Picture this scenario: your partner is late home and isn’t answering their phone. As the minutes pass you’ve checked the traffic, pictured the car on it’s side on the freeway, and have already begun rehearsing what you will say to the police officer when they inevitably knock on your door. Then, suddenly, the key turns in the lock, and your partner is home. They had decided to stop off at the supermarket and their phone ran flat. You likely feel relief, and possibly even shame for worrying so intensely. The next day, you might notice a strange mole on your arm, or notice pain in a particular muscle, and the cycle of persistent worry and conclusion jumping commences again.
For many of us, this is a daily inner reality. We may have been told that we have anxiety, and in some cases, a doctor or a psychologist may have used the words “generalised anxiety disorder” (GAD). A label like this can be useful, and for many people it really is accurate. But what it doesn't always explain is why our minds keep jumping to the worst conclusion, or why exactly reassurance never seems sufficient to set our minds at ease.
Schema therapy offers a different perspective, in that it delves underneath the worry on the surface to explore our long-standing beliefs about the world that are perpetuating our anxiety. Oftentimes, two specific schemas are flagged again and again for people who feel chronically anxious: the Negativity/Pessimism Schema and the Vulnerable to Harm Schema.
A brief look at Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Anxiety is the most common mental health condition in Australia. The ABS National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing found that 17.2% of Australians aged 16 to 85, around 3.4 million people, had an anxiety disorder in the previous 12 months.
Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is diagnosed when worry is excessive and hard to control, shows up on more days than not for at least six months, and comes with physical signs like muscle tension, poor sleep, irritability or feeling constantly on edge. The worry tends to roam across various domains of our life, including things like money, friendships, work and health to name a few.
A diagnosis can be useful in describing a cluster of symptoms and giving them a name. This can open the door to treatment and support, and can be helpful for clarity and validation surrounding our worry experiences. Where diagnoses fall short is in the fact that they may leave out valuable context. That is, context about what has predisposed us to excessive worry, what in our life might be keeping this pattern of worry active, or what our worry serves to protect us from.
It is this gap that schema therapy, by its very nature, aims to fill. Whilst it does offer tangible strategies for managing anxiety experiences, it is mostly focused on exploring what you came to believe early in your life that makes constant vigilance feel so necessary.
The Negativity/Pessimism Schema: “something very bad is going to happen”
Dr Jeffrey Young, the founder of schema therapy, formulated eighteen possible early maladaptive schemas. The Negativity/Pessimism Schema (sometimes also called the Pessimism/Worry Schema) sits within the “Overvigilance and Inhibition” domain, which is a cluster of schemas centring around remaining on guard and keeping things in control.
Those of us living with this schema may be prone to a lifelong focus on the potential worst case scenarios, like loss, conflict, mistakes and regrets. Meanwhile, good news might be discounted, minimised or even discouraged due to the disappointment it stands to elicit. That is, we likely sit with a persistent expectation that things will inevitably and eventually go badly, whether this is in the realm of our career, or more personally, and is often accompanied by the felt sense that one wrong move could destroy everything.
The Negativity/Pessimism Schema can sound like:
“Don't get too excited, it probably won't happen” in the context of a potential opportunity.
"If I let myself enjoy this, I'll be blindsided when it falls apart” in the context of something positive happening.
“I’ve checked this so many times but something still feels off” in the context of leaving the house/forgetting something.
"Everyone said my work was good, but I know they're just being nice” in the context of praise or compliments.
Some of us with this schema come across as a realist to our peers, or as the one that always seems to have a backup plan. Others are seen as pessimistic, risk averse or gloomy, which is unfair because internally, these patterns have allowed us to survive. That is, if we are constantly considering worst case scenarios, we believe that we are prepared should they inevitably eventuate, and at best, we are pleasantly surprised if they don’t. For this schema, worrying works like an insurance policy. Unfortunately, however, the premiums are astronomically high, and the investment/reward ratio can leave us drained.
The Vulnerability to Harm/Illness Schema: “disaster could strike at any time”.
Whilst the Pessimism/Worry schema expects things to eventually go wrong, the Vulnerability to Harm Schema braces for sudden catastrophe. This schema belongs to a different domain in Young's model, impaired autonomy and performance, which relates to how capable and safe we feel moving through the world on our own.
The core belief underpinning the Vulnerability to Harm Schema is that something terrible could happen at any time, and we won't be able to stop it. This is so destabilising, and can leave us feeling utterly powerless and constantly fearful. For some of us, our fear is medical (for example, a headache is interpreted as a tumour, chest tightness is interpreted as a heart attack). We might google our symptoms incessantly, resulting in us feeling more frightened about what we might be experiencing than when we originally started. For other people, the fear is external (for example, a car accident, crime, plane crashes). Alternatively, for other people the fear sits in losing control of their own min (for example, the perception of “going crazy”).
What feeling underpinning each of these anxious experiences is one of fragility. That is, the work seems dangerous, an we feel small, underprepared and vulnerable within it.
The Vulnerability to Harm Schema can look like:
Avoiding flights, highways or public transport.
Checking locks, the stove or that the kids are breathing more than once.
Needing to know where loved ones are at all times.
Reading every health article, then wishing you hadn’t.
Staying close to home, or close to a hospital, when travelling, or alternatively, not travelling at all.
Oftentimes our fear can spread to the people in our inner circle. For example, parents with this schema may find it difficult to let their children take ordinary risks, like catching the train into the city or going on school camp, even when they know the odds are likely on their side.
Pessimism, Vulnerability to Harm and Generalised Anxiety Disorder: Overlap and Distinctions
It is not uncommon for both schemas to show up concurrently in us, and it is true that both can sit alongside a GAD diagnosis. Differentiating them, however, can still be useful, because the fear at the centre of each one is slightly different.
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What it is: a long-standing belief about life.
Schema domain: Overvigilance and Inhibition
Core belief: Things will go wrong, and good things wont last
Typical worries: Money, work, mistakes, relationships souring
How the fear feels: a slow, heavy sense of dread
Common habits: over preparing, playing down good news
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What it is: a long-standing belief about safety.
Schema domain: Impaired autonomy and performance.
Core belief: Catastrophe could strike at any time and I’m powerless to stop it
Typical worries: Illness, accidents, crime, losing our mind.
How the fear feels: sharp spikes of panic about danger
Common habits: checking, avoidance, reassurance seeking
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What it is: a diagnosis based on current symptoms
Schema domain: Not part of a schema model
Core belief: Not defined. The focus is instead on how much/how persistently we worry.
Typical worries: Anything and everything, shifting day to day
How the fear feels: constant tension and restlessness
Common habits: overthinking, poor sleep, trouble switching off
We certainly do not need to fit neatly into one column, where most people who come to therapy for worry recognise parts of both schemas, and the mix can shift with life stage. Triggers like becoming a parent can wake one up that's been dormant for years, and so can a health scare in someone close to us.
Where these schemas come from
Schemas form when core childhood needs go unmet, and for these two in particular, the needs in question are a felt sense of safety, and permission to relax and enjoy things without waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The Negativity/Pessimism Schema typically develops in homes where hope felt risky. For example, we may have ha a chronically worried parent, or money was scarce and bills were a source of tension. Alternatively, something bad may have happened to us, like a sudden death or a family business going under, and the message our younger self derived from it was: never allow yourself to get comfortable again. But there isn’t always a clearly defined cause, and seemingly small, repeated events can also reinforce this schema. For example, a child that constantly hears “don’t count your chickens” when they get excited might internalise that happiness is a luxury that should be held at arms length.
The Vulnerability to Harm Schema typically holds roots in an anxious or overprotective parent. Specifically, if adults around us viewed the world as a dangerous place, we are likely to absorb this sense of danger in our environment before we have the tools and experience to question it. We may have been constantly warned about things like germs, strangers, or climbing trees, without the encouragement and support to have our own experiences and test our own limits. It is important to note, however, that these warnings may have been grounded in real danger, like a long hospital stay as a child, or growing up in a home that didn’t feel safe. From a neurodivergent perspective, another angle emerges. That is, when the world feels loud and hard to predict, remaining on high alert can become a realistic and reasonable way to survive life day to day. As time progresses, this ongoing alertness can be encoded by our nervous system, sometimes as a belief that the world itself is unsafe.
Exploring this is absolutely not about assigning blame to parents or caregivers, who may have passed on intergenerational fears from their own families. Two things can be true at the same time: They may have been doing their best with the resources they had available at the time AND this may not have always met our needs. Therefore, understanding where a schema originated can make it easier for us to externalise this as something we learned, not something inherently wrong with us. And things that were learned can certainly be updated.
Schema modes: the parts of you that take over when worry emerges
Whilst schemas are the long-standing beliefs we carry, schema modes are the moment to moment states we transition into when these beliefs get triggered. One way to conceptualise this is to see a schema as a bruise we have carried for years, and a mode is how we react when someone presses on it.
Modes can shift in a matter of seconds. For example, we may wake up feeling fairly steady, read a headline about a car crash, and suddenly feel fearful and vulnerable, like a younger version of ourselves. Schema therapy makes it easier to identify these shifts in behaviour/emotions/thoughts, by grouping modes into different categories, with each of them playing a part in how chronic worry manifests.
Child modes
The Vulnerable Child is the part of us that feels fear most directly. With these two schemas it tends to show up frightened and small, and totally convinced that something awful is on its way and nobody will be there to help. We experience it as a hollow drop in our stomach, or a strong wish for someone to tell us that everything is going to be okay.
There is also such thing as a Happy Child mode, which holds our capacity for play and spontaneity. For people with the pessimism schema this part may be chronically blocked by a need for preparedness, productivity or control. Fun could feel risky, almost as though taking a moment to relax is exactly when something bad will happen.
Inner critic modes
Critic modes are internalised voices of the adults and experiences that shaped us in a negative way. Older schema therapy texts call them parent modes, but The Felt Sense Counselling refers to them as critics, as these voices are not always purely shaped by parents alone. When we worry, our Demanding Critic can sounds like a strict safety officer that tells us something like: you should have thought of that!!Check it again just to be sure.
The Punitive Critic usually emerges after something goes wrong, being the voice that says it's our fault for not seeing it coming, or somehow being to blame.
Whilst both critics can sound similar, the major distinction between these two is that the demanding critic aims to guide us/prompt action (sometimes through guilt), whereas the punitive critic contributes to a shame response, which is not known to hold any adaptive function.
Coping modes
Coping modes are the strategies that our mind uses to manage our Vulnerable Child's fear. They're home to things like reassurance-seeking and avoidance behaviours, and explored further below.
The Healthy Adult mode
The Healthy Adult mode is the part within us that schema therapy aims to strengthen. The Healthy Adult can notice fear and respond to it kindly without allowing it to dominate us. It can comfort our frightened child self, and it can push back on the critic when it oversteps. Most of us have more of this mode than we give ourselves credit for, but it is often a voice that feels subdued in the face of vulnerability if we haven’t had the opportunity to practice strengthening it.
Why reassurance doesn’t always work
Coping modes are a big part of what keeps a schema alive. Each one likely made sense to a younger version of us as a way of surviving fear that was too big to hold on our own. As an adult, they actually perpetuate the fear, as they keep us locked in our earlier patterns of thinking.
The most common mode when it comes to worry is the Perfectionistic Overcontroller (shortened to the Overcontroller). It is a part within us that scans ahead and rehearses, telling us that if we think through every possible disaster, we will be ready for it when it inevitably comes. Each time the thing we fear doesn't happen, our Overcontroller is reinforced and takes the credit, cementing the idea “worrying works”.
Avoidant modes perform a similar role from a different angle, where avoiding a risk feels safer in the moment, but impacts us unfavourably in the long run. We might put off a scan a doctor recommended us, or continue to postpone an overseas trip because we fear the flight there. Another avoidant mode called the Detached Self-Soother might compel us to reach for something to subdue the intensity of our worry, like alcohol, drugs, gambling or excessive social media usage. Unfortunately, the cost that we incur with these avoidant modes is that we never have the opportunity to observe ourselves coping with fear and worry, which perpetuates the belief that we are powerless/cannot cope.
Some people continuously live in a Compliant Surrenderer mode, where their schema’s view of the world is simply accepted as a truth of life. The world can then get organised around this fear, also contributing to a disempowered, passive view towards the schema’s narrative.
A smaller group of people turn the opposite way and push against the fear with reckless behaviour, like driving too fast or ignoring real health warnings, which is often known as an “Overcompensator” mode in schema terms. This mode can be exhausting (and dangerous) because it is a surface-level facade that actually preserves the vulnerability underneath.
Living with a worried mind: what can help
Rewiring the way a schema has impacted us can take time, and is often a lot easier with support. Despite this, there are a few initial steps that can be helpful in exposing these patterns, and thus, making it easier for us to enact change.
Be curious about why worrying is protective
Next time your mind races with anxious thoughts or worst case scenarios, allow yourself to be curious about the role the worry thinks it’s playing for you. What function does it serve? How does it protect you? Generally, the answer might be something like “if I see something bad coming, it won’t hurt as much as if I am completely blind sighted by it”. Separating this out can assist us is alleviating some of our self-directed frustration.
Listen to your body
Worry is just as much physical and it is psychological, sometimes manifesting as a clenched jaw, tightness in the chest or a headache. Placing one hand over the impacted area and consciously slowing down your exhale can communicate to your nervous system a sense of safety that arguing with your thoughts cannot.
Keep a record of reality
Write down a worry, then come back to it a week later with perspective. Did it happen? If it did, how did you cope? Over a few months this becomes hard evidence against the schema's prediction that you won't be able to handle things, and is a helpful way to begin strengthening our healthy adult.
Increase your distress tolerance slowly
If you are prone to checking or reassurance seeking behaviours (e.g., calling family five times a week), see if you can try implementing a small, manageable reduction (e.g., trying calling only four times for a week). This can be gradually increased, where these small reductions teach your brain that uncertainty is survivable, without throwing you in the deepest end first. It is very important to note that distress tolerance behavioural activities are safest and best worked through in therapy with a trained professional.
Allow yourself permission to sit with good news.
This is particularly useful for the Negativity/Pessimism schema, which is geared towards rejecting/minimising good news. When something goes well, see if you can resist the urge to add a "but". Tell a safe person about it, write it down, or see if you can sit with it for a minute longer than feels comfortable.
Speak to “little you”
When fear spikes, see if you can ask what the vulnerable child within you needs to hear. Sometimes people find that it is something as simple as “you're not on your own with this”.
How schema therapy can help with chronic worry
Well known worry management strategies can be helpful (like deep breathing or CBT based exercises). Many people who have tried these sorts of strategies alone describe feeling like they are simply tipping water out of a sinking boat without ever finding the leak. Schema Therapy is different to other types of therapy in that it goes looking for this metaphorical leak, addressing experiences at their root rather than merely patching them up on the surface.
In sessions at The Felt Sense, we'll map out which schemas are most active for you and trace them back to where they first took hold. From there, the work becomes more experiential with things like imagery rescripting (allowing us to revisit early memories of fear, and bringing in the protection/comfort that was missing at the time), and chair work Igiving the worried, over controlling parts a voice so that we can understand what they aim to protect us from).
Because Schema Therapy is highly somatic, we also track what happens in your body as fear rises and settles, which helps to build a felt sense of safety that insight alone doesn't always reach.
If a specific frightening event is feeding the schema, such as a medical emergency or an accident, EMDR can sometimes be woven in to help reduce the intensity of the memory and the anxiety associated with it.
The aim is to strengthen your Healthy Adult, the part of you that can hold uncertainty without needing to solve it. Life will always carry some risk, but what we aim to change is how much room that this risk takes up in our mind.
If you have been battling anxiety that feels deeper than just day to day worry, feel free to book a free 15 minute chat and we can talk about whether schema therapy might be a good fit.
