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Schemas are deeply ingrained emotional patterns that repeat throughout our lives sabotaging our attempts to reach our goals, dreams and live a fulfilling life. Identifying and reducing your schemas is the key to achieving lasting change.

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Breaking the Patterns from the Past


Welcome to this 3 part video training series on

Breaking the Patterns from the Past.

This video series is for anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of why we often find ourselves stuck with difficult emotions, unhelpful thoughts and self sabotaging behaviours. 

The information in these videos is absolutely groundbreaking and is based on the most up to date scientific research from the fields of neuroscience, attachment, trauma and child development.


Video # 1           What Every Child Needs

In this first video, you will learn about what we need as children to develop a healthy balanced brain that allows us to thrive in life.

You will also learn about essential emotional needs and the devastating impact on the brain when these needs go unmet for prolonged periods of time. 

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD VIDEO # 1 WORKSHEET

Video # 2 will be posted on the blog section of this site in the next couple of days, so you might want to bookmark this page if you are interested in finding out how your present struggles might be related to your childhood environment.

In the meantime, why not join our free facebook group 'Breaking the Patterns from the Past'

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the information in the video - whatever they are! so please consider leaving a comment below.

How To Identify Emotions & Feelings


In my last post, I shared one of my series of videos on emotions  -'Dealing with overwhelming emotions'.  However, before we can really get anywhere with managing and processing emotions, we need to first be able to identify them.

And this isn't an easy task if we have spent most of our life avoiding, suppressing or numbing our emotions. Initially, it can be really difficult just staying with our feelings long enough to name them.

On top of this, the way our brains have developed can make it biologically quite difficult to identify our feelings.  This is often one of the main reasons a lot of self help books or therapies don't produce optimal results.

We first have to create the capacity for change in our brains. 

Check out the video below to find out more about this and also learn a 6 step process for identifying your emotions and feelings. 

 


Click here to get a copy of the emotions and feelings list mentioned in the video.


If you found this video interesting, or you struggle to manage your emotions, why not have a look through our schema pages or join our free face book group. Breaking the Patterns from the Past. 

Our new online programme designed to help you heal the patterns from the past launches on Monday 14th May so if this is something that you might be interested in click here for more details

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the information in the video, so please feel free to leave a comment below.

How To Deal With Overwhelming Emotions

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One of the most important skills we can master in life is the ability to manage our emotions and feelings.

The inability to manage and process emotions effectively is at the heart of the majority of mental health issues we face today.  

Anxiety and depression happen when we get 'stuck' in high or low emotional states.

Addictions take hold when we rely exclusively on external sources to change the way we feel. ​

Over-eating becomes a problem when we use food to 'stuff our feelings down' because other options don't seem to be available to us. 

If we want happy, successful relationships and true emotional intimacy, we need to be able to express our feelings - no matter how scary - and also be able to sit with the uncomfortable feelings of others.

If we want to achieve the goals we set for ourselves, we need to be able to push through a range of uncomfortable emotions - fear, anxiety, self doubt, guilt, frustration and perhaps shame - to get where we want to be in life. 

But learning to deal with emotions and feelings effectively is not something we can learn overnight. Quite often, our brains have developed in ways that make it biologically very difficult to manage emotional states.

If you want to learn a little more about this, check out my video below  on "Dealing with overwhelming emotions" 


If you found this video interesting, or you struggle to manage your emotions, why not have a look through our schema pages or join our free face book group. Breaking the Patterns from the Past. 

Our new online programme to heal the patterns from the past launches on Monday 14th May so if this is something that you might be interested in click here for more details

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the information in the video, so please feel free to leave a comment below.


The Healing Power Of Anger


Anger gets a really bad rap these days. 

We are socially conditioned to believe that it's a very 'wrong' emotion. That if we get angry, we're not very evolved, civilised or enlightened. And so, we're often encouraged to "forgive and forget' , "let it go" and just "chill out" and "get over it" 

But if we don't give anger the acknowledgement and respect it deserves - we are doing ourselves and society a great deal of harm.

Anger is a valid, and entirely appropriate feeling to have when we are mistreated, abused, disrespected or our boundaries violated in someway.

It's a very powerful, hard-wired survival emotion that gives us the determination, motivation and strength to protect ourselves and those we care about. 

So when we were brought up in an environment that was harsh, abusive, dismissive and neglectful, it would have been biologically unavoidable to experience anger. But in these kind of conditions - it was probably very dangerous to express how we felt. 

Many of the people I work with were given the message that anger was just not acceptable - that to show anger was disrespectful, rude and totally inappropriate.

Expressing anger in any form would have probably resulted in more abuse, rejection or humiliation. 

So what do we do when anger isn't allowed? What do we do with all this powerful energy that's building up inside of us?

We either suppress it - pushing it down, turning it in on ourselves. We tell ourselves that it's our fault we are angry - that we have done something wrong - that there is something very wrong with us at our core.  

Or we repress it - not even allowing it to surface into our conscious awareness - shutting down our emotions at a brain level.

Or it leaks out - like an overflowing sewage pipe - infecting our lives and those around us in subtle, unpleasant ways. 

Or we direct it at others who had nothing to do with the original perpetration. 

Suppressed anger energy doesn't just disappear - it continues to circulate in our system, fuelling a whole host of apparently unrelated problems. Anger often underlies other difficult emotions such as anxiety and shame. And when it's turned inwards onto ourselves, it causes chronic, unrelenting depression.

When it's repressed, the same brain mechanisms also repress other emotions - joy, enthusiasm, passion, hope, excitement - resulting in a flat, colourless existence.

And when it's projected, well look around you - the extent of the violence in the world today is evidence of the effects of mis-directed anger. The mass school shootings, the murders, rapes, assaults, racist attacks and general hostility towards vulnerable targets.

Some researchers believe that Hitler's atrocities were actually a result of repressed anger towards his parents.

And the effects are not just psychological - there are countless studies that link unexpressed anger to the onset of diseases such as cancer, and heart-disease.

I think you get the picture - we need to express our anger or we're pretty much doomed.

So where do we start?

Do we start screaming and shouting while pummelling a pillow? Do we unleash our fury by bashing an effigy of our parents? Well, in a nutshell, no.

This is another misconception about anger - that if we vent our anger through a short burst of aggression, we release it - job done. And while that might help us to feel better momentarily - it doesn't do much to get to the root of the problem.

We need to get in touch with our anger from past hurts and abuse and direct it at the person who was responsible.

This doesn't mean punching them in the face. 

It means looking back on how we were treated and allowing the anger to come up.

Many people find this difficult as there are so many unhelpful beliefs and other emotions in the way.

As soon as anger starts to emerge, you might tell yourself that you are being over-sensitive or over-reactive. Or you will tell yourself that you are bad for feeling anger and that your caregivers (or whoever mistreated you) loved you really and were doing the best they could.

Maybe they did love you. Maybe for the most part they treated you well. But that's not the point. It's not about blame - it's about allowing valid emotions to emerge that should have been allowed at the appropriate time.

The point is to allow that anger to be experienced in your body. To allow and feel the suppressed energy as it comes to the surface.

You might be overwhelmed by guilt, shame and confusion as you start to allow the anger to move through you. You will likely have a strong urge to stop it, to push it back down.

But you have to find a way through this.

Anger absolutely HAS to be felt.

It's not about reacting to it or acting on it immediately.​

It's about experiencing it and trying to make sense of it and then deciding what to do about it.

You might worry that it will overwhelm you if you allow it, but if you take it slowly, breathing through the feeling, it will peak and subside.

You don't have to - and probably shouldn't - direct it at the person who it is meant for. At least not until you have felt and processed it. Then maybe, if it's appropriate, you can think about how you are going to do it later down the line.

One way to direct it safely is to write no-send letter to the person - telling them how it was for you as a child - how painful their treatment was of you. Just write freely, putting down on paper everything that comes up. Putting feelings into words is one way to release them.

Expressing anger

As you move through the experience of allowing anger - you might notice that you are getting angry with everyone! You might have an urge to shout at your children, at your spouse, at the driver who cuts you off in traffic.

You might start noticing how you suppress your feelings and needs constantly in your life- and this will probably make you more angry.

That's Ok. Just don't act out on it. If you do, just apologise. 

It takes time to heal from childhood emotional and psychological wounds. It will take time for all this energy to work through and out of your system.

You can the process along by writing in a journal, focusing on the feelings in your body as they arise and working out where exactly the anger is coming from.

Allowing your anger is empowering. Even more empowering is developing the ability to express it in healthy assertive ways. 

In the wise words of good old Aristotle:

"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."

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If you are struggling with anger - either finding it difficult to control or difficult to express - there might be a schema playing out. 

Subjugation, Self-sacrifice and Defectiveness & Shame often result in anger suppression. Emotional inhibition can cause anger repression. Abandonment and Mistrust & Abuse can cause a lot of anger outbursts and projections.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this article and your own experiences of working through anger. Please feel free to leave a comment below and also share this article if you found it helpful.

Love’s Executioner

The Abandonment Schema

We are all on a quest for happiness. Yet, given the rapidly increasing rates of depression and suicide, it would seem that happiness is somehow eluding us.

We tend to think the things that make us happy are; more money, a better body, status, an exotic holiday, a new car, a bigger house.

But if these things really did make us happy, then there would be no miserable millionaires or addicted celebrities. In fact, statistics show that the wealthier a nation is – the higher the rates of depression are.

So, what does make us happy?

Well, according to the longest study on human happiness

“… the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”

The Grant Study, starting in 1938, followed the lives of  250 men for over 75 years to determine what factors predicted happiness and health over the life span.

Over and above everything else, money, fame, status etc, it was the QUALITY of their relationships that predicted whether the men would be healthy and happy.

And given what we know now from recent neuroscience research – this makes total sense.

Feeling seen, understood, accepted and that we belong is not just a wish for some of us – it's a biological necessity for us all.

When our emotional needs are not met, we are programmed to experience feelings that result from this – sadness, loneliness, shame and often, a deep sense of unworthiness.

Much as we probably don’t like to admit it – we do indeed need other people to feel happy.

So why is it so hard for some of us to find good quality relationships?

George Valiant –  Director of the Grant study, noted that the men who were unable to maintain healthy relationships – the ones also likely to succumb to addictions and mental health issues – had one thing in common. They had developed ‘defenses’ against love.

He had this to say:

“Happiness Is Love. Full Stop. But In Order To Permit Love To Make You Fulfilled, You Have To Be Able To Take It In, Which Means That You Have To Feel Inside That You Are Loved”.

One of the biggest obstacles to ‘taking in love’ is the Abandonment schema.

This is one of the earliest schemas to develop in life – sometimes as early as a few months old. Many people think it occurs when we are literally abandoned – when a parent leaves or dies. And while this can definitely be one of the causes – other causes are actually much more subtle.

One of the most common reasons the Abandonment schema develops is when our emotional needs are not met for a prolonged period of time. When we are ‘emotionally’ abandoned.

This can happen when we have care-givers who are addicted, sick, over-worked, stressed or emotionally unstable. Or even if we are hospitalised for a while.

The key factor in the development of abandonment is the unpredictability of the care-givers responses.

Sometimes they tend to our needs and other times they don’t. Sometimes they are warm and loving, and sometimes they are cold, distant or overtly hostile and abusive.

This lack of consistency plays havoc with our brains.  We are constantly in a state of stress. The amygdala – the brains danger scanner, is constantly on alert – looking for signs that the care-giver is going to switch off the love and attention - even when they ARE attentive. It becomes stuck at a higher baseline than average, a condition that can persist throughout life.

The video below shows just how distressed a child becomes when the mother is unresponsive.

If you experienced this kind of parenting, you are likely to have developed a pattern of ‘hyper-vigilance’ which has become deeply wired into the brain and is activated in close relationships.

You will have developed automatic thoughts and beliefs that people are not reliable, not to be trusted, that they could pull away and abandon you at anytime. You're probably very sensitive tothe slightest change in another person's moods and feelings, which causes a surge of anxiety and insecurity. 

When we get surges of intense stress and other emotions, our rational logical brain goes off line, leaving us at the mercy of our more reactive often irrational emotional brain.

If you have this schema, you might recognise yourself in some of the following signs;'

  • Hyper-sensitive to other people's feelings
  • Constant scanning for signs that your partner is losing interest or going to leave you
  • Obsessive thinking about your partner to the point that you can’t focus on anything else
  • Constant worrying that they might leave you get sick or die.
  • Pervasive feelings of anxiety, insecurity while in the relationship
  • A sense that you are ‘losing’ yourself
  • Clinging, possessive or controlling behavior
  • Needing constant reassurance
  • Difficulty with partners silence
  • Outbursts of anger and rage
  • Avoidance of close relationships altogether

As with all schemas, the abandonment schema is self-perpetuating.  It brings about the very thing that you fear; the loss of the relationship.

For other people, it can be very difficult to tolerate the intensity that the schema causes – the conflict, the monitoring, the control, the depth of the need, the outbursts. It can feel very suffocating to be on the receiving end of an abandonment schema and  eventually pushes people away.

Each time you enter a relationship, the schema gets stronger as it has more ‘evidence’ that people will leave. In the end, some people with this schema avoid relationships all together because they are just too painful.

The abandonment schema isn’t triggered in all relationships. It generally emerges when you are in a relationship with someone who is emotionally unavailable or unpredictable

Unfortunately, if you have this schema, you will be biologically wired to be attracted to emotionally unstable or unavailable people. Their unpredictability or distance will activate the stress response – feeling like excitement when it is often in fact anxiety.

But the good news is, you CAN heal this schema. It takes time and effort but if it means you will live a healthier, happier life, it’s worth it.

If you resonate with information in this article - why not consider joining my free face book group 'Breaking the patterns from the past'. Or check out our online programme, which will be launching mid-may.

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