Changing Expectations: How Beliefs Impact Mental Health

Foreign I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on how schema affect anxiety and depression. Exploring the mind body connection. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this presentation we're going to define schema, explain how they're formed and yes, space, time, they are affected by our culture and the messages we get from around us. We will discuss why schema may be inaccurate or outdated and identify at least five strategies to help people address unhelpful schema. Schema are mental representations or beliefs about a particular person, event, place that we repeat and hopefully address through throughout our lives. It's our brain's mental shortcut. When you drive up to a stoplight, if it is on yellow, you know it is probably going to become red. Based on your schema when you go to work, based on your schema, based on what you've learned about going to work, you know what the expectations are for dress and what you're supposed to do there. Now, every workplace may be a little bit different, so you may need to modify those schema over time. Likewise, you may pull up to a traffic light and it's three o' clock in the morning and instead of operating like it normally does, it's just a flashing yellow. And so you need to adjust your schema, otherwise you're going to be sitting there for a really long time. Schema help us anticipate the future based on our past experiences and predict the safety of a person or situation. Again, we're looking at what have we learned in the past based on similar experiences we've had. Schema are a type of metacognition. It's how we think about what we're thinking. It's an overarching folder. If you want to think of our thoughts as having folders and subfolders, you would have, for example, a folder about bills. And in that folder you may have subfolders for your insurance bills, for your electric bills, for these different bills. And when you get them, you know what you need to do. Schema that tell us that we are unsafe and powerless promotes viewing the world through that lens and leads to chronic stress. If we've had experiences in which we have been unsafe and disempowered, that is what we talk about a lot as trauma. And that forms a schema that helps us predict what might happen in the future. If your experience, if you have experienced multiple instances where you felt unsafe and powerless, then your brain may kind of lump all that into an overgeneralization that says nobody and nowhere is Safe and I am powerless. And we're going to talk about how to why those form and how to address those. Think of times that you or a client held a faulty schema, a faulty anticipation of what was going to happen, and it contributed to unnecessary stress, anxiety, depression, interpersonal distress, GI distress. You know, we know when we're under stress, it actually changes our gut microbiome we, which alters our neurotransmitter levels. And we know when we're under stress, we don't sleep as well. So let's think about times when we or somebody we know or worked with had a faulty schema that caused unnecessary distress. Schema about doctors, teachers, law enforcement, or ems. If you've had good experiences with them in the past, then you may think about going to your doctor's appointment as, hey, this is going to be great. They're going to help me feel better and then I'm going to go home. If you've had not so great experiences, you may be dreading going, figuring it's just going to be a waste of time and they're going to run three hours late, etc. And you can see how prior experiences, for example, with teachers may shape how you interact and how you perceive teachers in the, in the future and throughout my, you know, educational career from kindergarten all the way through graduate school, I had a lot of teachers with a lot of different personalities. And it was important for me to be able to step back and evaluate each professor or each teacher based on their individual characteristics. Yeah, they all have some similarities, but there are some nuances. So I interacted differently with different professors. Schema about dogs We've, we talk about this a lot because it's a common fear of a lot of people. Some people see dogs and they think, oh, cute puppy. Other people see dogs and they're terrified based on their schema from past experiences. Now, not all dogs are good. Well, behave properly. Not all dogs behave aggressively. And so when we encounter dogs, we have that initial schema that says, all right, based on my past experiences, this is what I'm expecting. And then we need to say, all right, but that gives us a heads up about what might happen, what is actually happening in this context at this time with this dog. I mentioned earlier, we have schema about workplaces. If you have worked in workplaces that were toxic, that were adversarial, then you may expect every workplace to be toxic or adversarial, which also means you're going to be on alert for those behaviors. You're going to Be more likely to notice toxic and adversarial behaviors or perceive behaviors as being toxic or adversarial. Yes, you had a bad experience at XYZ company. Let's not make your current company carry the baggage of the old company. Our schema about ourselves and our goodness, are we capable? Are we good people? If we are constantly criticizing ourselves and telling ourselves that we're no good, yeah, that's going to contribute to distress schema about our competence and personal power. This is another area. As children, when we're starting to form our initial schemas, we think globally, we think egocentrically. You know, how we perceive it is how everybody perceives it. We think personally. And children often have difficulty separating. When you have a situation, what parts of this situation can I change? They either want to be able to change the whole thing or they think they can't do anything at all. And adjusting our schema to be less, all or nothing, to use fewer cognitive distortions is really important. Yeah, there are certain things in just about every situation that we cannot change. However, there are a lot of things we can. And the schema about the safety or dangerousness of other people. If you've experienced trauma, especially interpersonal trauma, then you may have difficulty trusting others. You may not overgeneralize as much and think nobody safe is safe anywhere. You may think that people who have these characteristics are unsafe. And in general, I don't think it's accurate to categorize people. People with these characteristics might be unsafe, but what about this particular person? I worked a lot with people who were homeless when I was in Florida. And that's a great population. I enjoyed working with them. But not every person that I encountered was safe. Most of them were. And most people have a different schema about those who are are homeless. Same thing with my criminal justice population. I love working with that population. Yeah, they did some bad things. It doesn't make them a bad person. But we still need to be aware that there are some that probably are on the sociopath end of the spectrum. So not lumping in all people who have criminal histories as being bad people or dangerous people. And that's really what we need to think about. So schema are your brain shorthand that tells you, based on what we know up till now, this is probably what we can anticipate. Schema are formed based on the interpretation of the event and memories of experiences. And interpretation is really important. If you go into a situation expecting the worst, you're probably going to experience the worst. You're going to perceive it as being threatening, as being overwhelming. If you go into a situation and perceive it as a challenge or perceive it as no big deal, you're probably going to notice different things and your stress response isn't going to be primed ahead of time. That doesn't negate what happened. Your memories in the past doesn't mean it's okay, doesn't mean you got to let go of that pain. That's. You can do that whenever you're ready to address those issues. Or schema can be modified though to say that situation was dangerous, that was awful, that was traumatizing and I had no power. This situation is very different. There are similarities, but what are the differences? And remember that we are different. I'm different today than I was yesterday or three days ago. And I'm stronger, I hope today than I was yesterday or three days ago. That's one of my goals. And things that may have caused me distress in the past may still be distressful. But I can look at what's one of the things that's different between then and now. I'm stronger. I have different tools. Our interpretation of what's going on is impacted by our, our age and our similar experiences. Remember I said that children are think in all or nothing terms, are egocentric and tend to think person, personalize everything. It happened because of me. You see the world the same way I do and it's an all or nothing situation. You love me or you hate me. That is the way children are wired. Go back and look at Piaget's study on cognitive development. So our initial schema are formed in very primitive fashions to help us stay safe, no doubt. But they need to be modified once we develop formal operational thought. Unfortunately, most people don't really realize that. And that's part of our caregivers responsibility is to help us start differentiating, to start moving from all or nothing to. Some people with trauma histories may notice and remember more threats in the environment if they feel unsafe. If at their very core they feel like the world is an unsafe place, they're going to be hyper vigilant. When you're hyper vigilant, you notice more things. You're walking through the woods and maybe you've encountered a poisonous snake in the woods before and, or a bear, you know, and you're like, okay, I don't want to get eaten by the bear. So when you're walking through the woods the next time you're on high alert and you're hearing every crackle, every leaf move, whereas Somebody who hasn't had that experience probably isn't quite as aware of everything that's going on. Even if they are, they're probably interpreting it as the wind, not, oh, my gosh, there could be a grizzly bear out there. We need to recognize people's perceptions of the same exact situation may be very different based on their prior experiences and their expectations and interpretations of the present. We're going to talk about this more, but it is important to recognize that that schema need to be changed. And as part of our developmental process, our caregivers that are consistent in their responses to us, they pay attention to what we need and what's going on, and they're responsive. They help us tolerate distress. They help us evaluate the situation in context and. And figure out the next decision or the next best action is really important because our caregivers are capable of formal operational thought. Not every child is capable of it when their caregiver is introducing it. That's okay. You can introduce concepts that the child will have difficulty coming up with on their own, like, what parts of this question could you change? Or, you know, I said people personalize things on the playground. Tommy and Jimmy get into a fight. One takes his ball and goes home, whatever's going on. Tommy, who was the aggressor, may need to understand why Jimmy took his ball and went home. He may be like, I don't understand why he did that. A caregiver could help him take Jimmy's perspective. You know, if you were Jimmy, how would you feel? And a lot of times the kid's going to look at you kind of confused. All right, let's turn the tables. If Jimmy acted that way to you, what would you do? And this is just really helping, providing scaffolding, helping them move toward that formal operational thought. Empathy is important. Empathy and validation are super important because the child's perspective. The child's eight years old, we'll say, and has had eight years of experiences with which to judge the present. You are 28 years old. You've had 28 years worth of experiences and time to differentiate those folders and really figure out your filing system. So a ch. What seems overwhelming and like the end of the world to a child or terrifying to a child may not seem like a big deal to you, however it is to them, because in their world, based on their experiences and their thinking, it is a big issue. You know, it's a hurdle, and we need to make sure that they feel safe when children. Well, people don't feel safe. They have Difficulty learning. When they don't feel safe, they stay in that threat response with that HPA axis activated. They stay hyper vigilant. And when we're in that fight or flight, flee, fawn or forget about it mode, our brain is actually sort of prevented because of all the glutamate from solidifying a lot of our memories, from learning effectively, from being able to say, okay, let me look back at this situation and what can I learn from it? Thinking about how a lack of these behaviors from a caregiver or a significant other, if we're talking about an adult, how might this contribute to anxiety, depression or trauma? Remembering trauma as a sense of powerlessness and unsafeness. Children can't pay the rent, they can't buy their own food. There's a lot of stuff they can't do. So if they aren't getting this responsiveness, they're, they're going to feel anxious, they're going to feel unsure. I want you to also think about how the schema of the caregiver impacts their response to the child. If the caregiver thinks it's a huge big deal, the child may not think it's a big deal at all. You know, hey, I was two hours late coming in from playing outside. Why are you freaking out, Mom? The kid doesn't get it. The caregiver, based on their schema, may see or may interpret that child being late, especially that late, as, oh my gosh, something bad must have happened. The caregiver would then communicate to the child, you weren't safe. You know, it's not safe to be out there. And then the child alters their schema to go along with that. So if we are coming from a perspective as caregivers, if we are coming from a perspective of trauma, then we are probably teaching our children and our significant others to perceive the world through a traumatized lens, because that's how we perceive it. How might a caregiver's response, a caregiver who didn't have these things or who had some trauma related schema contribute to anxiety, depression and intergenerational trauma? Well, you tell the kid, I don't know, didn't know where you were. You were gone for two hours. You were supposed to be late. I was sure something bad happened to you. My mother always used to like, used to like to say, I thought you were dead in a ditch. I'm like, no, ma, not at all. But the child hears that and perceives the panic and says, well, you know, caregivers like freaking out. There must Be something to be afraid of. So the child now internalizes that schema, internalizes that message. And when they have children, guess how they react when their child is two hours late from coming in from playing. Now, we can break the cycle. We can adjust the schema or, and or adjust the reactions. But it's important to recognize that our schema we do pass down. We do our schema as caregivers shapes the early schema of our children. Schema guide our interpretations and need to be updated and often organized into subfolders based on new information. We'll use dogs again because they're an easy target. You believe that all dogs are just wonderful, big old snuggly, furry, whatever. All right, that's not true. There are some dogs that for whatever reason, may be aggressive. Maybe they were abused. I believe that they are responding from a threat standpoint, but it's important to be able to categorize. Most dogs are really good fuzzy little critters. Some dogs, based on their history, may be aggressive. Or for example, my dog Brewster, we got him as a foster when he was about 18 months old and he had some abuse in his background and he is good around people and everything. Unless you walk over to him and you lean over him, lean over him. There's something about that particular stance which obviously puts him in a submissive position that terrifies him and he will just put his hackles up and go crazy. He's not crazy 99.999 of the time or only when somebody does that. So those are things that we have to be able to differentiate. When a threat schema is triggered, people respond with the stress response, which means they are in emotional reasoning. They are in crap. I need to make the threat go away. I need to fight, flee, fawn, freeze or forget about it. Operating in stress mode also prevents them from recognizing when a schema is inaccurate. If you're in in the midst of a situation where your prior schema said you're in danger, then when you experience that again, the automatic response is you're in danger. Not you're, you might be in danger. Let's evaluate. Kind of like when the smoke alarm goes off at home, doesn't always mean there's a fire. Sometimes it means that somebody took too hot of a shower. But when somebody has had a traumatic experience in the past surrounding a trigger surrounding a situation, they are more likely to perceive it as a threat in the present, which prevents them from effectively evaluating distress tolerance skills. Super important here. As Lindahan says, people need to be able to tolerate, acknowledge the distress, identify, hey, this is scaring the crap out of me. Tolerate the distress. Downregulate so they can get into their wise mind and evaluate the situation. Children have difficulty with specifying and sorting. Like we talked about a little while ago, they may see all dogs as aggressive if they've interacted with an aggressive dog. Likewise, they may see all dogs as, you know, furry little sweet critters and then they go up to some dog that they've never met before and they get bit. Not a good thing. We need to help them recognize and and start sorting. Children may have difficulty recognizing or people who don't change their schema may have difficulty recognizing that what was dangerous to you as a child may no longer be dangerous. If you're 44 years old, it's not safe for you to stay home alone. When you're 24 years old or even 14, then you know it's different. So the fears that you had when you were four about monsters in the closet or whatever, and the fears your parents had about leaving you alone, which are justified because it's not safe, they're not the same. So as caregivers, our schema have to change as our children grow. When we start to believe instead of they're unsafe being home, they are capable of being home during daylight hours or for two hours or whatever. Not only does the child schema need to change that says, hey, I'm safe, I can stay home by myself for two hours, or whatever the case is, the caregiver also has to communicate that there's a difference. We're not going to leave you home for a weekend. However, we believe that you are safe being home for two hours and that's the caregiver being responsive to the child and saying, we understand this is what we've always said and this is what's different now. You're 14 now, you're 24 now, and you can stay home alone. The ex expectations that applied to something 20 years ago may not apply now. Y' all know, or most of you who've been with us know that my family has a long history of cancer. And when I hear cancer diagnosis, my schema say, that's going to be really bad. However, cancer treatment has come so far in the past 20 years that that is not accurate. The same thing for HIV and aids. We have come so far in understanding and being able to address it, that instead of being a terminal, you know, a death sentence, if you will, it is an issue, but it's a one that can be addressed, and most people can go on to live a relatively, quote, normal quality of life. Schema can be inaccurate because of emotional valence. As I've mentioned multiple times. When we are already stressed, when we are already anxious or depressed, when we are exhausted, we tend to notice the threats more. When you're tired, your brain is going, all right, you got to be on alert. We also have a harder time changing threat schema. Schema that in the past helped us stay safe tend to be a little bit more resistant to change. If you had a bad experience with a dog, we'll go there. Instead of other traumas, then it may be harder to alter that schema. It may be harder to decondition or modify that schema because your brain's going, are you sure? Are you really, really sure? And this is where writing things down, journaling, filling out worksheets can be really helpful for people so they can process information after it occurs. Sometimes they something happened, they got really stressed out, their anxiety went up. All right, that sucks. Maybe later that evening, when they're reflecting on their day, they can explore what happened and explore the thoughts that they were telling themselves and identify whether it was actually threatening or not, and then look at that situation over time. Each time you encounter a dog, how many times did it turn out to fulfill your expectation and how many times did it not? Looking at the facts in context, there can also be a lack of knowledge, caregiver responsiveness, and healthy guidance on interpretation. That aspect of cares that we talked about earlier. For example, if the caregiver had mental health issue or addiction and they relapsed, then they may not be able to connect or be emotionally or maybe not even physically present for the child. So there's nobody there to help the child interpret the world from a more advanced perspective. So they're back to going, I'm going to perceive this as best as I can, egocentrically, personally, and all or nothing. The caregiver is angry. Okay, well, even if the caregiver isn't relapsed for some reason, if they come home and they're just in an awful mood, children often personalize that. And it's important for us as caregivers to communicate or even as significant others, because there's a lot of people in this world when their significant other comes home and they're in an awful mood, they assume it's something they did, or they assume things are getting ready to get unpleasant. It's important for people to be able to communicate their feelings, their thoughts, and develop and maintain Healthy boundaries. Caregiver is angry, had a bad day. The child thinks they're angry at me. So it's important for the caregiver to say, I had a bad day. It has nothing to do with you, and I need to, I need to take a time out for a little while or something. Okay? A lot of children who grow up in chaotic households also start to believe it's my responsibility to fix everything because caregivers were not responsive, they were not consistent, they were not available. Sometimes the child's learn. The child learns that if I want to get fed tonight, I gotta do it. If my brothers and sisters need to get to school this morning, I need to pack their lunch because I can't count on my caregiver, I can't count on other people to do it. So how does that shape the way they perceive the safety, safety of the world? And conflicting or inaccurate information like fear mongering and gaslighting, this can come from caregivers saying, oh, that didn't happen, or I always took care of you when that wasn't actually the case. Conflicting or inaccurate information from others, from others in your community, from others in your social media, whoever you're getting information from that's helping you process life on life's terms is helping to potentially shape your schema. Is the information you're getting accurate and theoretically unbiased? Most of us can say in most instances no, because everybody has their own schema. What somebody else may see as overwhelming or devastating you may not see as that way. So it's important to be respectful of people's boundaries, but also to recognize that sometimes conflicting information is not presented with malice and it's just what that person seized off of the experience. When cops interview people after some kind of an incident, they interview four people. They're going to get usually at least three, if not four, very different accounts of what happened based on their physical perspective as well as what they paid attention to in the situation based on their schema. And we can also get conflicting or inaccurate information from ourselves when we're telling ourselves, you can do this, and then the next minute you're going, you're telling yourself, why did you even try? You failed at everything. When you are telling yourself you're a good person and then something happens and, and you tell yourself you suck, that makes it really difficult to figure out what the truth is. According to schema therapy, there are several different types of schema. And I want you to think as I go through these, we're going to talk about modifying Them in a minute. I want you to think about what experiences might contribute to each type of schema. Remember, schema form throughout our lives. And if you work with adults, maybe somebody had a great childhood and everything was picture perfect and then stuff went to the toilet when they were in their 20s. All right, so some of their threat schema may not come from childhood. It's not always about childhood trauma. A lot of times it's about trauma, but maybe not childhood trauma. So we want to think about what experiences can people of different ages have that help them feel secure, that help them feel like somebody is going to be consistent, available, responsive, empathetic, whether it's people answering their text messages or calling to check in on you, or what is it for that person that help them develop their perspective, their schema about whether they're secure, whether, whether they're safe in relationships. And likewise, what experiences might contribute to people fearing that they're going to be abandoned as soon as their significant other comes in and is in a bad mood or maybe is withdrawn for a couple of days. They assume based on prior experiences that that is the beginning of the end of the relationship, which may not be true at all. Maybe that person has had a migraine for three days. Belongingness and connectedness versus alienation. Do I belong? Do are there other people out there that share common interests with me? Or am I out there, you know, this kind of, in this weird nothing land all by myself? What types of events might help people develop a sense of trust in themselves and others, as well as safety? And some of these schema are nuanced differences like security is a quality of a relationship. Trust and safety is sort of your perception of individuals or situations. Trust and safety versus abuse. What types of schema help people develop the belief that others will be emotionally supportive versus emotionally depriving and invalidating? When people tell you that you're feeling wrong or you're thinking wrong, your perception is inaccurate. How does that make you feel now? The perception may be inaccurate in their eyes and maybe eventually it's inaccurate in your eyes. But at that moment when you're having that perception based on your schema, it is accurate. At that point you acknowledge the schema and then you identify, you know, tolerate, tolerate the distress and then identify whether that schema is accurate in, in this context at this time. Just like the, the stoplight that I mentioned earlier, driving along at 3 o' clock in the morning, if I come to a flashing yellow light, my schema is going to take a minute to kick in because I'm used to, you know, yellow going to red, red going to green. That's how it works. But then I remember, oh, in this context at this time, yellow means this acceptance and commitment. Contentment versus hypercriticalness. When children are met with inconsistency or hypercriticalness, they will learn to be that way. Their schema will be formed that shapes how they perceive themselves as well as others and their situation. If their caregivers are never satisfied, then they are probably going to have difficulty. Adopting a schema of contentment like, this is good. It's always going to be. It should be better. Self concept and self esteem. Who am I versus who are you? And versus enmeshment. And in families where children are told what to think, or in relationships where people are told what to think and how to feel, that's enmeshment. It's a violation of boundaries and keeps the person from figuring out, what is it that I think and I feel? Success and empowerment versus failure. Self control and determination versus disempowerment. What. What do I see when I encounter a challenge? Do I see the aspects that I can control? And am I motivated to change the things I can? Or when I encounter a challenge, do I automatically feel like, screw it, it's not worth it. Positivity versus positivity and optimism versus negativity and pessimism. Competence versus defectiveness. Am I able to do this or am I defective? And independence. Can I survive on my own? Can I do things on my own? Now remember, we tend to be interdependent, but independence and dependence is a continuum. And some cultures are more interdependent sorry than others, which can affect people's perceptions, can affect people's schema based on what their culture has told them. As I mentioned earlier, forming healthy schema requires secure attachment both in childhood as well as in adulthood. In adulthood, our attachments are often to multiple people. There's not one person that is our primary caregiver when once we're adults, theoretically that's us. But there are people in our lives who are consistent, attentive, responsive, empathetic, and help us feel safe. They help us carry the load of life on life's terms. And when we don't have these needs met as children or adults, it contributes to stress. In terms of adjusting schema, we need to help people identify and evaluate their current schema that are causing their distress. What are you telling yourself when this happened? And this goes back to the ABCs of rational emotive behavior therapy. What are you Telling yourself, when you had that stress reaction in that situation, when you got upset, what were the beliefs that contributed to your upsetness? Those are the schemas. Those automatic beliefs are the schema that help you predict what comes next. It's important then to evaluate D is determine the accuracy of the schema in the present moment and E, evaluate the best way to use your act, use your energy to move toward what's important in your rich and meaningful life. So people need to evaluate the facts in this context at this time. The mnemonic for that is fitkat. And I like saying it just because it's kind of catchy and it can help people when things get really stressful. If they have something that's catchy, it's easier for them to remember, oh, I need to do this. We need to help people identify and address their cognitive distortions, their overgeneralization or all or nothing thinking every time this happens or I never, blah blah. Help them evaluate the facts in context and find exceptions. If it's all or nothing, what is a compromise? What's middle ground? If it's overgeneralization, you, you never empty the litter box. Let's look for exceptions to that. Very few things happen all the time and that can help people start recognizing that their schema may need to be addressed. Personalization. This happened because of me, because of something I did or because of something I didn't do. And a lot of times that kind of goes along with mind reading and jumping to conclusions. You're in a bad mood because of something I did. Well, where'd you get that information from? And that could come from a history of having to be hyper vigilant in a toxic environment. So now the person just assumes that I'm going to get blamed for whatever happens. It's my fault. I'm sorry. We need to help them explore three other potential reasons why this might be going on. Somebody's rude to you. All right. Could it be you? Yeah, maybe. Could it be that they just had something bad happen, they got a flat tire and they're late for work and they feel rushed and they're not paying attention to you. They're just, they're in a bad mood, they're being rude to everybody. What are some other explanations? Mind reading. Let's go back to personalization. There's one other I want to mention. Sometimes people are rude or ugly towards us and it's important for us to also examine what are their perceptions. Are they projecting a bad experience? Are their schema saying they that Person reminds me of somebody who was unsafe or nasty in the past. So they sort of anticipate or expect us to be nasty, so they're putting their stuff on us. Is it fair? No. Do we all do it? Yes. And it can be positive or negative. It's important to examine if somebody is ugly to you, you know, what part did you have in that, if any? And is it possible that you reminded them of somebody from their past and it really had nothing to do with you at all? Mind reading and jumping to conclusions is something that people often do if they've grown up in chaotic households, because that was the only way to stay safe, to anticipate ahead of time what the caregiver or somebody else needed or jump to conclusions in order to anticipate what they needed to do next. Caregiver comes in and they're, you know, kind of staggering around. The child may assume, you know, jump to the conclusion that caregiver's drunk. Well, that could be. Maybe the caregiver is their blood sugar is of whack and they're having a diabetic reaction. Now, I wouldn't expect a child to know this, but they're going to jump to conclusions. And the same thing is true for us in counseling a lot. When somebody acts a certain way, we may assume that they're intoxicated or assume that they are something else when that might not be accurate. If somebody is, you know, sitting in group and they're itching themselves a lot or picking at their skin, you might think that that is a sign of substance intoxication. It could be that they were out gardening and they got into a bunch of poison ivy. So we don't want to necessarily assume we know what is the probable thing. You know, based on our past experiences, this probably is what happening is happening, but we may not know that for sure. Emotional reasoning, making decisions based on how you feel. Because I feel angry, it must be threatening. Because I feel a scared, it must be a threat. Not necessarily. Prior experiences may have programmed your brain the form schema that set off that smoke alarm. But when the smoke alarm goes off, we need to say, all right, in this context, at this time, between saying that feeling anxious and evaluating the situation, we need to be able to down regulate those distress tolerance skills. And the same thing with catastrophizing. People who've had challenging experiences, especially people who had challenging childhoods, may think that whatever's going to happen is going to be a catastrophe. Because when things have gone wrong before, it's been catastrophic. Helping Them recognize in the present what is your personal power and what is the probability that your worst fear is going to happen. We want to explore schema related to old situations with what I call fresh eyes. If the person has abandonment schema, they believe that most people, or maybe everybody is, are going to abandon them. All right, where did that schema come from? Where did you learn that? And then let's explore that if a caregiver put you up for adoption or walked out on you, all right, as a kid you probably said that was me and I'm not lovable and people are going to abandon me. As an adult, you may be able to look back and go, that had nothing to do with me. My caregiver was on a three month bender on, on a drugs or something. So looking at it with fresh eyes as an adult, remember we can think of alternate explanations for why something happened. Whereas as a child, all or nothing personally safety, same thing. In the past, things may not have been safe for you, but looking back at it, what did you do to survive that helped you stay safe? Some people may have schema about futility and you can categorize these based on those schema categories we talked about earlier. But recognizing what was futile in the past because you didn't have the skills, the tools, the knowledge, whatever may not be futile now. Looking at it with fresh eyes, not the way that person did 10 years ago, but how you can right now in the present, encourage people to write down, you know, do the ABCD worksheet recognize patterns in schema that contribute to distress like situations like this remind me of. I had to appear at a couple of board meetings last week and I can tell you it triggered a significant stress response in me. Now why my schema were telling me that. I'm still not sure where that came from because I'd never been before a board before, but it was terrifying for me. So situations like this remind me of being powerless. Maybe not before a board, but in situations where I've had to do something and, and been completely at the mercy of whomever I was interacting with. We need to help people decide on the most accurate interpretation in the moment and how they can choose to use their energy to move toward what is important in their rich and meaningful life. I've said before, say again, what's important for me in my rich and meaningful life is not the same as what's important for my best friend. And that's okay. They are more motivated by money and being able to buy what they want when they want it. I'm more motivated by relationships. Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them. But when we encounter particular situations, we're probably going to make different choices based on, based on what motivates us in terms of schema restructuring. This really gets to the heart of those cognitive distortions and it's important for us to help people identify. All right, when you start fearing abandonment, when you start fearing that people are going to leave you, let's figure out what you're telling yourself and then let's evaluate what aspects of that you have control over. Will some people abandon you? Yes. Is it because of your unlovableness or you're not good enough? Only a person can answer that. I can't tell them no. Has nothing to do with you. But we need to help them evaluate the beliefs, the schema that they have, that are triggered when they encounter situations that cause them to feel like they're going to be abandoned and evaluate them once they've determined a more middle of the road schema. Because generally there's still some kernel of truth, like some people are going to abandon you, but writing it down in the restructured format so it's less all or nothing, it's less catastrophic, it's less personalized. You would go through each of the different categories of schema and help people work on restructuring their beliefs about themselves, about others, about situations, and recognize commonalities between those. Maybe there are certain situations that are kind of general, like going to the doctor, that regularly trigger their anxiety response or. So what is similar across all those situations and how accurate are your beliefs about them? Schema are lenses through which we predict and interpret situations. They are only as good as the knowledge and understanding of the situation in the present moment. A schema can be way off base or, you know, it may be very, very similar to a prior situation and very on target. But the only way we know that is if we're able to down regulate and evaluate the current situation, the facts in this context at this time, schema often need to be altered as we gain new information or in new situations. If you're starting a new job, if you're in a new relationship, you have schema based on past employers and past jobs and past relationships. However, it doesn't necessarily mean that what was what meant something in that prior relationship is going to mean the same thing in this one. And one more example, if in a prior relationship, when your significant other would come home and go into a room by themselves, it meant they were relapsing or they were getting ready to cheat on you or leave you. Okay, that's. That's pretty awful. In the present relationship, maybe your significant other comes home and goes into their. Into their cave and spends some time because they need to decompress after a long day and they don't want to kind of trauma vomit on you from what happened for the day. The behavior is the same. They're going into their. Into their caves. The reasoning is very different. Are there any questions? All right. Well, one thing we were talking about while I wait to see if there are any questions we were talking about before class started. It is there are a lot of places, a lot of states in which people can use their bachelor's of psychology to get certified as an addictions counselor or as a prevention professional. So if you're working with somebody who has a BA in psychology, that is a career path that they can choose without having to go get a graduate degree. And currently, no, I do not have any upcoming videos on memory consolidation. Teal, as far as the counseling compact, we're all waiting with bated breath. It's supposed to go into effect. They've been teasing that it would be in July. I know they were working on developing the databases and trying to figure out what was going to be required. Most of us who've worked with people with computers know that it's probably not going to happen in July because the database is not going to be where it needs to be. My understanding is that the. Once the compact is in. In place, all you'll have to do is file a, like a onepage application and maybe take the jurisprudence exam in that state, maybe not in order to be able to practice. And then in that state and every year, you would need to pay them their fee for allowing you to practice. So, you know, it's definitely a money maker for most states. They're probably not going to make it too terribly difficult. I am looking forward to when that actually comes comes to pass, though. How do you catch a schema in action? From an emotional reaction. Whenever you have a feel, it is being prompted by beliefs. Your cognitions affect your emotions and your behaviors. So when you have a feeling, or maybe if you're not feeling anything, when you're engaging in a behavior like addictive behaviors, that's telling you, I'm telling myself something. I'm having some beliefs. I need to look at what's going on with those right now. And you're right, Jyoti. Schema are not good or bad. It's just they can become outdated just like if I was trying to use the instruction manual for Windows 97, it wouldn't be a whole lot of help with whatever Windows we're on right now. They're both Windows products, but the manual hadn't been updated to be accurate for this current version. We often keep fears in the back of our minds because that is that threat oriented schema that we have developed. And it's going to be important to decondition that to start writing down the fears that you have and then examining how often are those fears justified versus not justified. So you start recognizing the difference between your feeling that something bad's going to happen and the probability the facts based on that. Well, I'm glad that you're here with me, Julia, and congratulations on being coming into the field. I assume you mean Cleveland, Tennessee, which is supposed to be an absolutely beautiful place, Teal. So from what I've heard, you'll really enjoy it, especially if you like hiking and doing those sorts of things. There's plenty to do around around Cleveland and I'm pretty sure that's one of the areas in Tennessee that actually has some of the most the greatest number of sunny days every year. Everybody have a wonderful rest of your week and I will talk to you next. Oh well, Friday if you come to the one on doom scrolling. It's not a CEU class, it's just a Q and A. Otherwise I'll see you on Wednesday.