This program focuses on repairing early attachment conditioning through a series of guided meditations.  We will go after understanding and healing the core schemas (beliefs) that partly under-gird insecure attachment. This course will be very light on psycho-education and very heavy on experiential work/meditation. (the first two classes will have more theory, the last five will be less theory and more meditation.)

Attachment Theory describes one of the earliest phases of our psychological development. It describes the behaviors of the infant from ages 6 months to 3 years when it ventures away from the caregiver to explore and then goes back to seek safety, affection, and care from the ‘secure base’. This goes on to impact us for the rest of our live.

Attachment conditioning is foundational to our psychological health. When our foundational attachment strategy is insecure then we experience developmental problems with our exploratory abilities, self-development, emotional self-regulation and relationships with others.

According to Jeffery Young “An early maladaptive schema is a pervasive self-defeating or dysfunctional theme or pattern of memories, emotions, and physical sensations, developed during childhood or adolescence and elaborated throughout one’s lifetime, that often has the form of a belief about the self or the world.” Jeffrey Young also calls the schemas “life traps”. We will work towards healing and dismantling them in this program!

Details about modalities

Research into Schema Therapy indicates it is effective at treating grave psychological disorders like complex PTSD, personality disorders, treatment resistant depression and anxiety, and substance abuse issues.

To this point, schema therapy was developed by Jeffrey Young in response to seeing how traditional Beckian Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) did not yield satisfactory results for patients with more serious disturbances like personality disorders.

Said differently, the techniques and frame works used in this program are very effective even for difficult cases.

Ideal Parent Figure Protocol, developed by Dan Brown, has been found to be effective for moving people with insecure attachment to secure attachment after repeated sessions.

We’ll also draw from Coherence Therapy. We’ll take the position that there is coherent reason for our ‘neurosis’ and negative beliefs.  We won’t fight those against those. Rather we’ll seek to understand the problematic beliefs and resulting ‘neurotic’ coping mechanisms.

Additionally, we’ll also integrate some elements of Metacognitive Inter Personal Therapy, Mentalization Based Treatment, and the Core Conflict Relationship Themes Psychodynamic Psychotherapy.

Course Structures: Schemas, Psycho-Education and Guided Meditations

Schemas

We will do psycho-education and reparative meditations on each the following schemas:

• Defectiveness & Shame (dismissing schema)
• Social Isolation (dismissing schema)
• Emotional Deprivation (schema common to all types of insecure attachment)
• Abandonment & Instability (preoccupied schema)
• Emotional Inhbition
• Mistrust & Abuse (disorganized schema)

Moreover we’ll investigate how each of these schemas manifest as behaviors (schema modes); particularly the coping modes of surrender, avoidance, and overcompensation. We’ll see how within these schemas there particular models of self, other, and world. We’ll investigate these structures within the schemas. Then we’ll regress back to the vulnerable child mode and feel into the schema, studying how it was brought about through difficult childhood experiences. Then we’ll reparent the vulnerable child in those difficult experiences.

Psycho-Education

We will start the first two weeks with a brief lecture on attachment theory, attachment repair, and Schema Therapy. Then, before each Schema oriented meditation guidance, we will do a brief psycho-education on that particular schema drawing both from Jeffrey Young’s Schema Theory and Attachment Theory.

Moreover, in this course we’ll focus more on metacognitive integration within the guided meditations

• Metacognitive skills
  • Mentalization of Fonagy & Bateman, et al.
  • Metacognitive skills of Dimaggio et al.
  • Reflective Integration of Crittenden & Landini
  • Core Conflict Relationship Themes of Luborsky et al.

Guided Meditations

Guided meditation will be the primary means for working through the schemas. We will be taking an attachment theory based re-parenting approach in the guided meditation. These meditations will give us a corrective emotional experiences. The “perfect nurturers” will reparent our inner, vulnerable child in the meditation. These meditations will help us remap the ‘internal working model of attachment’.

We will apply each of these meditations to each the five schemas listed above:

• Schema Repatterning Meditation, a meditation in which our “perfect nurturers” reparent our inner, vulnerable child with a heavy focus on metacognitive integration.
• Tong Len, a Tibetan Buddhist compassion meditation. This will help us cultivate compassion generally and also particularly around the schema in question. Moreover, by considering how others suffer with the same schemas we will see how we are not alone in our difficulties. This helps to normalize the painful experience of the schemas. Moreover, compassion around our shared difficulties further builds solidarity and a sense connection with others.