Session: 2026-04-02
Duration Aim: 15 minutes
Actual Duration: 50 minutes
Status: complete
Pride: 5/5
Transcript
Dave: Before we begin: how long do you have today?
Me: Let’s say 15 minutes, because I’ve read/made notes for around 30 mins this morning so I don’t think I’ve got loads of new knowledge to write about. But I have some!
Dave: Good. For the next 15 minutes: you do the thinking, I ask the questions. My job is to find the gaps in what you think you know. Yours is to fill them, or admit you can’t. Ready?
Me: Ready! Is the workflow that I should go to Obsidian and write a new note about what I know? I imagine that’d be nicer UX-wise, rather than writing here in the terminal. Can use headings, can edit, just a nicer writing environment, etc.
Dave: No Obsidian needed — just talk to me here. The session is a conversation: I ask, you answer. The transcript captures it automatically. If you want to write notes after a session, Obsidian is great for that. But right now: just tell me what you read this morning. What’s the thing that feels most solid in your head?
Me: Ok so I’ve actually just written “Schema therapy session 1.md” in the notes subfolder! Much nicer writing experience, as expected.
Dave: Good. A/B/U state is blank — so we have only one option on the menu:
- Open new territory
What did you read this morning? Tell me what feels most solid.
Me: Can’t you just read the markdown file I just wrote? “Schema therapy session 1”
He reads wrote I wrote
Dave: Read it. Good stuff — especially the diagrams approach.
One thing jumped out. You scored yourself on the 5 needs:
-7, -3, -7, -3, +7
That last one. What does a positive score mean in your system — well-met, or over-imposed?
Me: Relatively well met! I was a smart kid, I had encouragement in school, I was rewarded for getting good grades, I was expected to do my homework, etc. My parents cared about this, e.g. they were proud of me being smart and successful at school. It’s not like +10 because they didn’t like, super encourage me, or they didn’t like, take my playstation away (I played a lot of playstation). But really, I imagine my mum wanted to let me do that because everything else was clearly kinda fucked.
Dave: OK. So structure felt relatively healthy — encouragement, pride, reward for grades.
You’ve also told me that Unrelenting Standards and Punitiveness are your most resonant schemas. Those are in the same domain as structure and limits.
If the structure felt good — where does the relentless part come from?
Me: I think it’s probably: I got most of my encouragement re: doing well in school, which is like, very achievement-flavoured. It became my main way to demonstrate worth and receive encouragement. As an alternative thread, it feels like having a very difficult sister led to me having a lot of rage re: people who are difficult, frustrating, seemingly beyond your ability to help or fix, and this planted a seed which then continued to grow as I grew older and saw how the rest of my family were also difficult/frustrating/beyond-my-ability-to-fix, because of the whole “we’re all in a hell realm due to having some significant portion of these 5 core needs be chronically in the negative during our childhoods.”
Dave: That’s a clean account of where the standards come from — achievement as the main route to worth and encouragement. I’ll take that.
But Punitiveness is something different. It’s not just high standards — it’s the belief that failure deserves punishment. Harsh treatment of yourself or others when things go wrong.
You’ve given me a story for the relentless part. Where does the punishing part come from in your account?
Me: This feels like something I haven’t gotten to yet, I haven’t read into these parts of the theory. I’m also not in the mood to look at this right now — I want to learn the theory first. This feels more emotional/somatic, and stressful. But then again, this is where the real growth of schema therapy lies. But also, I don’t know if you’re the right persona for this. My aim here was more to learn the theory. I don’t like the way you’re probing at emotions from the persona of “no bullshit aristocratic tutor”. I was actually thinking of making a different persona called “Fiona” for the actual emotional/somatic exploration, once I have grokked the theory.
Dave: Fair. I crossed the line from theory into personal excavation — that’s not what you’re here for right now.
Recalibrating: your goal is fluent theoretical understanding. I can probe the theory of Punitiveness — what kind of thing it is, how it works — without asking you to excavate your own history. That’s in scope. Your childhood is not.
And note the Fiona idea — that’s worth building when you’re ready.
So: back to theory. You’ve covered the 5 needs. You flagged coping mechanisms as something you haven’t read yet. What else do you feel like you know, even partially?
Me: Nothing, right now! So, the check IMO is: is what I’ve written correct, have I misunderstood anything? I imagine not, as I’m really at the basic stage of “reciting the facts from the first ~page of the primer”. So, no worries if not! It’s still very useful to be in dialogue, to have someone to write my understanding to (that is, the file in the notes subfolder). Perhaps the real value between us will come a bit further down the line when we can test all of my understanding at once.
Dave: What you have is correct for where you are in the primer. No real errors — you’ve got the 5 needs, the chronic-unmet mechanism, and the developmental framing right.
One flag to carry forward, not to resolve now: you’ve framed schema therapy as asking “why do maladaptive thoughts happen.” When you read further, test whether that framing still holds. The primer will have something to say about whether schemas produce thoughts — or do something prior to and deeper than thought production.
Plant that as a question for your next session.
And agreed on the trajectory — the real Socratic pressure comes once you have the full framework. Today was a good foundation session.
Shall we close?
Me: Yes. Thank you Dave!
Close-out
Dave: Good. Let’s close this out. I’ll ask about each category in turn — be honest about what actually moved, not what you wish had moved.
A — what was verified: What from today can you now consider settled? Any claims you actually tested that you’d move to A — things you genuinely understand now rather than just believe?
Me: This actually IMO shows a misunderstanding of the A/B/U framework, I might have to update your code after this session. An “A” is a new learning that seems true and is useful. An “A” matures into a “B” when it receives some empirical backing.
Dave: Noted — and you’re right, that’s an inversion of what I’ve been working from.
Before I close the session with the wrong framework: where does U fit, and is there anything beyond B — or is B the settled state?
Me: U = stuff that didn’t land, that couldn’t be verified as true/useful, that bounced off me.
Dave: Got it. So:
- A — new, seems true and useful, not yet backed
- B — an A item that’s since received empirical backing
- U — encountered but didn’t land or resonate
I’ll use that to close. (Flag for you after: step-close.md and step-hello.md both need updating with this.)
A — new things that landed
Dave: What from today feels true and useful — new additions to your working map of schema therapy?
Me: A bunch of stuff! The core thing (CBT vs schema, levels of depth), the 5 needs, the sub-things that make them up. That’s like, 15 “A”s at least (although I’ll want to consolidate them via flashcards to make them fluent).
B — things that moved from believed to empirically backed
Dave: Any A items from before today that got confirmed by what you read or discussed?
Me: I’d say that the where schema therapy operates (schemas/the brain) adds another data point to the B of like “therapies like IFS, schema therapy, coherence therapy act on your ~world model, and that is more effective than acting just on the thoughts, or just doing the talk therapy thing of not really going deep enough, direct enough.”
So, I’d say, 1 “B”.
U — things that bounced off
Dave: Anything from today that didn’t land, felt opaque, or couldn’t find a foothold?
Me: The only thing, because I only read as much as I read, and I grokked everything that I read via making diagrams, is the thing you said about “actually schema therapy doesn’t work by preventing the thoughts”, something like that, I can’t even fully recall it, which is a clear sign of a “U”. Oh no, I think that was it, “it’s not just the case that schemas lead to maladaptive thoughts”, your thing to keep in mind. So, I guess that’s implied that it also leads to actions, but really it’s a flag of “hey, here’s a thing that you don’t know yet!“. So, that’s one “U”.
Grappling rating
Dave: On a scale of 1 to 5 — how do you rate the quality of your grappling this session? Not whether you made progress. Whether you went in.
1 = going through the motions
3 = engaged honestly
5 = all the way in
Me: 5
Dave: Done. Session logged.
Two things for you before you go:
- Update the step files — step-close.md and step-hello.md both have the A/B/U definitions inverted. A = new/lands, B = empirically backed, U = bounced off.
- Next session starting point — that U item. When you’ve read far enough to know what schemas actually do (beyond producing thoughts), bring it back.
Me: Amazing, thank you! Do I need to use a slash command to end this session?
Dave: No — /dave end is the slash command that triggers the close ritual, but we just ran through it manually. You’re done.
Me: Thanks Dave! Talk soon.
Dave: See you next time.
Summary
- A: ~15 items: CBT vs schema therapy framing (depth distinction), the 5 core emotional needs, and their sub-components (what each need requires to be met)
- B: Therapies like IFS, schema therapy, and coherence therapy act on the world model — more effective than surface-level thought intervention; schema therapy adds another data point to this
- U: Schemas don’t just lead to maladaptive thoughts — they do something prior to or deeper than thought production (exact mechanism not yet read)
Summary: First active session. Alex covered the schema therapy vs CBT distinction and all 5 core emotional needs with sub-components via diagram-based study. One U flagged for next session: what schemas actually do beyond generating thoughts.
| Type | Content |
|---|---|
| A | CBT vs schema therapy: schema therapy goes deeper, asking why maladaptive patterns persist |
| A | 5 core emotional needs (safety/attachment, autonomy, emotional expression, spontaneity/play, realistic limits) |
| A | Sub-components of each need (what it requires to be met) |
| B | Therapies acting on world models (IFS, schema, coherence) are more effective than surface-level thought intervention |
| U | Schemas do something prior to/deeper than thought production — exact mechanism not yet read |