A recent executive education program I attended got me thinking about the ways in which embedded emotional responses continually undermine our goals and intentions. Which reminded me of Tara Bennett-Goleman’s 2001 book, "Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart." The book combines Buddhist approaches to mindfulness to a branch of cognitive psychology known as schema therapy. To make sure we’re all on the same page, here’s a brief description of each of these elements.

“Ordinarily our attention swings rather wildly, carried here and there by random thoughts, fleeting memories, captivating fantasies, snatches of things seen, heard, or otherwise perceived,” Bennett-Goleman writes. “By contrast, mindfulness is distraction-resistant, sustained attention to the movements of the mind itself.” Think of it as “a way to expand the scope of awareness while refining its precision,” or “the capacity to see things just as they are from moment to moment.”

The negative emotional habits or patterns that derail us are what Bennett-Goleman calls schemas.

Schema therapy identifies ten major schemas: vulnerability (the fear that a minor setback will leave you jobless and homeless), subjugation (always giving in to the demands and needs of others), abandonment, emotional deprivation, perfectionism, unlovability, mistrust, social exclusion, failure, and entitlement. Most of us have one or two principal schemas.

Each schema “has a unique signature, a pattern of typical triggers and reactions,” Bennett-Goleman writes. Mindfulness serves as “the crucial radar, alerting us to the fact that a schema has been stirred.”
Breaking free from power of a schema starts with learning to notice when you’re in the grip of one. Once you’re able to do that, you can identify the hallmarks of how that particular schema affects you. Equipped with that information, you’re in a position to do something different—to find an antidote that disrupts your usual response—the next time one of your schemas is triggered.

Here, then, are the five steps Bennett-Goleman recommends:

1. When you detect a schema attack, “intentionally make at least one positive response that blocks part of the usual pattern,” advises Bennett-Goleman. If your unlovability schema has been triggered, try to remember something kind or affectionate that someone has said to you recently.

2. Challenge your automatic thoughts. Conduct a reality check that tests the automatic assumptions underlying the schema. For example, if a difficult conversation with a client has put you under attack from the vulnerability schema, ask yourself how many times such conversations have actually resulted in your becoming homeless.

3. Disrupt the unpleasant mood. To prevent being swept away by the negative feelings, try to just note them. Bring mindful attention to them in a way that allows you to see yourself as having the feelings—instead of being held by them.

4. “Do something constructive that changes the schema script for the better.” If a last-minute request from an acquaintance has triggered your deprivation schema—your tendency to neglect your own needs and plans in an overeagerness to care for others—try to craft a response to the request that acknowledges your desire to help the acquaintance without completely discarding the plans you had made for yourself.

5. Practice making a more positive response every chance you get. “As human beings our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world,” Gandhi once said, “as being able to remake ourselves.” Once you’ve found a more positive response to embedded maladaptive one, iteration becomes the order of the day