.

It goes against everything I believe and have learned in other models of therapy, such as Internal Family Systems, which argues that every part of us has a positive intention, however counterintuitive that may be.

Collaboration, not confrontation

Think of your Critical Part, as I call it, as being a bit like a barking dog. At first, it might seem scary (like that pitbull in the photo, if it suddenly became aggressive), because it can be loud, harsh and say really mean things to you, calling you names like pathetic, a loser or failure. It’s only natural to want to fight back, or get rid of that horrible voice in your head.

But, thinking again of that pitbull, if it’s barking loudly, it’s usually because it is scared. My theory is that your Critical Part gets loud when you are vulnerable, or threatened in some way, because it is anxious and so warning you about bad things that might happen.

For example, if you’re about to go on a first date with a girl you really like, you might think self-critical thoughts like, ‘I’m bound to screw this up – I bet I say something stupid and she never wants to see me again!’

So that’s your Critical Part piping up, warning you not to say the wrong thing, because you might get hurt or rejected by your date. It might not seem like it, but that part is trying to protect you. And in my experience of working with hundreds of Critical Parts in my consulting room, their intention is almost always either protective or motivational (and sometimes both).

They might bark loudly, but that’s just because they are scared and don’t want you/them to be hurt, rejected, abandoned, criticised or attacked.

Compassion for the Critic

So, if it’s not helpful to fight the Critical Part, or try and banish it from your mind, what should you do? I think you need to have compassion for this part of you, which is trying desperately to protect you – and may have been doing that since you were a small child. It doesn’t mean you should just let the self-critical thoughts flow, because I’m sure they do make you feel stressed, anxious, depressed or upset.

Here’s a rough guide to the approach I use – and teach my clients to try themselves as homework, between sessions:

1. First you have to notice the self-critical thoughts and realise that these harsh messages are coming from the Critical Part. This requires taking a ‘mindful observer’ perspective, where you can step back from the thoughts, observe and respond to them, rather than thinking, ‘That’s just me.’

2. Let’s say the Critical Part is bashing you about an upcoming presentation, saying things like ‘You are terrible at public speaking! You are bound to look really anxious and tense, so everyone will think you are unprofessional and generally just an idiot.’ Notice that the Critical Part is trying to motivate you (make sure you prepare well, do your absolute best and nail the presentation) and protect you (if you mess this up people will judge and criticise you; then you might even lose your job, which would be awful).

3. So, roll your shoulders back and lengthen your spine, take a few deep breaths and respond calmly but firmly: ‘Critical Part, I know you’re trying to help. I also think you are freaking out about this presentation. But this isn’t helping – you are making me more anxious and stressed, which will actually make my performance worse.’

4. Then let that part know that you, Healthy Adult, grownup, strong, professional you, can handle the presentation. ‘I’ve got this. I will prepare thoroughly, do lots of deep breathing to calm myself down, then I’m sure it will be fine. So please step back and let me deal with this.’

5. The Critical Part then feels reassured and should, as requested, take a step back and be quiet. If not – and even if so – you may have to repeat this again, again and again. This part of you is deeply ingrained and is also very anxious, so needs lots of reassurance, negotiation, persuasion and compassion to calm down.

I really hope this helps, but I must emphasise that it’s not easy and takes consistent, repeated effort. But then everything important in life does, no?

Warm wishes,

Dan

Try this Mindfulness Technique to Help Quiet Your Mind

Image by Nathan Dumlao

One of the biggest misconceptions about mindfulness meditation is that you should be able to clear your mind of all thoughts – and that, if you can’t do that, you are somehow getting it wrong.

As anyone who has tried meditating knows, not only is it impossible to stop thinking – as if you could turn off some kind of mental tap – but also that the whole point of mindfulness meditation is to become aware of how your mind works.

And a central part of that is to begin noticing the ceaseless whirl of thoughts that accompanies you throughout your every waking moment. When you meditate, perhaps focusing on your breath, thoughts naturally and inevitably arise.

The point of the practice is to notice this, then gently escort your attention back to the breath. That is meditation, not achieving some perfect state of complete mental silence and tranquillity.

That said, there are times when we might want to quiet the mind. With my clients, that might be when their thoughts are racing, making them feel highly stressed, anxious or agitated. Or it could be to help with insomnia – especially those 3am ‘what if…’ worries when everything looks bleak and scary.

I recently tried a superb mindfulness practice designed to quickly and effectively quiet the mind. I loved it, so have tried it with my clients and it really seems to help them too. The practice is offered by meditation teacher Bodhipaksa (you can try it for yourself on Insight Timer – where you can also make a small donation, if you wish, to thank him).

The practice

Here is my version of the practice, for those who like to read and not just listen to instructions:

1. This practice takes around 10 minutes, so find a quiet time in your day when you won’t be disturbed. Switch your phone off, but set a timer for 10 minutes. Sit on a straight-backed chair or cushion, finding a posture that is upright but relaxed.

2. Start by becoming aware of the points of contact between your body and the cushion/chair/floor. Notice the weight of your arms and hands resting in your lap. Then shift your awareness to your breathing. You don’t have to change your breath in any way, just let your body breathe itself.

3. Normally in mindfulness of breathing we focus on one point in the body, like the nostrils, chest or stomach rising and falling. In this practice, we will try something different – start by bringing your attention to your upper back. Notice the muscles expanding on the in-breath and contracting on the out-breath. Keep your focus here for a minute.

4. Now, while still holding the back in your awareness, also focus on your belly rising and falling. Zoom right in to the contact between your skin and clothing. What’s that like? You might notice warmth, coolness, friction, softness, or perhaps nothing much at all, which is perfectly fine.

5. Then add an awareness of the breath entering and leaving your nostrils, flowing down your throat and into the lungs. So you are now holding three distinct parts of the body in your awareness, all at the same time.

6. You might start to notice a sort of dance between these three areas of the body, as the breath flows in and out. Stay with that for a few minutes until your timer goes off. Slowly and gently open your eyes.

When I have tried this practice, holding three separate areas in awareness is effortful. It’s not easy, so it takes up a lot of mental bandwidth. I found there wasn’t much left for thinking, so my mind automatically became quiet and still. I hope you find it helpful too.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Your Inner Critic: Friend or Foe?

Photo by Mwabonje from Pexels

We all have an inner critic – the part of us that gives us self-critical messages. This critic (which I call the Critical Part) is on a spectrum of harshness, from mild at one end (‘Come on Dan, that wasn’t a great blog post, was it?’) to harsh and aggressive at the other (‘Why do you always screw everything up Dan? You’re such a pathetic loser!’). The view in mainstream psychology is that this self-criticism is harmful, bad and must be silenced to stop us getting stressed, anxious or depressed.

Of course, if your Critical Part is at the harsher end of that spectrum, the messages it gives you will make you feel some kind of bad – sad, hurt, anxious, stressed, unconfident or ashamed. But having tried many different approaches to help people with this hurtful inner dialogue, I now believe that trying to silence the Critical Part just doesn’t work. And getting angry with it, or trying to get rid of that part of you doesn’t work either.

The critic is part of you

As I often say to my clients, it’s like really hating your left hand. You might not like it. You may even want to get rid of it. But it’s part of you! So whether you like it or not, it’s not going anywhere. Same goes for your Critical Part – like it or loathe it, this is a part of your inner world. You can’t get rid of it, any more than you can your hand. So it’s better to understand, even have compassion for this part.

So how do we do that? First, let’s try and understand its origin and function in your inner system. I believe most Critical Parts come online when you are around five years old. That’s the age when you start to get cognitive, when your brain has developed enough that you can start asking big questions, like ‘Who am I?’ or ‘Why does mummy love my sister more than me?’. You not only wonder about who you are as a person, what you’re good or bad at, what you like and dislike, but also start comparing yourself to your siblings and friends.

Protecting you from HARM

At this age you also figure out what makes your parents treat you well or badly. For example, if your dad gets drunk and screams at you for tiny mistakes, you learn to avoid making any mistake (like spilling your drink, or leaving toys scattered about the floor) that will trigger a scary, hurtful attack. I think that Critical Part is the hypervigilant inner guard dog, that barks at you when you make a mistake that might get you hurt.

Throughout your life, this part becomes more entrenched until, as an adult, it just seems like you. But it’s not – it’s just a part of you, that is barking at you when it thinks you have done or are about to do something that will get you hurt in some way (usually attacked or rejected). If we think about the Critical Part this way – that it’s actually protective – it seems a lot less like some big, scary monster.

And we can have compassion for it too, because in my consulting room I often see these parts freaking out. Your Critical Part is usually anxious, scared, hypervigilant for danger. Because of course it’s just part of you, so if you get hurt, it gets hurt.

Love every part of yourself

I wrote in a recent post that we need to develop love and compassion for every part of us, even the parts we dislike or hate. And that absolutely includes the Critical Part, because the only way to turn the volume down on that hurtful inner criticism is to reassure this part that it’s OK, we hear it, and we’re perfectly capable of handling whatever it thinks we can’t handle – scary boss, angry partner, presentation at work, or whatever the threatening person or situation may be. I will guide you in exactly how to do this in an upcoming post.

I am dedicated to helping people be kinder and more compassionate to themselves, so I hope this helps you, a little, with that hard and lifelong work.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Protect Your Mental Health in a Pandemic

Photo by Matt Duncan on Unsplash

As the pandemic nears a deeply unwelcome anniversary, many people are struggling. In the UK, it’s nearly a year since the first lockdown – a year like no other in most of our lifetimes. And that year has, of course, taken its toll on us, both physically and mentally.

When I speak to my clients about how to cope right now, I always start with this idea – it’s just a really hard time. It’s OK to be struggling. That doesn’t make you weak, or lacking in resilience, or whatever self-critical thoughts you might have. It just makes you human, like everyone else – and it’s a really hard time to be human right now.

Reasons for hope

That said, of course it’s crucial that we all do everything we can to look after our mental health at the moment. It seems to me that, having run a 12-month marathon, we are on the home straight. As I write this, 15 million people in the UK have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

This is a wonderful, miraculous thing. We should all be deeply grateful for the brilliant, unbelievably hard-working scientists who produced a vaccine in record-breaking time (as well as the tens of thousands of volunteers around the world who made successful vaccine trials possible). And to the heroes of our NHS – the doctors, nurses, physios, cleaners, receptionists and every other person who has risked their lives to save ours.

The vaccine, bit by bit, will give us all hope and eventually help us end this long, incredibly difficult time. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do to help ourselves, right now, to make daily life easier.

Try these three things

As a therapist, I would like to share the three most important things I think you can do, today, to stay well as we tough out the final stretch of this hard year:

1. Remember that you have been through tough times before. Very few among us have never had to cope with tough times in our lives. Most of us have had our hearts broken, been divorced, or otherwise suffered for love. Many of us have dealt with bereavement (and all of us will, at some point in our lives). Maybe we have had tough times financially, lost a beloved home, or friend, or even a pet.

   To be human is to suffer sometimes. But we humans are also remarkably strong and resilient. Usually, we find a way through, bounce back, even emerge from tough times feeling stronger. If any of that’s true of you, then you can cope with this too – you are way stronger than you think.

2. Find beauty in small things. There have been times this year, I must confess, when I found it hard to feel positive or hopeful about anything. Especially on cold, grey days in January, when every day was like Groundhog Day (wake up, breakfast, shower, dress, work, eat, Netflix, sleep, repeat), my mood was hovering somewhere down there with the temperature.

   But even on those days, thanks to a long love affair with mindfulness meditation, I remembered to find beauty and meaning in small, beautiful things. A hug from my wife. A warm text from an old friend, or a grateful client. A goldfinch guzzling away on my bird feeder. Children laughing in the playground.

   Even when things seem bleak, there is always beauty, always meaning, always reasons to be grateful for this one precious life, if we just stop, breathe and look for them.

3. Do something for others. There is a Pali word, Dana, which is roughly translated as generosity, or giving from the heart. And in every major religion – Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity – there is a similar word or guidance to give selflessly to help others.

   This could be volunteering at a foodbank, or training to be a volunteer vaccinator, or just checking in on an elderly neighbour from time to time. Not only does this help those who are struggling right now, there is good evidence that practicing altruistic giving is highly beneficial for your mental health. The very definition of a win-win situation, I would say.

Finally, please remember that just making it through the day is as much as some of us can do right now – and that’s perfectly fine. Just try to take care of yourself, be self-compassionate (I wrote about this in my last post) if you can. And remember that one day, this will all be over. We all just need to hang in there until it is.

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

Helping You Heal Your Trauma

Image by Aaron Blanco Tejedor

I am passionate about helping people heal their trauma. It’s a big part of what I do all day, in my consulting room in north London. As a Cognitive Therapist and Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor, I draw from a variety of proven, trauma-informed models, but my main model is schema therapy.

This warm, compassionate, powerful approach was developed by Dr Jeffrey Young in the late 1980s to help trauma survivors and other people struggling with complex mental health problems.

And it really works, helping people overcome even the most painful experiences in childhood – I see this every day in my practice and it’s a wonderful, magical thing to behold. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s easy – healing from serious problems like trauma can be a long, challenging, arduous process.

And people are on a spectrum both in terms of the trauma, abuse or neglect they experienced as children; and the impact of those painful experiences on their adult selves. Some people heal more slowly, some find change more difficult, but I strongly believe that however bad it was for you, there is always hope – every kind of painful childhood experience can be healed.

trauma recovery

If you are a truma survivor, I would strongly advise you to find a skilled therapist offering one of the trauma-informed models, such as schema therapy, trauma-focused CBT, compassion-focused therapy, sensorimotor psychotherapy, internal family systems therapy or somatic experiencing therapy.

If you experienced trauma, abuse or neglect as a child, it’s imperative that you get some good therapy to enable your healing process to begin. Sadly, self-help books and other personal-development tools – although helpful – will not be enough for you. Instead, you need a warm, kind, patient human being to help you overcome the wounds of your past.

Choose your therapist with care

If you are struggling with the impact of trauma, please do not get help from a counsellor or therapist who can’t explain to you, in simple terms, how their model is designed to work with trauma. We now know that just ‘talking about’ traumatic experiences is not only unhelpful, it can be retraumatising.

Instead, trauma work should help you to regulate your nervous system, teach you vital mindfulness skills, reframe negative self-beliefs and – if it’s necessary – process traumatic memories in a structured way, which is not the same as just talking about them in great detail. Please believe me that this will make you worse, not better.

Knowledge is power

That is why I have created my Heal Your Trauma project, including this blog. It will guide, support and inform you as you attempt the challenging journey towards a happier, more peaceful and meaningful life. I will teach you all about the effect of trauma on your mind, brain, nervous system and body.

I will provide techniques that you can use right away, to help you feel calmer and to regulate your nervous system – a key first step in trauma work. And I will try to be a voice of hope, another precious resource, as you attempt to put the dark days behind you and let the sun shine into your life.

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

The Link Between Trauma, Stress and Physical Illness

I have long been convinced of the link between traumatic experiences, especially in childhood, and physical ailments such as arthritis, eczema, digestive problems like irritable bowel syndrome and a whole host of other illnesses. So I found Dr Gabor Maté’s book, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, to be intriguing.

Dr Maté (a physician working in palliative care and later with addiction in Canada) makes a strong, evidence-based case for the ways in which traumatic or stressful experiences in childhood and throughout our lives repeatedly trigger the stress response in our brain, which causes a cascade of hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, as well as many other changes in the brain and body.

This is meant to be an urgent, life-saving response to threats such as predatory animals or aggressive tribes, which were the life-or-death threats humans faced for much of our evolutionary history (which is when our brains were, to a large extent, formed).

But when, say, you have a highly critical parent, putting you down every day throughout your childhood; you suffer abuse or neglect; or are unlucky enough to be raised in a high-conflict family, where the parents are always at each other’s throats, your stress response is being triggered, repeatedly, which the body is not designed to cope with.

Sadly, when combined with your particular genetic makeup, this can make you more vulnerable to a whole host of physical illnesses, including the big, scary ones like cancer, dementia or heart disease; and autoimmune conditions like multiple sclerosis (MS) or rheumatoid arthritis.

None of this is your fault

Of course, it’s really important to emphasise that this is not your fault in any way, or that – if you are ill now – you somehow brought this illness upon yourself. Dr Maté goes to great pains to explain that it’s the result of these repeated stressors impacting your growing brain and body, which may cause problems in later life. Nobody chooses to have a harsh, critical parent, or to suffer emotional neglect.

But what it does make crystal-clear to me is that, if you have had a highly stressful childhood, it is so important to get psychological help from someone like me (or any other well-trained therapist practising an effective, evidence-based form of therapy). Because none of this is fixed or irreversible – healing those wounds from childhood, learning to feel and healthily release your emotions, becoming less self-critical, more assertive and kinder/more compassionate to yourself… these are all the magic ingredients which form the medicine that combats the effects of your long-term stress.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why You Can't Always Think Your Way Out of Trouble

Image by Siora Photography

Humans are thinking creatures. More than any other animal on Earth, we have the ability to think, reason, analyse, remember our past and imagine a future that hasn’t even happened yet. That is because of the cortical layer of our brain, especially the prefrontal cortex – the most evolved part of our brain, which is involved in high-level, executive functions like impulse control, rational thought and predicting the consequences of behaviour.

And this miraculous supercomputer in our skulls is what allowed humans to write symphonies, build the Pyramids and fly to the Moon. That uniquely human brain is also what allows me to practice psychotherapy, or write this post. And it helps you problem-solve your way out of difficult situations – a vital and sometimes lifesaving skill.

When thinking is not your friend

But if you are struggling with your mental health, feeling highly stressed, anxious or depressed, thinking may not be your friend. That’s because the kind of thinking we do when we’re experiencing high levels of painful emotion can be deeply unhelpful. Let me give you an example.

Jane is a highly anxious, frequently worried type of person. And when she hits bumps in her life, she tries to think her way out of them. Jane engages that thinking brain and then worries, obsessively, projecting into the future with hundreds of ‘what if’ thoughts (‘What if my boss doesn’t like my work and I get sacked?’, ‘What if I can’t find another job?’, ‘What if I lose my home and end up on the street?’).

These obsessional, catastrophic thoughts are especially bad at night, when Jane lies there for hours worrying, worrying, worrying. This just makes her more anxious, stressed and, of course, exhausted. So the next day her resources are low and she feels ten times worse.

Keep it simple

In schema therapy language we would say Jane has a Perfectionistic Overcontroller mode, which tries to be in control all the time, hates uncertainty or feeling out of control, and believes that there is always a perfect solution if she just thinks long and hard enough! If I were helping Jane I would work with this mode to help it calm down a bit and give her a break from the relentless worrying.

I would then help Jane to develop a range of activities that did not involve thinking. This would first involve drawing up a list of coping skills. Try this yourself – write ‘coping skills’ on top of a blank sheet of paper. Then come up with 10 skills, with different types of activities you can use at different times. The first four skills I teach clients are always my Posture, Compassionate Breathing, Supportive Touch, Compassionate Self-Talk sequence (read all about those in this post).

Use what works for you

The other six are negotiated with my client, depending on what they find helpful, calming or relaxing. Yoga is fantastic, if it works for you. Mindfulness or other forms of meditation often go on the list. We might also add taking a long, luxurious bath; watching a TV show or movie you find comforting; calling a trusted friend; getting a hug from someone you love; stroking your favourite pet; drinking a warm, milky drink; going for a walk, preferably in some green space; reading a blog like this one, which focuses on improving mental health; listening to a song you find moving or joyful…

The list is endless, really. It’s just about finding ten things that will help you feel (depending on the emotion you are struggling with) calmer, more peaceful, more grounded, happier, more energised, or mindfully in touch with the present moment. Try it now – write up a list and then stick it on the wall next to your computer, on in your bedroom, where you will see it every day.

Then practice those skills, on a daily basis, until they become so familiar it’s like muscle memory. Over time, you will find that you are able to take the edge off whatever painful emotion you are feeling – that also gives you a strong foundation to begin therapy, use self-help books, or whatever way you choose to work on the deeper wounds that cause those painful emotions to bubble up.

I hope that helps. In my experience, it really does, so I hope it benefits you as much as it has hundreds of my clients.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Rewrite the Story of Your Life

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What is the story of your life? What do you tell yourself about your successes and failures, key life events, those you love and those who have hurt you in some way? In my therapy practice, I find that people often tell themselves a story about their life that is distorted, highly critical, focusing heavily on perceived mistakes and failings. This is especially common among trauma survivors, who are often made to feel bad, wrong or unlovable as children.

Over the course of therapy, I always try to help people write a new life story. One that is realistic, not pessimistic. Compassionate, not critical. Based on the understanding that we all suffer, we all make mistakes, we all have problems. That is the nature of living a human life.

Your life story

So, you were born. And you landed in a family, with (probably) two parents, maybe some siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and assorted other relatives. And if, as so often happens, that family was not a happy one, your childhood was difficult, which caused you suffering and may have led to lifelong psychological problems.

A key concept in schema therapy is that of ‘core needs’. These are core developmental needs that all children have, whatever culture or family structure they grow up in. There are five needs, which I will explain in detail in a future post, but the two most important needs are for love and a secure attachment; and safety and protection. If these were not met for you in your family (where the vast majority of our development occurs), you would have developed unhelpful ‘schemas’.

And these schemas – neural networks that fire up when you feel threatened or stressed – have a profound effect on how you feel, your sensitivities and vulnerabilities, your thoughts, behaviour and most of what makes you, you on a daily basis. Well, as I always tell my clients: you didn’t choose to land in that family, did you? You didn’t choose to have the painful schemas that make life so difficult. You certainly didn’t choose to be anxious, stressed, depressed, to have an eating disorder or low self-esteem. Nobody would choose those things.

The Compassionate Version

So instead of telling yourself a harsh, critical, self-blaming story, why not choose a more compassionate version? One in which you found a way to cope with the painful wounds inflicted by a childhood that let you down in some way. That coping may involve some unhelpful behaviours, like over-eating, drinking too much or even taking drugs, but – although of course it would be helpful to free yourself from these ways of coping – they are definitely not your fault.

You are just coping, the best way you know how, like the rest of us. No blame. No shame. No beating yourself up. Just understanding what went wrong in your childhood, the effect that has had on your mind, brain, nervous system and body, and how to heal yourself. And while we’re at it, why don’t we change that horrible ending and replace it with a positive, hopeful, happy (or at least happier) version?

One in which you can be healed, with hard work and – if your wounds are deep – with expert help. An ending in which you are loving and loved. Having lived a rich, meaningful life. Because, as far as we know, this life is the only one we get. So it seems crucial to me that we make the most of it, however hard or hurtful its beginning.

And I will do my best to help with that, so please keep reading these posts and I will guide you along the path to a new, improved version of your unique life story.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Hardwiring Positive Experiences and Emotions in Your Brain

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One of my favourite techniques to use with my schema therapy clients is psychologist Rick Hanson’s neuroscience-based approach to ‘hardwiring’ positive experiences and emotions. As he explains in his excellent book, Hardwiring Happiness: the New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence, the human brain is designed with an in-built negativity bias.

This means that our attention is directed towards negative thoughts, feelings and experiences such as failing at an exam, being rejected for a job or left by a partner.

Human brains were built over millions of years of evolution, which were mostly spent in environments of extreme threat – wild animals trying to eat us, other tribes wanting to bash us over the head with clubs, poisonous snakes and spiders underfoot, simple injuries and diseases meaning certain death because we lacked effective medicine.

So our threat system became the dominant system in the brain – and consequently 21st-century humans pay a great deal of attention to anything that could be threatening, hurtful or upsetting.

How schemas affect us

To an extent, this is how schemas work – affecting our information-processing systems, memory, attention, and so on to make us focus excessively on negative or upsetting things. I see this all the time in my practice – and I’m sure you do too.

Someone comes in talking at great length and in fine-grained detail about some incident where they felt someone rejected them; or a time when they messed up at work and felt terrible about it. As well as giving plenty of space for that (which is, after all, what therapy is mostly about!) I always get people to make the most of positive experiences too.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say James tells me about getting a Distinction for an assignment on his Master’s. He then quickly whizzes on to the next thing, an upsetting story about his brother. I get him to pause, slow down, and tell me more about getting the news about his Distinction – I often use imagery to get him to relive the experience, closing his eyes and describing where he is, what he’s thinking when he reads the email and, most importantly, how he feels.

James tells me he feels happy and proud, so I ask him where he feels that in his body. James says in his chest and throat, so I get him to focus on those bodily sensations for one minute (anything from 10 seconds up works, but longer is better).

After he does this, I get him to open his eyes and explain that we just hardwired those positive feelings to the memory – so now every time he thinks about it, he will feel happy and proud again.

Repetition is key

I just love this technique – and so do my clients. It feels great and is a really simple thing to give them for homework – just repeat, as often as possible, any time they have a positive experience. The more they do it, I explain, the more they are rewiring their brain to take more notice of and enjoy good experiences; and to be less sensitive to the bad ones.

Over time, this creates feelings of calm, confidence, satisfaction, pride, self-compassion, and so on.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Learn to Be Kind to Yourself With This Step-By-Step Technique

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I’m guessing, if you’re reading this, that you are a kind person. I bet you’re really good to the people in your life — treating friends, family and even strangers with care and consideration. And, although that may take effort sometimes, you show up for those people, day after day.

But I also bet that the one person you struggle to treat with kindness and compassion is yourself. Somehow, all that warmth and love you radiate outwards rarely goes inside.

At best, you don’t take good care of yourself, working long hours, putting everyone else’s needs before your own, running around until you’re exhausted. At worst, you may be harshly self-critical, beating yourself up for every (real or imagined) transgression, calling yourself stupid or pathetic, attacking yourself as if you were your own worst enemy.

Kindness is like gold dust

But here’s the thing I always tell my clients — kindness is so powerful and produces such deep healing in our mind, brain and body that it’s like gold dust. There is a huge and ever-growing body of research that clearly shows the deeply transformative impact of positive mental states such as kindness and compassion.

So why is it so hard to treat yourself as you treat others, even though you know rationally that it’s a good idea? Primarily because the rational part of your brain (the prefrontal cortex, or PFC, responsible for rational thought, among other things) is not the part that’s mean to you. In schema therapy we call that part the Critic, which lives in the more emotional, evolutionarily older parts of the brain, like your limbic system.

This critical part of yourself may echo the messages given to you by punishing or excessively demanding parents or other caregivers when you were a child. If they told you that you were weak, pathetic, lazy or a failure, sadly that’s what your critical part will tell you now. But it’s crucial to remember that, for the vast majority of the time, these hurtful messages are not true.

Just because an irritable, sharp-tongued mother told you something when you were four years old does not make it a fact. And the hurtful things your hard-drinking, quick-tempered dad yelled when you were ten say more about him than they do about you — as a ten-year-old or an adult. Act as if your life depended on not believing these toxic messages from the past — which, in many ways, it really does.

Another problem is that, if you’re feeling anxious or angry, your PFC literally goes offline. That’s because when you feel these ‘threat-signalling’ emotions, your fight-flight-freeze response has been triggered. And when that happens, your PFC — which is great for solving equations or writing novels, but not so good for quick, life-saving action — powers down until the threat has passed. This is why your mind goes blank when you’re highly anxious — because your ‘thinking brain’ has, temporarily, stopped working.

So, given that it’s such a struggle for so many people, how on earth can you learn to be kinder to yourself? In my 10 years as a therapist, I have tried hundreds of different techniques to help my clients treat themselves with the care and respect they afford to other people. Some work better than others. And this kindness-generating technique— which I use multiple times, every single day — consistently works best…

Want to be kinder? Try this simple technique

Remember how good you are at being kind to others? Well, the good news is that the same brain circuitry involved in external acts of kindness fire up when we’re kind to ourselves. So you have all the neural architecture/skills already, you just need to treat yourself the way you would a good friend. Try these steps, in this order, being sure not to skip a step (they all activate key parts of your neurobiology — skip one and the rest won’t work as well).

1. Change posture. Let your shoulders roll back so your chest is open. Sit upright but relaxed, as if there’s an invisible piece of string coming from the top of your head, pulling you upright.

2. Breathe. Take deep, slow breaths in and out — four seconds in, four seconds out. 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. Place a hand over your heart, touching yourself the way you would a friend who was upset — with a kind, friendly, supportive touch. Feel the warmth under your hand and imagine it trickling down into your heart, soothing all the hurt, scared parts of you.

4. Add compassionate self-talk. Now talk to yourself the way you would to that troubled friend. Make sure your voice tone is warm, soft and slow (your tone is just as important as the words you use). Say things like ‘Oh, John/Jenny, I know you’re struggling right now. This is so hard, isn’t it — I really see how scared you are. But it’s OK, you’re not alone. I’m here with you. I care about you. And I’m going to help you get through this...’

Feeling better?

When I use this technique with my clients (or myself), every single time they feel calmer, lighter, more at peace. Importantly, it’s not about going from 80% anxious to Zen-like calm. Look to feel a bit calmer, a bit lighter, a bit more peaceful. That is eminently achievable — and the more you do this, the more effective it will become.

So do try this technique when you are feeling anxious, stressed, sad, lonely or upset — it should help with any kind of negative feeling or mood. I really hope it does.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Do You Have Trouble Managing Your Anger?

Anger is a tricky emotion. In pure evolutionary terms, anger is our signal to fight a threat, as part of the fight, flight or freeze response (anxiety is the emotion that tells us to freeze or flee).

This is all well and good if you are facing a hungry lion, but not so helpful if your boss has just criticised you, or another driver cuts you off in traffic. But this primitive, self-protective threat response explains why we can react so strongly, violently even, if we feel threatened – in a very crude way, that's what anger is for.

Most of my clients have some kind of problem with anger, roughly falling into two camps. The first group is scared of or uncomfortable with anger – theirs and other people's. If this describes you, it may be because one of your parents was given to angry outbursts, which as a child were very frightening.

That vulnerable child inside you learns to be scared of anger, even when you are – on the outside at least – now an adult. It's also possible that your family were rather buttoned-up, viewing any expression of anger as rude and uncivilised (a very British way to deal with anger!), so you learned to keep your angry feelings stuffed deep down inside you. As an adult, it's now hard to access and express them, even when it's appropriate to do so.

The other problematic form of anger is expressing it too often and too volcanically. This is the cause of domestic violence, bar brawls, violent crime, road/air/trolley rage and aggressive bullying. It's just as harmful as repressed anger, both to those around you and ultimately yourself – you will probably end up in serious trouble, perhaps even prison, if you cannot contain your anger and explode at the smallest provocation.

People with this 'anger style' may come from very angry, combustible families in which everyone was always shouting at/being aggressive to each other. They may also have been hurt, neglected or abused as children, so that child inside is absolutely furious at the world and can't help but express it, even when it's dangerous or destructive to do so.

The angry modes

In schema therapy, when people are expressing anger in a problematic way, we see this showing up as one of three angry modes. If you find yourself blowing up all the time, perhaps shouting or swearing at other people, being threatening or even physically violent, you are in Bully/Attack mode. This is the most problematic angry mode, so a major part of your therapy would involve learning how to respond to triggering situations in a calmer, more rational manner.

Anger-management strategies can be helpful here, as well as longer-term healing of schemas such as Abandonment, Mistrust/Abuse or Vulnerability that can trigger this attack-is-the-best-form-of-defence style of responding to threats or challenges.

The second mode, Angry Protector, is less destructive but still problematic. This is when you express anger in more subtle ways, perhaps non-verbally by scowling or with a closed-off body posture; with sarcasm or cutting humour; angrily complaining about or being harshly critical of other people.

This mode is all about keeping a distance between yourself and others, perhaps because deep down your vulnerable child is scared of attack or rejection. You may also be uncomfortable with any kind of criticism or challenge, so respond with subtle but unmistakeable shows of anger to shut that down.

“Anybody can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

— Aristotle

The third mode is the most helpful, even if it doesn't at first appear that way! This is the Angry Child mode, and is evident in the way a person expresses their anger – often disproportionately to the perceived insult or infraction. You may have a tantrum, smashing or throwing objects (not to hurt others, just to release your anger). You might also get very tearful or upset.

And beneath the anger is always hurt, fear or sadness, so if we were working together I would help you express your anger in a non-attacking, non-destructive way, so we could contact and soothe the hurt, upset or fearful vulnerable child lying just beneath the angry surface. 

When we get people into Angry Child mode, teach them how to express their anger verbally or by doing something safe but physical, like twisting a towel or punching a cushion, they experience a tremendous sense of relief – all the anger literally drains out of their bodies. It can then be deeply healing and soothing to deal with the hurt that lies beneath – over time, your anger subsides as you feel happier, safer, stronger and calmer.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Overcome a Painful Childhood

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As a therapist, one of my first tasks with new clients is helping them understand why they have developed the problems — such as chronic stress, anxiety or depression — that they are seeking help for. It never ceases to amaze me how many people tell me, in our first session, ‘Actually, I had a happy childhood.’ And I think, But you have been depressed, on and off, for 40 years. Where do you think that depression came from?

As we slowly and gently work through the details of their childhood and family dynamics, it becomes clear where all that unhappiness stems from. Perhaps their mother was an alcoholic, so was unable to be the stable, loving, nurturing caregiver that all children need.

Or their father was narcissistic and harshly critical, constantly undermining them or telling them they were not good enough. If that is your experience, every day of your childhood, of course your self-esteem and self-confidence will be eroded. And, sadly, you will start telling yourself, ‘I’m not good enough,’ ‘I’m stupid’ or ‘I’m unlovable’.

This is often how our negative self-beliefs develop — we internalise the harsh, critical or destructive things that family members tell us. And then, after first hearing and then thinking these things for years, or even decades, we just believe that they are true — ‘I’m not good enough’ is not just an unhelpful idea, or confidence-sapping story we tell ourselves. It’s a fact.

Changing negative self-beliefs

In cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT), these negative ways of thinking about yourself are called ‘core beliefs’. And in schema therapy — the form of psychotherapy I specialise in — we see these beliefs as part of a ‘schema’, a neural network incorporating painful ways of thinking, feeling and sensing in your body that fires up whenever you encounter something stressful or threatening, especially if it reminds you of similar stressful experiences from your past.

For example, if your dad left the family when you were young, you might have (understandably) felt abandoned. This could lead to the formation of an Abandonment schema, which fires up in adulthood whenever a romantic partner seems to be withdrawing, losing interest in you or interested in someone else.

Or, if you were the recipient of that horrible, harsh criticism detailed above, you may form a Defectiveness schema, leading you to feel defective/not good enough/incompetent when you fail an exam, or struggle in a job interview. This is perhaps the most common schema I see in my practice — and is at the root of low self-esteem, as well as problems such as public-speaking anxiety or struggling in your career.

Once I have helped someone understand that their childhood was not so rosy, and identified which schemas they have (there are 18 in total and we all have at least a few), we start work on healing those schemas. That essentially means healing the wounds of a painful past, which usually begin forming in childhood or adolescence. If this is resonating with you, and you are one of the millions of people whose childhood was not a happy one, here are a few powerful insights I have garnered from helping hundreds of people overcome their painful histories.

The negative stories you tell yourself are usually not true

Let’s say you have that negative belief about yourself: ‘I’m not good enough.’ (This is incredibly common, by the way — most of my clients believe this about themselves.) You might think this because someone, often a parent, was highly critical, demanding or dismissive of your best efforts, in school, sports or — in the worst-case scenario — just who you were as a person. They made you feel everything you said or did was somehow stupid or wrong.

But, if that was your experience, it says far more about them than it does you. If a father is criticising his five-year-old son for not having the football skills of Maradona, who really has the problem? Your dad, that’s who. So why do you have to believe the nonsense he told you, 40 years later?

Being harshly self-critical will only deepen your unhappiness

Many of us (myself included) absorbed all that criticism from our parents and started to say those mean, hurtful things to ourselves. After all, we thought they were true, so why wouldn’t we call ourselves ‘Idiot’, ‘Pathetic’ or ‘Stupid’? You may even think that’s a good way to motivate yourself or improve your grades or work performance. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way.

There is a huge body of research now proving the link between harsh self-criticism and depression (in a 2019 study, by Zhang et al, the researchers found that self-criticism triggered depression, while self-compassion reduced it). Research also shows that mindfulness, self-compassion and self-kindness are wonderful antidotes to the toxic, self-destructive critical thoughts that cause mental anguish of all kinds.

You are human, with strengths and weaknesses, like everybody else

Many of my clients struggle with deep-rooted, painful and debilitating problems like substance abuse, anxiety disorders, depression or low self-esteem. Often, they are ashamed of these problems, thinking that they make them weak, or uniquely deserving of judgement or blame. So I tell them (often hundreds of times, until it eventually goes in) that these problems are a direct result of their painful childhoods.

They didn’t choose to be ignored, belittled or shouted at, so how on earth can that depression or debilitating anxiety be their fault? And I help them see that problems like these are normal. Human. We all (again, myself included) have strengths and weaknesses; things we are proud of and others that fill us with shame; behaviours that are healthy and others that are not. No need to beat yourself up.

It is never too late to find happiness

There are billions of people living on our planet. Sadly, most of those people will have experienced a painful childhood, in one way or another and with varying degrees of intensity. But, as Paul Gilbert, eminent psychologist and founder of compassion-focused therapy, teaches: Having a painful childhood is not your fault — but it is your responsibility to do everything you can, as an adult, to heal and change.

And we know this is possible — there are countless forms of therapy, wonderful self-help books, loving friends and family members that can help you overcome a painful past. Take it from someone who has helped hundreds of people do just that — it is never impossible, or too late, to change. And if you can live the rest of your life with greater happiness, confidence and self-worth, surely the hard work needed to change must be worth it.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Be Assertive – Even With the Most Difficult People

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Think of the most difficult person in your life. Now imagine you are in conflict with them and need to find a way of communicating that solves the problem. Sounds daunting, right? But there is a simple, easy-to-learn formula that will help you manage even the most challenging people in your life — it’s called ‘assertive communication’ and I will guide you through the simple steps involved so you can make assertiveness your new superpower.

Like all new skills, assertiveness is not easy to learn — and even harder to put into practice. But think of it like learning a musical instrument, or driving a car. At first, it’s really hard and clunky. It takes huge amounts of concentration and you still make tons of mistakes every time you try. But, over time, it gets a bit easier each time you strum that guitar or park in a tight spot.

And then, one day, as if by magic, you try again and it just works. You can play that Beatles tune easily and it actually sounds right. Or you can drive to the supermarket smoothly and confidently, without scaring the life out of your dad in the passenger seat.

We think of this as muscle memory but actually, it’s the development of a neural network in your brain called a ‘schema’. This is a blueprint for how to play the guitar or drive your car that fires up every time you do it. It’s something your brain develops so that it can save energy for oft-repeated tasks (your brain is constantly looking for ways to conserve energy, as it has a vast number of tasks to perform for every second of your existence with only finite energy resources).

The same goes for being assertive. Just practice over and over — starting with the easiest people and situations, before progressing on to the tough ones — and before you know it you have nailed it. Critical partner, undermining boss, negative friend — whoever the difficult people in your life are, you will find relationships with them a whole lot easier and more pleasurable.

Why is it so hard to be assertive?

Before I teach you how to be assertive, we need to ponder why so many of us find this simple skill so daunting. In my therapy practice, I work with many people every week who are unassertive, letting themselves be bullied or steamrollered by more confident, pushy folk. And many of my clients have been bullied as kids, either in the family, at school or both.

This sapped their confidence, making them feel helpless and weak. As I often tell my clients, think of a three-year-old girl being shouted at by her dad. What can that little kid do? She is tiny and her dad is huge. He is much stronger, smarter, more cognitively and verbally skilled than her. She feels scared and under threat — so the threat system in her brain fires up and triggers the fight-flight-freeze response.

She can’t fight, as he is much bigger and stronger. She can’t flee, as it’s her home and she has nowhere else to go. So the only option is freeze — think of a deer in the headlights, muscles quivering with tension but frozen in terror. That’s what happens to us when our freeze response is triggered.

How maladaptive schemas sap your strength

If this happens over and over — as it did for many of my clients — we develop those schemas I mentioned earlier. But these are not helpful schemas, they are what we call ‘early maladaptive schemas’, in this context maladaptive meaning unhelpful.

That poor little girl will probably develop a Subjugation schema, which makes her feel powerless, subjugating her own needs, wants and desires to strong, dominant people like her dad. She may also develop a Mistrust/Abuse schema because she was verbally and emotionally abused throughout her childhood. And maybe a Vulnerability schema, because she feels vulnerable and under threat in the world.

As an adult, these schemas fire up whenever she feels stressed and threatened by someone who reminds her of her angry, bullying dad. She will probably be especially triggered by male authority figures, so a nasty male boss will be like Kryptonite for her. And when those schemas get triggered, she feels intense emotions like anxiety, bodily sensations like a plunging in her stomach, breathlessness and a racing heart.

Even though she is a smart, capable 40-year-old lawyer, mum, wife and activist, in those moments she is three again, powerless to fight back against the critical, angry man who is shouting her down.

Demystifying assertive communication

Luckily, even if we have experienced a destructive, disempowering childhood, as adults we can learn to heal those schemas and deal with difficult people in a more confident, assertive manner. There is a simple model for having difficult conversations that I have taught to hundreds of clients — and used many times with the challenging folk in my own life. Here’s how it goes.

Let’s say you have a tricky coworker, Nancy. She seems to enjoy putting you down and belittling you in front of colleagues, even though you treat her well and she has no reason to attack you. It’s just how she is with everyone (assuming they let her get away with it). In a meeting, when you presented your idea for boosting sales of a new product, Nancy interrupted you, said it was a stupid idea and would never work.

This was, of course, hurtful and humiliating. For the rest of the meeting, you sat there fuming, angry thoughts and feelings churning away inside you like a toxic cocktail in a blender. Normally, that’s where the anger would stay — eating away at you inside, while you thought of a thousand witty putdowns that remained resolutely unsaid.

But not today. Because yesterday you worked with me on a new way of handling the Nancys of this world — using assertive communication to stand your ground and say what you needed to, even if that led to the conflict you so desperately try to avoid. So after the meeting, you (Sarah) march into Nancy’s office, sit across from her and get assertive.

Sarah: ‘Nancy, can I speak to you about the meeting.’

Nancy: ‘Oh, I don’t have time for that Sarah, I’m swamped!’

S: ‘This will only take a minute (refusing to be dismissed). I just want to tell you that when you interrupted me and shot my idea down like that, I really thought it was rude and disrespectful (step 1). Also, it made me look bad and feel embarrassed in front of the team (step 2). So in future, I would appreciate it if you would let me finish and respond in a more respectful manner (step 3).’

N (looking shocked): ‘Oh… um… well… I didn’t mean to upset you. I just come off a bit snappy sometimes. But your idea was a bit lame…’

S: ‘You are entitled to your opinion, of course. But again, in future, I am asking you not to interrupt me or speak to me in that rude way. Are we clear?’

N: ‘Um… I guess. Sorry.’

S: ‘No problem. I really appreciate your apology.’

Take-home points

Did you notice the way you refused to be dismissed and stuck to your guns? Also, that you used a three-step formula: ‘When you said/did A, I really felt B, and in future, I would appreciate it if you did/didn’t do C’

Simple, no? And that’s the point. When you’re being assertive, keep it short and simple. Don’t be tempted to add lots of words, or dress it up nicely. Be polite but firm. You don’t need to be rude or aggressive. Just say what you need to clearly and directly — that’s incredibly powerful.

And even though there is no guarantee that the other person will respond well, they usually do. Also, remember this isn’t a one-hit scenario. If Nancy does it again in the next meeting, you say the same thing again: ‘Nancy, remember when I asked you…’ Sometimes it takes a few reminders for people to get it, but they eventually do.

So, please do try this at home. Start with someone easy and a minor situation, to practice. Then work your way up to the toughest people, one step at a time. You will be amazed at how effective it is.

Good luck! I hope you enjoy your new superpower — and the newfound strength, confidence and self-worth that will start flourishing every time you use it.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Schema Therapy Supervision – Online Sessions Available

Are you a counsellor, psychotherapist or psychologist who is looking to integrate schema therapy theory and techniques into your practice? If so, I offer supervision online via Zoom. Typically, supervision sessions take place monthly, but this is flexible depending on your needs. Areas I can help with include:

• Formulating your clients’ problems in terms of their schemas and modes

• Dealing with complex cases, for example clients presenting with multiple diagnoses

• Therapeutic impasses and ruptures in the relationship, or ‘treatment-resistant’ problems including anxiety disorders, depression, substance abuse, eating disorders and dissociative disorders

• Working with both acute and complex trauma using the schema therapy model

• Using experiential techniques such as chair work, imagery rescripting and relational techniques

• Therapist burnout and managing the impact of trauma and complex cases on your own mental health

Supervision sessions last for 60 minutes and cost £130. If you would like supervision from a complex trauma specialist and Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor, email dan@danroberts.com or use the contact form to get in touch.

Warm wishes,

Dan

5 Things Parents Can Do to Raise Healthy, Happy Children

Image by Jakob Owens

Having children is the most profound, beautiful, life-changing and yet terrifying thing you will ever do. Nothing can prepare you for the awesome responsibility of holding that warm little bundle in your arms for the first time. And parenting — especially in those exhausting early years, when you think you will never sleep again — can be tough.

One of the hardest things for all parents is the worry that they will get it wrong and screw their kids up in some way. We will say or do the wrong thing and make them anxious, unhappy, or bereft of confidence. And no wonder — we are now deluged with information, much of it contradictory.

One parenting expert says let your baby cry it out at night; another argues vehemently against this, saying you should never let them cry. One expert recommends strict discipline with your teens; another says befriending and supporting them is best. This guru says be a Tiger Mom; that one says this will only make them stressed-out and destined to fail.

Trust your parenting instincts

Confusing, isn’t it? And in some ways I think the best thing you can do is ignore all the experts (including me!) and trust your gut. After all, some species of human has been raising children on this planet for millions of years. We know, in our DNA, how to raise healthy kids.

But the nature of modern societies means we now live in very strange, artificial, non-human ways — most of us in huge mega-cities, cut off from extended family and community, working punishingly long hours just to make ends meet. And many of us are stressed out, exhausted and stripped of our natural confidence about how best to parent.

Parents have never been under so much pressure to get it ‘right’ — while at the same time so lacking in elder-inherited wisdom about how to let themselves just be natural with their kids. Mums and dads are struggling — and I would like to help.

Lessons from my consulting room

As well as being the proud dad of a strapping 22-year-old young man — and having learned many parenting lessons the hard way over the years — I am also a therapist. I spend my days helping people whose childhoods have not been right for them, in one way or another.

Helping those struggling with chronic anxiety, depression, low self-esteem or a multitude of other life-limiting problems has taught me a great deal about what we, as parents, do to hurt our kids — even if we love them and are doing our best, which most parents are, most of the time.

It has also helped me understand what children need in order to be happy and healthy. After all, as I often tell my clients, babies are born ready to flourish. They are like little acorns, tiny and fragile but bursting with the potential to grow into a mighty oak. All they need are the right nutrients: light, soil, some minerals and they will thrive.

Your kids are just the same. So here are five pieces of hard-earned wisdom I would like to pass on to you, so that you can help your little acorns grow up strong, healthy and ready to flourish in the world…

1. There is no such thing as too much love

It is impossible to love your kids too much. That doesn’t mean you should spoil (see point 5), over-protect or smother them, but these are not the same thing as loving them. I mean hugging them, tight and often. Physical touch is how mammals communicate love, help to calm and soothe each other and build strong bonds (just watch a nature documentary about any kind of monkey cuddling and grooming each other to see how much our closest mammalian relatives need and value touch).

Tell them you love them, every day. And show them you love them, by listening intently; giving them your time, not money or things; play with them, read to them, bath them, be with them. These things feel good for you too, so it’s a win-win.

2. You can develop a secure attachment from day one

Babies are born hard-wired to attach to (usually) first mum, then dad, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts and everyone else they relate intimately to throughout life. And helping your kids develop a ‘secure attachment style’ is one of the greatest gifts you can give them — this will help them form close, loving, nourishing relationships for the rest of their life.

Again, this is about trusting your instincts. You are hard-wired to securely attach to them too. Just do all the stuff above, from the first seconds of their life, and you will both be fine. If you are able to breastfeed, that is wonderful. If not, please don’t feel bad about it — it’s not your fault and you can be physically close in many other ways.

Lots of skin-to-skin contact, soft words, lullabies, (just enough) eye contact, play, hair-stroking… just let yourself be an attentive, loving parent and you will raise securely attached, confident, loved kids.

3. Love your kids for who they are, not what they do

We have a self-esteem problem in Western societies. The (in many ways helpful) emphasis on good self-esteem means that we judge ourselves on our achievements and compare them with our peers. Parents do this too. We praise our kids for their gold stars, or straight As, or sporting prowess. And that’s fine, but I think it gives them the message: ‘I will keep loving you as long as you succeed!’

Instead, we should love them for them. And tell them, over and over: ‘I love you so much just because you’re you.’ With this unconditional love as a baseline, getting the A or scoring the winning goal is just the cherry on top. They already feel loved deep in their bones, so don’t need these achievements to feel good about themselves.

4. Aim to be a ‘good enough’ parent

The brilliant pediatrician and psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott, coined the phrase, ‘good enough mother’. I love this idea and use it with my clients (and myself) often. Parents — especially mothers — feel so much pressure to be perfect these days. But what does that even mean? I try really hard but I’m definitely not a perfect dad (just ask my son!).

Being good enough means trying your best, but getting it wrong sometimes. It means giving points 1–3 your best shot, but some days being a bit frazzled, snappy and impatient. It’s not a big deal. As long as that baseline of love is there, kids are pretty robust. They can handle an occasionally snappy mother or father and still turn out just fine.

5. Boundaries matter too

Although I think we should love-bomb our kids every day of their lives, I do worry about the kind of anything-goes, my little Tommy or Tina is the most special child in the world, I should never discipline them parenting I often witness. Kids need boundaries. They feel safe with structure and routine — especially with things like bath time, bedtime and (broadly) sleep routines.

It also makes them feel safe if they feel like you’re in control — no five-year-old should be the boss of a family! Children should be polite (mostly) and respect their elders. They need to learn not to hit, or bite, or have constant tantrums when they don’t get what they want, to share stuff, to be kind. Again, instinctively all parents know this, whatever the cultural or societal norms of the day.

So there you have it: my recipe for happy, resilient, self-valuing, confident kids. But please don’t turn these guidelines into more reasons to feel like you’re failing or beat yourself up! They are just guidelines. If they work for you, great. If not, do what feels natural to you.

Trust your instincts, go with your gut — and remember that you know how to do this. You don’t need a million parenting books to be a good mum or dad. Just love, value and cherish them and all will be well.

Warm wishes,

Dan

What is the Angry Protector Mode in Schema Therapy?

In schema therapy, we have a number of modes that feel, express or help us deal with anger. If you are in Angry Child mode, the anger will be felt and expressed like a child feels and expresses anger. It will feel intense and stormy, leading to shouting, swearing, breaking things or slamming doors. This is the mode people are in when they act out their aggression in road rage, air rage, etc – the anger is uncontrollable and often lands them in big trouble. Not so helpful, clearly.

The Angry Protector mode is a bit more subtle. As the name suggests, this is a protective part of you, which is always triggered in relationship to others. It can be a bit passive-aggressive, involving you looking grumpy, making snide or snippy comments, or generally showing people you are angry without necessarily telling them how you’re feeling.

Telltale signs

If you want to know how the Angry Protector appears in real life, look at this guy in the photo. Telltale signs that he’s in this mode include: grumpy expression; frowning; mouth firmly set; arms crossed; and generally giving off non-verbal signals that say, ‘I am not happy with you right now!’

But remember that underneath this angry exterior is another part, the Vulnerable Child. This is the part of him that is hurting, feeling criticised, attacked, rejected or abandoned. His Little Self feels overwhelming pain, so this protector mode gets triggered to push you away. You back off, either figuratively or literally, which makes him feel safe and in control. But of course that’s not a great way to manage relationships, because if this keeps happening he will end up isolated and lonely, because he has pushed everyone who loves him away.

Healthy Adult anger

There is a final option for feeling and expressing anger, which is your Healthy Adult. This is the part of you that feels anger in a healthy, proportionate way – not feeling uncontrollable rage if someone is a bit rude, say. In that situation, your Healthy Adult would feel, maybe 20% angry, then express that anger clearly and assertively. You might say, ‘I don’t agree with what you’ve said – and I actually think it’s quite rude, so please don’t speak to me that way.’

Now this is not easy – many of us must spend years learning how to be more assertive – but it is doable (here’s a post I wrote about assertive communication). I have taught many, many people how to be more assertive over the years (and learned those skills for myself!). Schema therapy doesn’t have the monopoly on those skills – cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) or dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) are two approaches that teach assertiveness very effectively.

So if you find yourself – or someone close to you – being grumpy, irritable and generally embodying the Angry Protector on a regular basis, you might need some help from a skilled therapist. I very much hope you get the help you need.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why is Your Attachment Style so Important?

Image by Ekaterina Shakharova

Humans, like all mammals, are hard-wired to attach to their parents from the moment they are born. When you are a tiny baby, the first person you usually attach to is your mother, followed by your father, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles, friends, teachers, colleagues, romantic partners, and so on, throughout your life.

This ‘attachment system’ in your brain is very powerful, because when you are small and helpless it is literally a matter of life and death whether your parents – usually starting with your mother – love, feed and keep you safe. So attaching to them is absolutely vital.

The first person to really understand this was John Bowlby, a psychoanalyst who argued that all babies have this attachment system and, depending on their relationship with their mother, form either a secure on insecure attachment.

A secure attachment means your mother has looked after you well enough, given you lots of love and hugs, changed you when you were wet, fed you when you were hungry, made plenty of eye contact, sung to you – and all the other things babies need to feel safe and secure.

Attachment and relationships

If your attachment was insecure, your mother – for all sorts of reasons, often because her own attachment with her mother was not secure – couldn't meet your needs as a baby, so you didn't feel 100% loved by or safe with her.

One of Bowlby's  groundbreaking ideas was that the kind of attachment style you developed as a baby would stay with you into adult life. Why is this so important? Because people with an insecure attachment will struggle to form strong, lasting, happy relationships with friends, colleagues and especially romantic partners.

In schema therapy terms, these people may have an Abandonment schema, so constantly worry about being left or rejected by their partner. Understandably, this causes all sorts of problems and makes it very hard to have a stable, happy relationship with anyone.

The good news is that, as Bowlby and later attachment researchers found, you can learn to have stronger attachments – and therefore better relationships – throughout your life. Schema therapy is one of the approaches that is very good at making these changes. If you do have an Abandonment schema, for example, we would work together on healing it so you felt happier, more confident, more trusting and relaxed in relationships.

As I always tell my clients, however difficult things were in your childhood, and however much you are still affected by those experiences as an adult, it's never too late to change. Heal your schemas and you heal the most painful and vulnerable parts of you – this really can be life-changing, as I have seen time after time with the people I work with.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How do Online Sessions Work for Schema Therapy?

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During this stressful time, many of us will be struggling with anxiety or low mood, especially if you are self-isolating or on lockdown, with few chances to leave the house. If you are finding it hard to cope during the coronavirus outbreak, first and foremost connect with your friends and loved ones.

Social distancing is, in my opinion, not the most helpful term right now. Instead, we should all be physically distancing but socially connecting – by phone, social media, Skype, Zoom or any other way that lets us stay in touch with those we love, while keeping them and ourselves safe.

If you need more help than that, do reach out to me or another mental-health professional, who can offer guidance and support during this hard time. I have long worked with clients online via Zoom. It also means I can help people all over the world, which is wonderful. I am offering both short-term and long-term therapy during the current crisis.

Here are a few guidelines about how online therapy works:

1. I use Zoom for online sessions – it has revamped its privacy/security recently, so I am confident it’s a secure and confidential platform for therapy. Using Zoom is very simple. Before your session, I will send you a link via email, which you click on to join an online ‘waiting room’. At the start of the session, I click on your name to begin our session, then lock the meeting to ensure complete confidentiality.

2. I will create a shared folder on Dropbox, so that we can share important documents like an intake form, or notes I want you to read after a session. This means that all communication is confidential (Dropbox also has strict security measures in place).

3. You may feel uneasy about having therapy online. But, having provided hundreds of online sessions over the years, I find it works very well for schema therapy. We get to see each other and hear each other’s voice. And clients tell me they feel safe and connected to me.

4. That said, we need to be flexible to make it work. Exercises like chair work are obviously a bit trickier online! But I do them, regularly, and will explain how to make them work. After the session I will send you an iZettle invoice, so you can pay quickly and securely. And that’s it!

If you have any questions about online session with me, email dan@danroberts.com or use the contact form to get in touch.

Warm wishes,

Dan