This program will help us to first identify our parts (schema-modes).  Then we’ll use mentalization (meta-cognitive) exercises to gain insight and perspective into our parts:

• What negative felt-beliefs underlie them
  • beliefs about self
  • beliefs about world/others
• What caused these negative beliefs in childhood
• How the different parts interact with the rest of our personality
• How and when these parts obstruct our life,
• We’ll also develop motivation to do the deep work to address them

We take the view that unmet childhood needs cause the negative beliefs and expectations.  These unmet needs then form into fixed, felt-sense beliefs (schemas) that function like a lens and color 1) how we see ourselves and the world and 2) how we feel we must respond to the world in order to get our needs met.

The pain of these negative felt-beliefs brings about and fuels the maladaptive parts (modes, symptoms) .

To heal the parts (neurotic behaviors) we heal the underlying negative felt-sense beliefs.  (These are often attachment wounds).  To heal these negative felt beliefs and attachment wounds we create imaginal scenes in which we have what Leslie Greenberg calls “emotionally corrective experiences”.  That positive experience remaps over the old negative felt-belief bringing about permanent change.  By healing the underlying negative felt-belief we eliminate the need for the maladaptive part (neurotic symptom/behavior).

We’ll use visualizations of a “Perfect Nurturer” to create the emotionally corrective experience.

This is how we heal.

We will use guided meditation to bring about these emotionally corrective experiences. The practices are also designed to treat insecure attachment.

Drawing from Jeffrey Young’s Schema Therapy, the parts/modes we’ll work on are:

• Surrender parts
• Avoidant parts
• Overcompensation parts
• Vulnerable child parts
• Angry child parts
• Demanding and punitive internalized parent parts (introjects)
• Healthy adult part
• Happy and creative child parts

Psycho-Education

We will start with a brief lecture on

1. What are felt-sense beliefs (schemas):  how emotional memory is different from cognitive/episodic memory
2. How these negative felt sense beliefs make up the component parts of insecure attachment
3. How to bring about deep positive change through permanent memory reconsolidation (Ecker, et al),
4. How the pain of the negative felt-sense beliefs are what drive the maladaptive parts (modes) and how repatterning the felt-sense beliefs naturally unwind the negative parts.
5. How mentalization (meta cognition, perspective taking, wisdom, etc) also fits in to leading a well adaptive and happy life.

Guided Meditation

The bulk of the program will be guided meditations to

1. Identify and understand the negative parts and maladaptive felt-beliefs
2. Heal them with a calibrated corrective experience in the guided visualization meditation.

Methods Used

The content of draws from the Schema Therapy frame work.  Schema Therapy was developed by Jeffrey Young in response to his frustration with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy’s poor results in treating personality disorders (Young, et al, 2003).  We will also draw on Attachment Theory, Bruce Ecker’s model of Emotional Coherence and Memory Reconsolidation, and Ideal Parent Figure Protocol, developed by Dan Brown, which has been found to be effective for moving people with insecure attachment to secure attachment after repeated sessions.