Schema therapy notes 1

Alex and Dave

• 2026-04-02
• Writing up my first set of notes for Dave, re: what I’m learning!

What I did this morning

• I started reading the “schema therapy primer” PDF on my reMarkable tablet, and added new blank pages where I drew little sketches to help me grok the basics¹. Basically, a form of active learning, turning some of the key axioms into little diagrams
• This was quite humbling, in that it took me 30-60 minutes just to sketch stuff from the first ~2 paragraphs! It goes to show how much effort it takes to make stuff click
• It felt very fruitful, and much more active and immediate than e.g. just making flashcards and cramming the info into my head over a course of ~a week. I think I now could immediately talk to people about the stuff that I’ve diagrammed (I’d still like to make Anki flashcards to keep this stuff in my brain long-term, however. I think I’ll need far fewer flashcards than if I went the “flashcards only” route)

What I learned this morning

• (The nice thing here is that I can think back to the sketches I did. Because the brain is so visual, this feels like a really useful cognitive tool)

The core frame: “one layer deeper than CBT”

• Schema therapy was developed as a response to CBT, by a practitioner of CBT who saw the limitations of it
• CBT acts on the maladaptive thoughts (this is presumably the same for NLP too)
• Schema therapy goes 1 layer deeper and asks “ok, but why do those maladaptive thoughts appear?” (this is the same for IFS, coherence therapy, memory reconsolidation, etc)
  • (As an aside, I like the idea of different therapies taking different views. Schema therapy = the internal beliefs and schemas, CBT = the thoughts themselves, Family Systems therapy (e.g. Bowen) look at the family relational dynamics (rather than the internal experience of one family member), Jung would look at the unconscious and archetypes and even “the collective unconscious”, etc)

Why do the maladaptive thoughts happen?

• So, if schema therapy asks “why do these maladaptive thoughts happen?”, then, what is schema therapy’s answer?

5 core needs

• It says that these thoughts stem from the fact that children have 5 core needs, and if these are chronically not met during childhood, this leads to the child developing adaptive coping mechanisms to deal with the pain of these chronic deprivations², which are effective in childhood (as after all, what else can the child do?), but when they are carried into adulthood, they cause suffering (maladaptive behaviours, self-beliefs, etc)³

Which are:

• (I can remember these because I made little diagrams for each. Really pleased with how well this worked! I haven’t made a single flashcard yet)
• (Although saying that, they’re definitely not fluent yet. I probably will make some flashcards after this session)
• (Let me start by remembering just the diagrams)
• (Note that I might not get the wording perfect, but I don’t mind, unless I’m actually misremembering something)

1. The need to feel safe and securely attached
   • Depicted with a drawing of a house
2. The need to have a separate identity, autonomy
   • Depicted with a drawing of a kid on a tree branch with the parent stood watching (denoting being trusted to climb a tree)
3. The need to be able to express their emotions and have them validated
   • Depicted by a sad baby with a speech bubble with a sad face in it
4. The need for spontaneity and play
   • Depicted by a baby wearing a wizard hat and wearing a sword
5. The need for discipline and boundaries
   • Depicted by a baby next to a whiteboard that says “math” on it, lol

• Hell yeah, I’m really pleased with how well the “draw sketches” thing went! I don’t often use the “add a new page” feature on the reMarkable, it’s clearly worth it. And it’s a way to bring some creativity and active learning into the reading process

How do the 5 core needs get met?

• This is as far as I got, and I only did these sketches once, so I don’t expect this stuff to be as consolidated. For the above 5 things, I did the sketches a few times on different pages, to practice recalling them from memory (house, tree, crying, wizard, math). These following ones were done when I was low on energy/motivation (near the end of a study session, basically)
• Each of the above 5 needs are met via receiving certain things repeatedly/reliably

1. Safety and secure attachment

• I remembering drawing a parent holding a baby - I think this was “feels connected and loved”
• And drawing a parent holding a sword by the baby - “feels protected”
• There was a third one too, similar to the first, I forget what

2. Independent, own identity

• I remember drawing 3 babies with a “no adults allowed!” sign → I guess this was like, I actually don’t know what exactly, because it feels related to the next one:
• I drew a god-awful doodle of a baby on a bus → “ability to be competent in the outside world”, something like that

3. Safe to express internal state, feelings

• The main sketch here is the “sad baby with a speech bubble showing that it is sad”

Note, my pomodoro timer just went off, so that’s 25 mins, but I’ll keep going. Really shows how much effort it takes just to grok a few paragraphs of something new 😅 the sketches on my reMarkable and now this

• The “sub-sketches” to show what is needed for this were pretty great actually, very memorable
• One shows the baby thinking about Harry Potter, and the adult is looking at this thought process with a magnifying glass and there’s a green tick: “this is valid!”
• The other is exactly the same, but it’s a love heart and the text says “more!”
• So it’s like, affirmation, and welcoming

4. Spontaneity and play

• I remember that the second drawing is a baby painting at an easel. “Creativity”
• And the third is a baby in a hammock. “Lightness”
• And the first is I think just a big smiley face and a “10/10!!!” and that’s “Joy”
• So yeah, “joy, creativity, lightness”

5. Responsibility, ~boundaries, ~self-ownership

• 👆 the above words aren’t quite right, but they’re pointing at the thing
• This is the drawing which is a baby next to a whiteboard that says “math”
• I actually don’t know if I did the sub-drawings for this yet… I don’t think I did!

Conclusion

So, it’s 8am now, that raps up this session. I probably spent 45-60 mins with my reMarkable, and 40 mins here.

Oh actually, I added some stuff of my own

• Re: the 5 core needs
  • House, tree, emotions, wizard, math,
  • Meaning actually:
    • Safety/secure attachment
    • Independence and own identity
    • Safety to express emotional state
    • Fun and spontaneity
    • Responsibility/boundaries
  • I scored myself, re: my childhood
    • -7, -3, -7, -3, 7
• And my adopted sister something like
  • -9, -8, -9, -8, -5
• And added a note about “and then of course, if I were to plot my mum, my dad, their parents, their siblings… being working class increases your probability of being in a ‘hell realm’ (Buddhist parlance) where most valence skews negative, and everyone around you is in the same situation (e.g. see Blackpool, Burton-on-Trent etc). No role models, everyone is suffering/struggling, no resources to address this, etc)

Appendix - my drawings/annotations

• This is what I did in the morning to learn, before talking to Dave to see what I could remember
  

Footnotes

1. See the appendix (bottom of this page) to see my terrible (but effective) drawings 😎 ↩

2. Chronic in the “1 year is not enough to develop a schema ↩

3. I haven’t gotten to this part yet, so I know this is currently vague. That is, I haven’t learned what these coping mechanisms are: I imagine they’ll be categorised into different types. I did read ahead a few days ago and saw something about the core wounded inner child state, and then an angry child state, dissociation, etc. ↩