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Compassion in a T-Shirt
Beneath Coping: Modes, Vulnerability, and the Healthy Adult | Rob Brockman
00:59:31
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A
Hi, I'm Dr. Stan Steindl and welcome.
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Back to Compassion in a T shirt. Today I'm joined by Dr. Rob Brockman, clinical psychologist, schema therapy practitioner, supervisor and trainer. I was fortunate to attend one of Rob's advanced schema therapy trainings last year, and this conversation grows directly out of that experience. So rather than offering a basic overview, we take a deeper look at how schema therapy understands the mind through through modes. The vulnerable, angry, detached, critical and healthy states we move in and out of, and why differentiating these experiences matters. Clinically, we talk about working with the vulnerability beneath coping and protection, the role of the healthy adult, and how compassion already sits at the heart of schema therapy through attunement, limited re parenting and empathic confrontation. We also gently reflect on how these ideas might sit alongside what other approaches describe as the compassionate self talking through some of the nuances. Rob is also involved in a range of schema therapy resources, live and online training programs, the schema therapy solution course for everyday living and the what's the Schemata? Podcast links are in the description.
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And.
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B
And so I bring you Dr. Rob Brockman.
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Well, Dr. Rob Brockman, welcome to Compassion in a T shirt.
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C
Nice. Thanks, Dan. Thanks for having me, mate.
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A
Very good to have you. I'm hoping to actually frame this conversation a bit around multiplicity, I suppose, and kind of multiple selves or parts or modes, I guess. And so schema therapy emphasizes that that modes are states we move in and out of and so on rather than fixed traits, I guess. But I wondered if you could start there, just tell us more about modes from a schema therapy point of view.
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Yeah, like, so, you know, I guess it's analogous to what you'd think about as parts, you know, that schema therapy has become a sort of parts model. And I think there's been a big trend in psychotherapy certainly in the last maybe 20 years, that most of the trauma based models end up landing on a parts model. That if you work with trauma or traumatized populations for any period of time, you start to run into issues to do with parts people being more or less dissociative in different ways that reflect parts of self or multiplicity. And schema therapy is one of those models that landed on a parts model in the end. And so they framed it in cognitive information processing terms within the idea of modes, calling it sort of a mode, and to my understanding, parts, and of course not a new idea, but framing that as a mode was something that I first saw within Aaron Beck's writings. I'M not sure if you're aware of that, but he wrote a chapter, I think it was in about 1998, called Beyond Belief. And I think it's Beyond Belief, a theory of modes and personality in a book chapter. And he laid out this idea of modes the first time I really ran across it. And then by 2003, 2004, Jeffrey Young had incorporated that into his schema theory. So, yeah, modes are, you know, you can think about it as analogous to parts of self. It's the idea that human beings are not a sort of unitary self, but a conglomerate of modes. You know, different parts of our personality that hold different functions, different feelings, slightly different histories and that come together, I guess, to drive our experience and to frame our experience.
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How do modes kind of show up then? And I guess in particular when you're listening to a client, you know, like what. What are you sort of most attuned to, to. To kind of perhaps tell you which mode maybe is even in the room right now.
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Yeah.
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So.
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It'S a hard thing to sort of stop seeing. And maybe you got the bug a little bit, Stan, like, once you get the mode idea, I guess we're sort of trained oftentimes from birth to think about ourselves as being quite consistent or this idea of consistency. And people get upset often in society if you're inconsistent and, you know, they'll say, oh, you're a hypocrite, you said this. Or, you know, used to think like this. And it's actually really common, I think, for people to hold multiple positions on. On things. Certainly at least two positions. Right. And. And we would say that's often. Well, there's a part of us, you know, there's a part of us that. That wants to be a good kid for your parents, but there's a part of us that wants to go and have fun, you know, so. So we struggle with this sort of the tension of that. I think that's normal. And actually with clients, when you acknowledge that, it's usually quite natural for them to go, oh, yeah, that actually makes sense that. That explains why I. I'm not consistently the same. But I do think there's this idea in society of consistency is somehow how it should be, or somehow that you're. You're only real or authentic if you're fully consistent all the time. But I think that's actually not. That's not reality. I think people are very complicated and we have different histories, different parts, different forms of coping that can mean that we're not actually the norm I think is that we're quite inconsistent in our approach to things. Yeah, I think that's more the norm than we acknowledge. So how do I pick it up? Once you have this schema, the sort of mode idea in your head, it's hard to unsee it. And then you start interacting with people like, okay, what mode is this? What mode? You know, what's the part that's kind of talking to me now? And certainly as a schema therapist, we want to hold that in mind because so much of our conceptualization is going to be grounded in the modes, like what parts of this person's personality are driving the problems. So, you know, the biggest message I would give about modes is that modes, they do encapsulate, certainly behaviors. That's the most obvious thing. You see modes in front of you, you see behavior, you see a mode acting out, doing something in the moment. So modes are very much activated in the moment. You see behavior, for the most part, overt behavior. That's the first clue. What do you see in front of you? And what mode could this reflect? You know, so we have different, in schema language, we have different words for the modes, and a lot of them, the descriptions are quite behavioral. So we have one called bullying attack. So bullying attack mode is a very antisocial mode of dominance, physical dominance. And if you see someone bullying another person, you might draw the conclusion quite quickly that this is some sort of bullying attack mode simply based on the behavior and its, I guess it's purported functions or what you think might be going on. So behavior is probably the most obvious thing. I do think too, as therapists, I think people often give away their intentions with their behavior. Like, so, you know, people often say one thing. I don't want to be too political, but you could say, like, Donald Trump says certain things, for example, but, you know, he could say, oh, no, I'm not going to do this, or I'm not going to do that. But then you look at what he does and, you know, okay, so, you know, so I think. And that's true in therapy too, people kind of give away their intentions. I remember a lecturer telling me once, I don't know who this was one of these old sort of hardcore CBT lecturers talking about ocd. And he said, you know, the client would say something like, oh, no, I'm not afraid of germs, you know, about. And it's like, mate, you're scrubbing the toilet bowl like, like all day. Like, I'm pretty sure there's a part of you that's scared of germs. Like, you know, so. So there's this. This idea that behavior can give it. Give it away, you know, so, yeah, behavior is one part the cognitions, you know, so what sort of thoughts are showing up?
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What.
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What are the. What's the verbal part? Showing up will give away the modes. You know, if, if the mo. You know, if the mode is saying things like, I can't handle this, you know, I need to escape or I'm leaving, this would talk. This would sort of show you like a kind of avoidant function, you know, the. The motivation to. To escape, you know, coming out and expressed as cognitions or verbal. Verbal expressions. So, yeah, there's the cognitive part of modes, there's the felt aspect. So we're sort of definitely catching the emotional sort of resonance in the room. You often know with clients where when you really touch on authentic vulnerability and you just know, you can feel that. That attunement that you've touched on something painful and that might show a certain expression of vulnerability or vulnerable mode. Conversely, clients often sometimes would display vulnerability or what seems to be vulnerability, but the felt aspect is a bit off or feels performative or something. And then we have a whole group of modes around that, around that experience that we call pseudo vulnerable modes. Yeah, so there's a felt aspect to modes. It's a kind of clue. You know, there's a bunch of modes that are. That are to do with anger. And so, of course, displays of anger get us thinking about which of the angry modes would this be. Probably the last thing. I guess it's not spoken about a lot, but I do believe all of the modes have a. Have a come with a kind of core motivation as well. So there's a motivational aspect to modes, you know, as well that that's important to try to understand. And usually you understand the motivation from all the other bits and getting inside and talking to the mode and that sort of thing. But. But that's another pretty important part of. It's in my mind, it's understanding the motivation behind modes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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That's a really, really great summary and collection. Thank you for that. There's sort of. You're listening with your eyes because you're watching out for the behaviors and just sort of noticing and observing and so on. You're listening with your ears to hear what the person has to say and perhaps what the cognitions are behind that, not being too poetic about it, but you're sort of listening with your heart or something. There's a resonance thing there where you're kind of dropping down and sort of trying to have that felt sense of perhaps where they're coming from. And then there's that sort of motivation piece, which I think is really key. This was probably one of the things that. A big takeaway for me, I suppose, when I did attend your level 2 schema therapy training recently, was. Was the. And you mentioned anger. I guess that across different modes, there can be different motivations behind anger, that the function might shift. And sometimes. Well, in compassion focused therapy that I might be working from, we might think of the angry self as kind of one part. But I really appreciated the idea that actually anger can have different functions across different modes. So I wondered if you could perhaps speak to those modes and where anger fits in.
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Sure, sure. Did you. Stan can ask you. Did you ever listen. Chris Hayes and I have a podcast called what's the Schematic?
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Have you ever.
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Ever listened. You have tuned in.
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I don't think I've listened to you there. I've listened to you on the Lars podcast. Okay.
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The Forensic. Forensic podcast.
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Yeah, the forensic podcast. Yeah.
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On episode one of our what's the Schematic Podcast, Chris and I play a clip of the old John McEnroe.
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Oh, yes.
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And actually, that whole podcast is about this issue. So. So, okay, but I'm sure you'll check it out eventually. But. But John McEnroe is the classic losing his can I swear on this podcast?
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I think so.
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At all. Like. Like he's losing his shit. Right. And, you know, it's like, you know, Archie, I won't. He goes more vulgar than that. He's like, are you kidding me? Like, and he's really going off. Right, right. And he throws his racket and all this kind of stuff, and Chris and I bounce off each other. What kind of mode is this? What kind of mode?
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Like.
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Like what? We know it's an angry mode, but what kind of mode is this? And that's the position we get in this therapist. Right. And I guess the clue initially is, wow, this is an angry mode. And there's quite. There's a few of those in our model. I guess the. The discussion comes down to the. The angry child. All right, so there's a. I think that's what you would call in cft, the angry self. What were you saying?
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Yeah, the angry self. I guess we might conceptual it. Conceptualize it as a sort of an emotional.
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Yeah, we would see that as a sort of primary anger. Right. I think even The EFT people talk about primary and secondary anger. I think that would be a sort of primary anger, which, and the function of that anger, it's a sort of expression of or representation of unmet needs, violated needs, threatened needs. So when someone's needs are impinged, threatened, violated, you might get a sort of angry child mode. Right. Which is, hey, you know, you don't care about me, you're disrespecting me. You're, you know, you're, you're my, you know, you're impinging on my needs in some way, you're threatening them, you know, et cetera. And that tends in our model, reflects the different schemas. Yeah. So in a schema model we find Rain, you know, the sort of painful element of that in terms of schema activation and specific needs that have been unmet. So therefore the angry child is a sort of representation of unmet needs. Okay, so that's one form of anger. Then we have various. Well, probably it makes sense to talk about it in terms of the next step, which would be critic type of anger. So one of the big questions I always ask clients and I say I was so angry, so angry, I was so frustrated, I was so angry. I would often, probably a really cool question to ask is, who are you angry at? And a fair chunk of the time they'll say, well, well, I was angry at myself. So in our model we would, we would then interpret that to mean this is an inner critic type of anger. You know, there's a part of them that's angry, that's internally angry, self directed. So we use an inner critic idea. Does CFT use an inner critic kind of metaphor in a similar way?
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Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. We might think of the critical self, I guess that that might have the critical self. Right. Various aspects to it. For examp, there might be a self improving kind of self criticism where.
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Yeah. So we would call that demanding critic. Usually like a demanding critic.
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Okay. And then there might be a self hating self criticism which, you know, sort.
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Of trying to be more like a pure. Yeah, that's very interesting. So that we would call that like a more a pure punitive critic. So you're saying like a self hatred thing versus more of a self improving version.
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Yeah, trying to distinguish the, the different forms and therefore the different functions of it. The function of a more self improving self critic might be to try harder or to sort of make changes or to improve upon things, whereas the self hating self critic is more a shame based approach to oneself.
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Yeah, so that would match up more or less. In our model we have this kind of idea of three different critics that they tend to see different flavors of and different mixtures of. And we have this, you know, punitive critic idea which matches up to your shame based one. The, the demanding critic, which is driven more by unrelenting standards and the need to improve and you know, be the best you can and stuff which, which seems to match up to your a little bit.
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Although the.
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I suspect that these more self improving self criticism might also come from a healthy adult mode as well.
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Sometimes it could be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it could be, it could be. And the last one is we call a guilt inducing critic. So this is for sort of overactive guilt type presentations. Now we do get a lot of anger through the inner critic at times. So, you know, if you screwed up or something, the critic would kick off and you know, you're an idiot and what's wrong with you and all this kind of stuff. Right. And that's very common in the punitive style of criticism. It's also common in the demanding style of critic. It's very sort of frustrated with yourself about not measuring out of something. So these are the initial couple of like modes that might carry anger. And then we have sort of a bunch of coping modes, coping selves, as you'd call it, that can be very angry or carries a lot of angry affect. And I'll talk quickly about the main types. The most obvious one would be like a fully fledged bullying attack mode as we mentioned, very antisocial dominant mode that wants others to be scared, that feels safe to the degree that you're dominating other people and making them feel scared of you. All right, so that's a bullying attack mode characteristic in its most pure form of a lot of forensic cases and folks with antisocial personalities and things often operate in that way. The next one off the line I would talk about something like an angry protector mode to differentiate. So the angry protector mode, it doesn't really seek to dominate or even really to make others scared more than actually the function is to push others away. So I always think about the sort of irritable, irritable old man type idea. Like, you know, leave me alone, leave you kids, you're always here and you know, jumping the fence and all this kind of, you know, that irritable old guy like, or, you know, you go and see someone, how you going? I'm fine, like, and you just get this angry, irritable wall which basically says, leave me alone, go away. So that's a Kind of coping form of anger. Well, so we've got Stan angry mode. So they're the big ticket items in terms of anger. Just kind of think through. I'm sure there are more. What are some other angry modes?
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Where does the sort of the demanding or angry parent fit in?
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Yeah, so that's the inner critic. That's the second one I mentioned. Yeah, that's an inner critic.
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It's really useful. You know, like sometimes anger might be to bring someone in and to meet my needs. Sometimes anger might be about pushing them away and.
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Correct.
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Sometimes anger might be about dominating the person.
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Dominating and so on.
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And.
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Yeah, there's just these different functions as you say, I guess across those different modes.
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There's another one actually you call it, I mean there's actually quite a few but you call it an ang. There's different ways to call it but probably the most common thing would be like a complete complaining protector. Oh, okay. So there's one that's kind of like, like about justice and it's not fair. Like you know, workcover did this to me and the insurer and you know, there can be a sort of sense of victimhood and a story and a narrative about being victimized by some party and it's this story that, that the narrative they want to go into and they want to go and sort of be heard about it again and again. And in therapy often this would be a sort of procedure, a ritual that, that happens between sessions like that the, the, the, the need to complain and to ventilate this kind of experience of being victimized. So. And that often comes with an angry sort of vibe to it as well. So that's another one that can come with an angry sort of vibe. The main ones, I mean we can nuance it a bit. I've had people with self aggrandizer mode that can come across quite angry in affect, you know, where they, they can become quite screamy and they want to be, they're dominating by. They want to put you down, you know, they're superior or something. And that can sometimes come across like angry sort of putting you down in a way, you know, tell, you know, telling you, you know, that you're not good in your job or you know, these kind of things that come across with an angry kind of vibe. These are probably the main angry parts that, that I can think of off the top of my head.
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Yeah, I think it's, I think it's really, really helpful because does speak to the importance of having a sense not only of the thoughts and feelings and behaviors, but the motivations. What, what is this, what is this mode? Or you know, and so on. What is it kind of wanting or trying to achieve or, you know, what's the motive behind this? And, and there can we can discern the different, you know, just sometimes subtly, but, you know, sort of different motives that are, that are at play. And, and it just made me think, I. One of the real strengths, I think, of the mode work in schema therapy is is that discerning, you know, difference between the different modes. And it's also one of the challenges because it's about trying to remember all of these different kind of concepts which. So I think I might actually include a link in the description if you can suggest one that people can actually maybe peruse some of the modes and what, the definitions or something like that.
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Look, I'll send a paper, I'll give you a link. Look, this is a famous paper because it's also kind of problematic. A guy named Dave Edwards, right, He's an ex president of the isst, the International Society of Schema Therapy. He published a systematic review of all of the modes. I think it was a 2022 paper of all of the modes that had been proposed in the, in the world's literature, schema literature. And he landed on 84 modes, which is a lot of modes. But. And he got a bit of criticism about that in a certain way because it's like, oh, this is so much. But. And I don't think everyone has to learn the 84 modes. I certainly don't know them all, but it's good to know and it does match up to my experience that people are very complicated actually and there are slight variations in presentations and motivations and topography of modes. And so I like it. I'm a bit of a geek, but I like the fact that there's this reference where you can go and geek out and, and see how all these things might present. Yeah, yeah, that's great.
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Yeah, that'd be great.
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I'll.
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I'll put a link to that one. I mean that you, you often will talk, I think about how the work is really about getting to perhaps the vulnerable child mode and sort of maybe.
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Or the angry child. Or the angry child, because we see, we see that, that in our model the angry child and the vulnerable child are sort of like primary vulnerability, primary anger. And you sort of touch on something that's important in schema because. And I think in therapy in general, because our philosophy is that if you, if you only speak to coping anger, for example, or, you know, coping modes. So, you know, you never really get to the heart of the issues. You never really get to the true schema activation and the needs and the pain and thereby you can't heal. So a lot of the model is about understanding the different coping modes so that you can bypass and really make contact with those parts of the client that hold the pain and the trauma. And so one of the ways this is really useful. You mentioned how useful it was in your therapy when you did some schema training. You're like, well, you guys actually nuance out the anger into these different functions. The practical application of that is, you know, if you, and I think you know this, Stan, if you sit with it with a coping anger, let's say a complaining protector, someone who wants to complain about grievances from the workplace and they just want to go over and over all the grievances. What's your experience of healing for those clients?
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Very difficult, right?
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It basically doesn't. This is, you know, it's this thing that they have to repeat and they come and they have to do the ventilating about problems and then you, you know, and, and as therapists, we're trained often because they're expressing pain in a certain way, but it's a kind of coping distress. Like, you know, and of course we're trained to empathize, to lean in and go, wow, you know, that was. Sounds really hard for you and that's not fair. And, and you empathize and you hold space. Now in our model, what happens if you, you know, only empathize with these parts that are in a coping state? You can expect the coping state to be reinforced, right? That, that, that would be reinforced, validated. And so there's sort of, in other words, you can just be stuck maintaining a coping mode. So there's a very practical nuance, like if, you know, okay, this is a coping mode, I'm actually not really getting to the heart of things that would very much change your clinical behavior in terms of what you're going to focus on in trying to. So the principle is to bypass coping modes, acknowledge them. Right. Understand them, but ultimately bypass them so you can connect with the pain, painful modes.
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How, if you think of the complaining mode, how might you literally do that? Like, what does that look like together? Get to the vulnerability or the angry child that might be the primary modes.
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Yeah. So I mean, often it's about getting it on the map. So I don't know if you've been using Schema, conceptualization. Since the training, have you been doing mode mapping and things? Yeah. So, I mean, the first thing is to get it on the map. So you have to be able, as you say, kind of confront the client with it. It's about getting on the map, saying, hey, you know, I've noticed there's this part of you that I think has coped with what's happened to you in a way which I would want to call. You got to call it something now you've got to call it something that they can digest, and that's somewhat validating. You know, for example, you. I would call a complaining protector. I often call it the complainer. Is it a part of you? It's the complainer or the ventilator. Something like that. And that part of you, in a way wants to be heard and wants to be validated, but also it doesn't want. It doesn't want to take a sort of responsibility to confront the issue, to change something about it or to change the trajectory. It wants sort of the system change in a way. So that's one of the motivations of a complaining mode. Now the trick is to get on the map with something that they can get on board with. All right. Of course, if you caught it, something like the whinger or something like this, you'd lose the client instantly. It's invalidating. Yeah. So what you call a mode is very important. And sometimes you have to kind of procure that manicure that somehow I find the complainer often works well for this mode or the ventilator sort of thing. Now, we know that with ventilating, it can feel nice, and it's like a load off your back and. But then, of course, it can get in the way of progress in the therapy. So you got to have this discussion with them about how they cope in a certain way. It's completely understandable because it has these functions like, A, gives you some subjective relief, makes you feel validated, B, you know, all these things. It sort of has a function for you, you know, but also it keeps you stuck in a certain way as well. You want to be at a better. And that's the start of some empathic confrontation. This is another strategy, empathizing with the mode and its functions, but also confronting them with the. The consequences of. Of. Of maintaining such a strong coping style.
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Yeah, it's a delicate process, isn't it? I think. And, you know, sort of the. The putting it on the map and finding the words and. And sometimes would you say that sometimes inviting Them to name this mode can be a way in as well.
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C
Totally. Yeah, totally. It's very collaborative. Like you can suggest certain, certain names for things, but it's totally. Yeah. Collab, collaborate. Collaboration is, is the key. Yeah, yeah. It's more powerful if they come up with a metaphor for their own mode. Makes total sense. Yeah.
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And then also kind of empathizing with what's kind of beneath that coping mode, I guess, and being able to express the angry child piece or the vulnerable child piece and sort of putting that on the map as well. Yeah.
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So, you know, the other parts of the strategy, I don't know. In level two, you would have done, we teach a sort of five step approach to bringing more attunement into the room and into the space. Do you, I'm just curious, did you ever use this framework?
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I felt like that was something that I was kind of felt quite confident in actually.
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Yeah, you're already quite attuned.
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Yeah, I feel like attunement and empathy and, you know, kind of really listening well was something that I am relatively practiced in. Yeah.
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So that's the other piece. So when you're getting on the map, you're starting to talk, you know, talk about the function of this mode and empathizing, but also, also confronting with, with the reality of it as well, the consequences of, you know, operating from that, that mode in terms of their needs and then pushing for attunement. So sort of, you know, if someone, if someone was to be, you know, they might be in a place where they, where they, where they want to talk about. Let's say it's a bullying attack.
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Right.
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And they want to talk about. I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill this guy. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna show him his boss and all these sort of things. Look, I get that you want to deal with him in a certain way. Yeah. Which is to, which is to show him who's boss. What I'm interested in is what's going on for you. Like what, what has he done? I mean, what's going on for you that puts you in this place where you feel the need to do that to him. Like, I'm pretty sure you didn't wake up feeling like you want to bash this guy. Like, it's like, I'm sure you have reason for it. Like what, what's been going on between you and this guy that's, that's given you this sense that you need to go there, you know, I think I Think you have strong feelings about him. What, what, what is it? You know, so, So, I mean, I don't know. This is something I do a lot of Stan often because I guess we all watch things, but, you know, I watch TV shows and I bring a kind of mode understanding to that. Last night I was watching a show called Run. It's on Binge. It's an Australian crime drama about a guy who. I think it was called the Postcard Bandit. And he was on the run for like five years. The police couldn't catch him because he kept the on between states. But, you know, this guy is an antisocial bank robber who puts shotguns in people's faces.
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Right.
- [34:16]
C
But you know, he's going to do something really bad to one of his mates, right, which took him out. He took him in the thing. He took him out to the bush and he's going to, you know, and he's obviously there to intimidate and hurt this guy. But the trigger had been, you know, he'd been off the scene for some over a year, on the run, and he. And he came back to his old girlfriend's house where. Where he had a kid and one of his friends is staying there. Yeah. And so these. He's got some issue with this guy that's been unsaid. Yeah. Now we can. We can guess what that is. It's a trigger around trust, It's a trigger around abandonment or, you know, this guy's getting involved with his ex. This is. This is not said. Right. What you see is a mode that's going to do a lot of damage or potentially even kill this guy. Like, you know, either a bully attack mode or something more sinister. But the tuning in part would be I could imagine sitting down with this guy or even if he committed the crime and he's in, you know, being interviewed. You know, I felt. I felt a breach of trust. You know, I was so angry with him. You know, I felt he was someone I could trust. He was my friend. And then there he is, you know, hurt, you know, breaching my trust like that. I mean. I mean, I was robable, you know, I was so angry. I was so hurt. Like, these are the parts we want to get down to. I want to get past the coping parts which are going to outline for you how they're going to take revenge and you're going to rearrange his face and all these kind of things. Right. These are the coping parts. So we want to get to the painful elements. I don't know if that works. I kind of pulled that out of nowhere.
- [35:57]
A
But yeah, that's, that's, that really works. I think that the, you can, you can attune to and just sort of feel that the vulnerability or the primary anger that sort of is kind of there and so painful. Perhaps much, much better to be in the coping mode because I don't know, maybe it gives me a sense of power and dominance and control, agency and control and you know, the starting to kind of. But the conversation shifts to the vulnerability.
- [36:27]
C
So in our Level 2 training, you might remember I usually run something, an exercise called where I'm pissed off because. Do you remember this?
- [36:35]
A
I don't remember that one.
- [36:36]
C
I'm pissed off because. And the way is that, okay, I think this might be fun. So, so it's just the idea that, you know, we all, we all, we all have pain, we all have schemas, we have pain and sometimes that, you know, shows up in anger. I think we can all feel frustrated and angry in ways that reflect our particular schemas. And you know, I often do this in the workshop if I reflected my own angry child. Like the people who we care about the most are the ones actually usually who can trigger our angry child because they're the people that can hurt us, the people that we care about. We expect them to care about us. And so if I thought about my own angry child, you know, if I said I'm pissed off because, and I answered this question of what, what are those things that really get to me, it'd be, it'd really be that, that you don't understand me. You know, I feel, I feel like you're not trying to understand me. You know, you've made a judgment or you've, you know, made a prejudice situation. And I'm feeling like you don't, you know, you don't even try to understand me. You know, there is the things that really would piss me off or upset me, you know, and this in our model is emotional deprivation. Yeah. But I give you this, this self, you know, description in the spirit. I'll ask you if you answered that question. If Stan said, you know, I'm pissed off because like what, what would it be for you? And that will give away your primary type of anger or schema.
- [38:13]
A
Yeah. Yes. That's, that's interesting. I, I, I've had to do a lot of work on anger myself and, and it's, it's now often what pisses me off is feeling sort of misunderstood.
- [38:29]
C
Or me and you are blood brothers. Yeah, I Think. I think. Okay, let me dig it one more step. So. So if someone. I'm guessing someone you. More people you care about than. Than strangers. Like, like we don't take strangers with a grain of salt. But if someone you care about is it misunderstands you or doesn't understand you?
- [38:52]
A
I think it's the misunderstanding from the point of view is they understand me wrongly, so they. They've come to a conclusion about me that I feel is wrong and unfair and puts me in a bad light too. I suspect there's a cut.
- [39:10]
C
You know, I really resonate with this, Stan, by the way. It's almost exactly my. My feeling. That's kind of strange, isn't it? In a way. But so, so. Okay, let's roll. So we would do this in the workshop. So. So because. Which. This is an example of tuning in, you know, to what it's all about in those situations. You know, what. What is it? What does it kind of mean for you if they misunderstand you? I mean, obviously that's not a good thing. But what does that mean for you if this person isn't able to understand you or they actually misunderstand you? What does that mean for you?
- [39:48]
B
Well, I think it means.
- [39:51]
A
That. I think it becomes a kind of a. A pathway to shame, to be honest, actually.
- [39:59]
C
Okay.
- [39:59]
A
Really thinking about being misunderstood, wrongly understood, but usually also some sort of a negative. In a negative way that makes me out to be a kind of a bad person.
- [40:14]
C
A bad guy.
- [40:15]
A
Yeah.
- [40:16]
C
And.
- [40:16]
A
And sort of being held in that person's mind as a bad guy.
- [40:21]
C
Yeah.
- [40:22]
A
Is. Is. Is then kind of like shame based feeling. Yeah, exactly.
- [40:26]
C
Like not good enough as a person. Like a bad guy. Like a bad.
- [40:29]
A
Yes.
- [40:29]
C
Bad boy. A bad boy even. Yeah.
- [40:32]
A
Yes.
- [40:32]
C
Yeah.
- [40:32]
A
I think, I think bad guy. I think this is more an adolescent feeling than a. Than a very, very young feeling.
- [40:41]
C
Right, right. A bad kid.
- [40:43]
A
Somewhat like.
- [40:43]
C
Like a bad kid or something developmentally. Look, I. Honestly, Stan, this is a bit crazy. I really resonate with. With all of that actually. It's. It's actually that I know this is boring in a way. In a cop out. It actually works very similar for me. Or it's actually two parts though. So for me the first part is like a deprivation. Like you're not even trying to understand. Like there's a sort of aloneness in not being understood. Like this is someone who just. Okay, you just prejudge and then nobody, Nobody gets it. And there's a sort of aloneness in that for me. But then the second piece of the pain as similar to you. It feels like, it feels like the shit's being put on you that somehow. Yeah, you're a bad guy, you're the bad guy, you're the bad guy. So yeah, I actually totally resonate with that. So there you go. We found that out about each other. Maybe that's why we connected.
- [41:39]
A
Yes. We both have shame at the heart of it, which is great. But yeah. Okay, now that's, that's, that's very interesting that the, the sort of how to kind of just find, help work with the person and to you know, find our way towards that, that kind of vulnerable child, the, the angry child, the lonely child. And then there's healthy adult, I suppose. So so sort of, if we kind of get there, you know, that that's this, well, compassionate, nurturing, but limit setting, assertive, you know, wise and often that's the bit that I suppose we're then moving towards in terms of trying to cultivate that, that mode with the person. So tell us a bit about, you know, healthy adult and where to with. With that.
- [42:31]
C
Yeah, so that's one part of the model, you know, which is very interesting, which is this idea that we all have a sort of healthy moderator type mode, you know, that wants to. It has a sort of long term need satisfaction is the function. It wants you to get your needs met and so it can do things like delay gratification, you know, in order to maintain different relationships or to meet certain goals or. Right. It's a sort of healthy voice in your head and it applies across different domains like whether it's approaching relationships, modulating your behavior in terms of more addictive type things. I always tell a story too about. I'm somebody who, for historical reasons, I just love milkshakes a little bit too much. And I'm turning 45 next month. I don't need any more milkshakes at this stage of my life, but they're just very yummy. But so there's this part of me that just loves them and just wants to drink milkshakes. But so, but there's a part of me that's, that's learned to say, hey, that's enough and you know, you know, you had one today or whatever and sort of moderates things in order to be healthy, you know, to look after yourself so you don't get diabetes and all this kind of stuff. That's a healthy, healthy moderator kind of healthy adult mode. So it wants to regulate your behavior, to, to regulate your emotions, to get your Needs met, you know, in different situations. Contextually. Yeah.
- [44:18]
A
Another thing we have in common actually, Rob, is milkshakes. I'd probably throw in donuts with that, but yeah, that's similar. Yeah.
- [44:28]
C
You don't mind a good milkshake thick shake?
- [44:31]
A
Oh yeah.
- [44:33]
C
Chocolate milk confectionery.
- [44:34]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
- [44:37]
C
Yeah. I've actually triggered you. I can see you. I'll get one now.
- [44:40]
A
I think it, I think there is a milkshake in my near future. But so would you. Do you feel like the healthy adult is like the compassionate sort of mode or the compassionate self? Would you see it more that compassion may be part of that healthy.
- [45:00]
C
Oh, absolutely.
- [45:03]
A
How does that integrate there?
- [45:05]
C
Yeah, 100%. Like I do think it's just one part of it though, you know, because as you, as you discuss it is a compassionate self. It has a capacity for compassion. Think about a good parent, right? A good parent can, can, can have a great deal of compassion. But there are other times when a parent might be setting very firm limits or boundaries that don't really seem all that compassionate. When you ground a child or whatever, it isn't really leaning on that compassionate leg or traits. So it's not that a parent is always showing compassion or being compassionate. There are times when you might be setting more limits or boundaries in different ways that don't really look compassionate. But certainly compassion is a very key trait of the healthy adult mode of a very well functioning healthy adult. Compassion for self and others, you know, understanding for yourself and others about, about the journey and what's led to these kind of things. Yeah, yeah.
- [46:15]
A
And I guess, of course compassion is also a motivation. Like if we think back to the beginning of our conversation where you're interested in the motivation or the motives behind it. And with compassion it's really more a motivation to alleviate or prevent suffering. And so sometimes being a little bit stricter with grounding might still have at somewhere in there a compassionate motivation that it is about trying to prevent suffering.
- [46:41]
C
Yes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, yes. And even with parenting, when you let's. We're going to go with the thing of grounding a child. I can always remember my dad saying there'll be times when he did more than ground me, let me say. But he would always come back at some stage and say, you know, Rob, I'm only angry with you because I care about you, because I love you, you know, and the thing that happened is not okay. You have to learn that. And that's why I care this much. Right. So. And I Think that was a good move. Reflecting back. I think that was good parenting, maybe not. The other things that happened beforehand. Sometimes the conversation back in the 80s, things could be maybe too much, but that conversation about the compassionate part of that felt very. It was reparative and regulating. Yeah, yeah.
- [47:36]
A
In a funny sort of a way, it was at that point that he perhaps had shifted back into his com. His healthy adult.
- [47:42]
C
Yeah.
- [47:42]
A
Whereas at the earlier times he was. Yeah. Trying to cope with that. With his own anxiety about operating from.
- [47:50]
C
Pure angry child or, you know, whatever.
- [47:52]
A
That's right.
- [47:53]
C
Whatever's coming out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So compassion is a big part. Definitely. Like. And, you know, we actually have a call. One of the courses I run, Stan, is called Contextual Schema Therapy. And that's where we integrate therapies from the third wave into a schema framework and we lean heavily on compassion focused techniques. Yeah.
- [48:13]
A
Yes. Right. Yeah. You alluded to the. What. What is a good parent? And I think one of the things that was a great takeaway for me from that workshop was a much better understanding of limited reparenting as a part of, you know, the therapist's approach. And I suppose in a way for me it was compassion sort of inaction in. In that moment from the therapist and, and because there's the warmth and so on, but the attunement, the, the, the sort of. The validation, but the limits as well. And I suppose, what are your thoughts there in terms of how we balance the, the. The care side of the compassion and the firmness, I guess, in, in limited.
- [49:01]
C
Yes. It's always a balancing act, I think. So we. And that's in the name. So we call it that part of limited repenting we call empathic confrontation. So it's always grounded in empathy and compassion. Help me understand you. I want to. Before I judge you, before I talk about this behavior. Help me understand what's gotten you in this place where you feel like that's the way to manage it, like what's going on for you. And from that we can. We can display a lot of compassion and empathy and, you know, for the client's coping, for his history, their history, etc. At the same time, we can, we can. That gives us a kind of credibility to be firm or to give feedback about the parts like the consequences and even to draw boundaries, you know, Are you aware that when you manage it like this, while I can understand it, the impact on you and your relationships can be like this. This is how it's felt on the other side of things. And we just find that, that much more effective for people if they know it's coming from a place of caring. Yeah.
- [50:15]
A
And the reality is that compassion or self compassion, it doesn't always feel good. I suppose it's more about what might be good for me in a sense or, you know, good for my health and well being and psychological well being. And so the care and firmness combination is actually really important in terms of.
- [50:35]
C
That and in parenting too. I've had so many clients somehow, and especially the forensic clients just to, I guess to draw that bow, who have expressed, you know, who maybe didn't have enough limits, who would lament it later and feel like they didn't receive something, they didn't receive care. You know what I mean? Like later to say, you know, my mum would just let us do whatever we want, like and now look at me, you know, I'm in jail or I have problems with, you know, impulse control and we would just get away with anything. And so those things, you know, for a child that's received, firm care, firm connection, like both of those things, they, they often feel it and receive it as a caring thing in the end. Yeah. But the child has to understand that. They have to understand that it's coming from a caring place and you have to have that, that connection and that attachment. Yeah. As the, as the, the base. Yeah. And that mirrors also the therapy relationship. Like once you have the credit in the bank with a client that they know that you've taken the time to get them, you really, really get them and you really empathize with them about their story and history. You can get away with a lot in terms of pulling them up on things and talking about their problem. The more problematic aspects in a way, if they know, yeah, you're being firm and talking about the problems, but you get them, you're not just judging them or you know, you're really doing it from place of empathy. I care about you. Yeah.
- [52:15]
A
Limits are kind of are a need, I guess. And when they're unmet, that too can be difficult. My penultimate question for today because I know I need to let you go, but you did allude to it, so I wanted to just get a little bit more your thoughts on the notion of, I guess a bit of integration and you know, so from your perspective, like what does good integration look like when a therapist might be drawing on some of the compassion focused or compassion based ideas alongside schema therapy?
- [52:47]
C
So myself and a couple of other gentlemen, including Eckhart Roediger and Bruce Stevens, we published a book in 2018 called Contextual Schema Therapy. And I don't know if you've read.
- [53:00]
A
The book or seen. I haven't read that one, no, that Contextual Skin Therapy.
- [53:03]
C
So it's essentially a schema therapy book, but it's a guide to integration in schema therapy, particularly integration of third wave concepts, which of course have become very popular within therapy and psychology more broadly. So I wanted to answer the question of how those things fit into something like schema therapy. And the shortcut answer is that those strategies really fit, fit well into this idea of building the healthy adult mode. All right, so they are healthy adult strategies. And when you, when you focus on something like building compassion, building a compassionate self, you are fortifying, you are building up that part of you that can be compassionate. That's, that's the healthy part. It's one trait, if you like, of the healthy adult mode. Yeah, so now I'm complete, you know, if you don't know this, Stan, I'm currently the president of the International Society for Schema Therapy. So I'm completely biased. I love schema therapy, so take it with a grain of salt. The way I've approached integration is through that schema conceptualization lens. And so, you know, I would start off with almost all my clients looking at a schema map the territory, looking at the needs, looking at the history, looking at the modes and the schemas behind them and, but leaning, you know, the idea of, of integration, which is consistent with your formulation. So, so within schema therapy framework we, we see that it's, there's a long tradition of this, it's okay to integrate techniques, evidence based techniques, to the degree that those techniques fit the model, fit your conceptualization. So in our model, when we look at the healthy adult and say, well, we've got clients that really don't know how to be compassionate. For whatever reason, they never experienced that, although never taught that, or they're never given any compassion. It makes complete sense for me to lean on a model like CFT that explicitly, its goal is to teach compassion is to help people, you know, people experience compassion for themselves, for others from the ground up. And that makes sense. So we, we don't have to know everything in schema. In schema therapy, we don't have all the, the answers to how to build a healthy self. But thankfully there are, there are folks across different psychology domains that have been working on different aspects. And that's how we see that, you know, that there are certain skills that the healthy adult needs to Learn and different models really, I think can contribute to that. So that's, that's the main rule that as long as it, you know, as long as these. Well, first of all, I think those techniques need to have some evidence in their own right because we don't want to be charlatan or something like that. So it needs to be an evidence base. But where there is, you know, an evidence base for this sort of, for building, well, being for addressing certain issues. And it fits with your conceptualization, you know, in your conceptualization, if you see someone who is having trouble with shame, you know, regulating shame or guilt at the same time bringing a compassionate behavior or feeling or stance to themselves and others. For me, this is, this is a good territory to integrate some of the techniques drawn from other models, including CFT and others. So, yeah, that's how we approach it, my friend.
- [56:45]
A
Yeah, love it. That makes a, a lot of sense. So you, I, I have done your, your train, some of your training and, and the, you know, highly recommended. And as well, I, I think, well, there's the podcast, so we'll, we'll include a bit of a link to that too. What's, what else is happening? Or. I, I think there's an overseas perhaps retreat happening too, or something. But yeah, what, what have you got?
- [57:12]
C
There's a lot of things happening. Yeah, yeah, so, so okay. Okay, thank. I appreciate this, Stan, by the way. So it's nice to reach some of your listeners with schema as well. And the first part is that we run live trainings. We, we run them, we're based in Australia, so we run them around Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong. But one of the exciting things over the last few years, and you refer to, we've built up a set of trains in Bali, right. So we run the retreats in Bali. We do all of our curriculum, but also we have a retreat as well. So our live trainings you can see@schema therapytraining.com including our Bali retreats. We also have an online platform for people that like to learn online and, and you can get on there. That's just schema therapy training online.com Very. These are very simple websites, as you mentioned. We have a free podcast if you, if you want to hear more about Schema, just to listen to the pod. It's called what's the Schematic? As in like what's the schematic with you? Sort of thing.
- [58:18]
A
Very clever, mate.
- [58:18]
B
Very clever.
- [58:19]
C
Very clever. And last but not least, we have something called the Schema Therapy solution, which is, which is actually Schema therapy applied to everyday living. That's a course for everybody, you know, for the lady in the tuck shop and, you know, people you run into wherever, and just to apply some of this stuff to our everyday life. So that one is that you can find that if you just type into Google. Schema therapy solution. I think it's actually. Schema TherapySolution.com is the website that's. That's the schema road train, you know, with training and. And different courses and different opportunities.
- [58:58]
A
Yeah, yep, Wonderful stuff. I will include those various links and perhaps some of the articles or even also the book you mentioned, send you some things. Yeah, yeah, that'd be. That'd be really great. But, yeah, Dr. Rob Brockman, thank you. Well, I really did get a lot out of that training and that's why I was so keen to get to talk with you. So also, yeah, thank you for speaking with me on Compassion in a T shirt.
- [59:24]
C
Love it. Love it. Stan, thanks for the. Thanks for the invite. I really appreciate it and I'm sure we'll catch up down the track.