Read Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. Online
Authors: Thomas Bien
Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. (26 page)
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Some of the more important schemas are not about matters like restaurants, but concern our emotional well-being—who we are, what other people are like, and how we fit into the world. For example, people who grew up during the Depression years often have schemas of deprivation. It is not uncommon for such a person to feel deprived even with far above average wealth. And there is no convincing such a person otherwise, despite the objective reality. Or sometimes, attractive men and women see themselves as unattractive. They manage to maintain this belief by discounting positive information about their appearance and magnifying the slightest hint of negative information. When a schema has been activated, you are looking at life through a particular lens or filter. Sometimes that lens may be distorted in a way that is maladaptive. Seeing yourself through schemas is like looking at yourself through a fun-house mirror; there may be some truth in the image, but it is so distorted that you can hardly recognize yourself. Often maladaptive schemas originate in childhood. It is as if we made some decisions back then about who we are and what the world is like, and no amount of contrary experience changes our conclusions. We maintain our schemas by ignoring and discounting information and experiences that do not fit them, while giving inordinate attention and validity to experiences that fit. In this way, schemas provide a sense of order and predictability, but at great cost. Both meditation and psychotherapy work by bringing attention to these patterns, which already begins to break them up.
See the World Afresh
Sometimes schemas are faulty. They also may limit the possibilities we see in new situations. The Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer’s research demonstrates that increased awareness has profound effects on our creativity, our adaptability, and even our health, longevity, and wellbeing. One example of this involves seeing things in what she calls a
“conditional” way. In one experiment, subjects were shown several ordinary objects. Some of them were shown these objects in the usual, unconditional way. “This is a hair dryer. This is an extension cord. This is a dog’s chew toy.” Others were shown these objects in a conditional way. This involved only the slight change of replacing the word
is
with the words
could be
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were told, “This could be a hair dryer. This could be an extension cord. This could be a dog’s chew toy.” Later, all subjects were put in a situation that required an eraser. Only those who had been told the objects
“could be” something could recognize that the rubber chew toy could also be used as an eraser. This is the kind of fluidity of thought, the sort of capacity to change cognitive sets, that you find also in Zen masters. Schemas do help to make our world more predictable and familiar, but they also prevent us from seeing other possibilities and acting creatively. Buddhism is full of stories about Zen masters who are not trapped in these categories of thought but find spontaneous solutions to problems that lie outside of traditional thought patterns. Thich Nhat Hanh recounts walking with a little girl who asked him what color the trees were. He told her: “They are the color that you see.” In this way, he pointed to her own immediate experience instead of adding to her thinking
about
the experience.
The Zen master Po-chang had to find a leader for a second monastery because of his many students. To identify the best leader, he set a pitcher (or what could be a pitcher!) before his monks and asked them to tell him what it was without calling it a pitcher. When the cook kicked the pitcher over and walked out, Po-chang was impressed, and made him leader of the new monastery. While it is never quite satisfactory to translate such Zen accounts into a moral precept, perhaps you could say that the cook pointed to the reality of the object as a thing you could interact with by kicking it—not what one typically thinks of doing with a pitcher. The cook was able to see reality outside of the concept “pitcher.”
Eleven Schemas
In their popular book
Reinventing Your Life,
the psychologists Jeff Young and Janet Klosko outlined schemas (which they call “lifetraps”) and how to change them. Here are the schemas they found most important: 1.
Abandonment.
The hallmark of this schema is a sense of continual threat that the people you love will abandon you in the end, leaving you alone and isolated. People with this schema cling tightly to others, which, ironically, often causes them to feel smothered 07 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:58 AM Page 165
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and eventually withdraw. In this way, the schema actually creates the feared result.
2.
Mistrust and abuse.
This is a pervasive expectation that others will hurt or abuse you. In order to then protect yourself, you treat others with suspicion. This can manifest as either few or no relationships, or relationships that are superficial. You may not ever really open up to others. Some people with this schema seem to choose people who will fulfill it, perhaps as an effort to overcome their fear.
3.
Dependence.
Having been made unsure of your own competence as a child, you need constant support from people who you feel are more capable than you are. Since others can never fully understand your needs, there is usually a letdown at some point, triggering anger at those you depend on. 4.
Vulnerability.
You never feel safe. Disaster in some form is always just about to strike, whether legal, medical, financial, or in some other form. As a child, you were repeatedly taught that the world is an unsafe place. Parents may have worried excessively about your safety.
5.
Emotional deprivation.
You feel that others will never meet your needs for love and understanding. You may be attracted to people who are cold and ungiving, thus endlessly creating feelings of deprivation, or you may be that way yourself, triggering more of the same from others. You alternate between being angry at others and feeling hurt and alone.
6.
Social exclusion.
You feel that you never quite fit in with others. If you have this schema, you probably never felt part of a group of friends when you were growing up. Perhaps there was something different about you that you felt prevented you from being accepted. 7.
Defectiveness.
You feel that there is something wrong with you deep down, that if people ever really got to know you, they would reject you. Conversely, if others do seem to value you, you may think there is something wrong with them for valuing such a defective person as yourself.
8.
Failure.
You view yourself as not achieving as much as your peers. You maintain this schema by exaggerating your failures and minimizing your accomplishments, which in turn keeps the pattern going.
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9.
Subjugation.
This is a pervasive sense that your own needs and desires are less important than those of other people. Either out of guilt (a sense that you will hurt others if you assert your needs) or fear (a sense that you will be punished for asserting your needs), you allow others to control you.
10.
Unrelenting standards.
This schema is essentially what has otherwise been called perfectionism. If you have this schema, you continually place achievement over happiness. You never feel that what you accomplish is quite good enough.
11.
Entitlement.
Individuals with this schema feel special. They feel that they should be able to have it all and to have it right now. Rules do not apply to them.
Bring Mindfulness to Your Schemas
Mindfulness can help us identify and alter our schemas.
First of all, as we become more mindful, as we learn to calm ourselves and look deeply, we become more aware of these patterns. For example, if you have an unrelenting standards schema, you start to notice how hard you are on yourself. If you have a mistrust and abuse schema, you may begin to notice how unsatisfying your relationships are and how self-protective you feel around others, as though at any moment they would try to hurt you. Looking deeply, you may begin to see how these schemas were lessons you drew from childhood experiences. Finally, as you become more calm and mindful, you begin to notice inconsistencies between your experience and your schemas. If you feel that no one likes or appreciates you, you may gradually become aware that at least some people actually seem to do so. You begin to allow yourself to see and acknowledge experiences that do not fit the schema, and in this way, over time, you begin to develop a new, more realistic view of who you are and what the world is like.
Sometimes it can be difficult to identify your schemas. In their book
Why Can’t I Get What I Want?
our friend the psychologist Charles Elliott and his coauthor, Maureen Lassen, describe how schemas can actually resemble their opposites. For example, a person with an underlying defectiveness schema may act as though he were supremely confident, doing this in an exaggerated, extreme way in an attempt to try to defend against his underlying pain. Or a person with a social 07 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:58 AM Page 167
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exclusion schema may always insert herself in social situations in overly aggressive, intrusive ways to compensate for these painful feelings. So if you find yourself acting in such an exaggerated way, you might consider whether the underlying schema is exactly the opposite of what it might appear.
Two schemas that may be difficult to distinguish are emotional deprivation and entitlement. With both of these schemas, you often feel hurt by other people. In the case of emotional deprivation, you feel hurt because you continue to see and interpret life events as once again showing you that your needs are never met, seeing slights everywhere and neglecting to notice the occasions when your needs actually are given consideration. People with entitlement schemas can feel hurt, too, but for a different reason: They feel hurt because they expect too much from other people. People with both sorts of schema suffer a lot, and one is not more deserving of kindness or empathy than the other. But there is a tendency for those with an entitlement schema to be a little more angry than hurt. Also, those with entitlement schemas often act as though the rules don’t apply to them. They may park in the handicapped zones or be the one in class who continually asks for special favors from the instructor. As we become more calm and aware of the world as it is, our view of ourselves and of life clears. Mindfulness inherently breaks up the automaticity involved with such distortions. It helps us to distinguish between the world as it is and our maladaptive view of it.
Identify Your Maladaptive Schemas
After calming yourself with mindful breathing, write down a list of key emotional events in your life—events that touched you for good or ill. Just give these events short titles, such as “The time I won that award,”
or “The day my father died.” Now consider how these events affected you. If you recorded a death or the breakup of a relationship for example, did it leave you with a feeling that people always leave you? Then you may have an abandonment schema. Did you list the time you brought home a report card with all A’s and one B, and your father said,
“Why did you get the B?” You may have an unrelenting standards schema. At first, consider these as just guesses. To know if they are 07 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:58 AM Page 168
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schemas, you must see that there is a repeating pattern—that people always seem to leave you, that you are always focused on minor mistakes you make rather than your overall competence, and so forth. Find your own one-sentence way of expressing the schema. With therapy patients, quite often someone will deny having “abandonment”
issues. This term just doesn’t strike a chord. But if you put it something like, “I find myself always on guard for signs that people will leave me,”
they may resonate with this. To another person, these may seem very much the same thing, but for the individual there can be a world of difference in the shades of meaning. Say it your way, using your own words so that it connects with your experience and memory. Also, don’t be limited to the list above. If you find another term for it that fits better for you, use it instead. In the coming days or weeks, be alert for emotional reactions to situations that confirm your guesses. Breathe consciously and then let your attention expand to include the feelings in your body, your thoughts, and your emotions, in addition to the breath. Notice what triggered the schema. Persist in bringing kind, calm attention to the schema. This begins to change the pattern.
Nurture Yourself
When we are distressed, it is time to be especially gentle with ourselves. We need to take care of ourselves, to give ourselves more of the things in life that are nurturing and healing. In doing so, instinct is on our side. Animals crawl away to a quiet, safe place to rest when they are sick. They instinctively withdraw and allow themselves to rest so healing can occur. Human beings, however, do not always follow this instinctive wisdom. We rush around to doctors and pharmacies. Sometimes we even nurture the pain we feel, refuse to rest, and cut ourselves off from sources of healing.
Barbara, for example, refused to answer the phone call from her friend. If this had been a person with whom her relationship were less positive, this would have made more sense. In that case, she would have been protecting herself and her wounded animal nature. But this was not so. Her friend was someone who always did her best to listen deeply when Barbara was troubled. Talking with her could only have helped. 07 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:58 AM Page 169