HEALING DEFECTIVENESS SCHEMA: Phase 2

• Mindfulness Based Anxiety Reduction: MBAR
  • ASSESSMENT: Over-Compensation Questionnaire
  • ASSESSMENT: Avoidant Coping Questionnaire
  • HEALING IRRATIONAL ANXIETY: Phase 1
  • HEALING DEFECTIVENESS SCHEMA: Phase 2
  • HEALING SOCIAL ANXIETY: Phase 3
  • HEALING IRRATIONAL PANIC: Phase 4
  • RATHER THAN AVOID, MEDITATE: Phase 5
  • SCHEMA ARE COSMIC: Phase 6
  • TREATMENT: Mindful Exposure to Disturbances
  • TREATMENT: Mindful Exposure to Images
  • TREATMENT: Mindful Exposure To The Large Breath
• Additional Resources
  • Videos
  • PDFs

Mindfulness, a practice of Non-conceptual Meditation, broadly supplants our maladjusted coping modes, and sets us on the path of healing. Instead of trying to escape our irrational anxiety, we observe and accept it.  True acceptance comes with decentering (not personalizing). We learn through non-conceptual practices to stay interested in our experience, regardless of the mind’s distress. This capacity is developed by consistent meditation, and its equivalents, that suspend habitual self-appraising, as well as habitual judging of others.  We suspend “shoulding” ourselves and the world. This is not passivity.  The spirit of acceptance is, both, courageous, and serviceable.

Surrender (resignation) to the Defectiveness Schema fulfills the schema.

Resignation to a maladjusted schema reduces anxiety, but not in a healing way. It is like believing you are a bad person, then proceeding to live through evil ends.  This resignation bypasses moral conflict, as well as anxiety, by succumbing to the negative impression. So dodging anxiety is not always adaptive. “Giving in” to the sense of being inadequate, for example, can reduce anxiety, only to be replaced with depression.   

Over-compensating doesn't work.

Buying into automatic thoughts that suggest a threat to your self-esteem can trigger measurable efforts to over-compensate, by being impressive, outstanding, or even superior.   The person, then, becomes an actor, playing to a mental image of a judgmental society.  This, negative spell can result in humiliating realities, and anxious distress.  There are also other over-compensations that are very common.  You will encounter them by reviewing the over-compensation assessment tool.

The process of change is not always simple. But, this complex process is nature’s job, and nature knows just how to do it.  Exposure therapies work reflexively, rather than willfully. 

Recommendation: Listen to Recovering From Defectiveness Pt 1.

Also, keep meditating.  Seek-out supports by connecting with other meditators. 

Schema healing and anxiety reduction depends upon becoming present to our mental events. Emotional wounds resonate in the present moment, because they are attached to our memory. Schemas and our traumatic impressions are very real. We are wise to accept their presence. We must learn to prevent them from disorienting us.

Cesar