In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a “schema” is a basic underlying assumption that we derived by ourselves in very early childhood about “how the world works.” By the time you are four or five, you might already “know” that, e.g., “If I obey instructions perfectly, I will be loved,” or “Bad luck always comes to our family,” or “If I don’t rock the boat, mom and dad won’t fight.” These may or may not have been helpful conclusions for the time, and after all, we are talking about a child’s still-developing brain, but it is easy to see that those assumptions will not work for adult behavior. Our problem now as adults is that those messages were encoded so long ago, and the neural pathways are so well trodden that they are almost never questioned.

As we struggle to individuate and self-actualize, we must question what we are asking of ourselves and of life. We must also look at the ways those requests are based on observations, conclusions, and schemas made long, long ago in childhood, perhaps in a different world, but certainly in another time. If so, are they still viable? The inner child in all of us, for example, loves to soothe itself in times of trouble with comfort foods like hamburgers, or ice cream, or their more “adult” versions, smoking and drinking. Solutions like these are very simple, physiological, childlike strategies based on out-of-date schemas. Those solutions work for infants and children but are not good or appropriate for healthy adults.

The culture in which one is raised forms a huge part of one’s world view and, by extension, developing schemas. In addition to the archetypal psychological teachings that parents are naturally expected to teach their children, there are also culture-specific teachings. The role of the parent to a child in a Latino family may have different connotations and expectations than in an Asian family, or an Irish-Catholic family, and so on. We are also raised with the cultural and familial expectations of the times. All these play into the development of our schemas, and the schemas in turn are played back to our families.

The times may move on, but our schemas do not. The crisis of identity that comes with aging often arises from this lag between time and self-perception. Certain understandings we have held for years about people and events may be completely mistaken. The values that have up until now motivated us may now seem false. Often self-awareness, too, is stuck in a previous state of development because of a childhood schema. For example, for someone raised in a family that did not aim very high or delve too deeply into things, problem solving and introspection may have had negative connotations. Sone schemas that might have resulted would be, “Don’t spend your time thinking about things,” “It’s better to party than to work,” or “Avoid responsibility.”

By definition, schemas cannot be changed, since they must be formed in childhood. However, once we recognize them in adulthood, we can decide whether we want to continue following them, a slave to their subconscious commands. Changing the resultant behaviors from childhood schemas is not easy and takes conscious work and practice. Coming up with new rules of behavior, new methods of perception, and new conclusions is only the first part; the second is teaching yourself to put them into practice. The work is well worth it, however, for you will finally be living your life according to your own rules and in the present, not your childhood’s rules of the past.

Finally finishing a project that had been in the works for more than 10 years (granted, on again off again) produced a very strange sensation of accomplishment and wonder. I wondered how I ever finished it. Year after year I would say, this is the year I finish Father Figures. Another year went by. And another. Writing partners, setting goals for myself, rewards, and reinforcements, they all came and went. What never left was my commitment to the project and what it could mean to my clients and to gay and queer men around the world.

Like a good psychotherapist, I began to look at the process itself, the constant delaying and precluding the work I needed to do. The effects of going through this roller coaster of promises to myself broken again and again contributed to an overall undermining of self-esteem. Finally, I remembered that it is in keeping one’s word to oneself that self-esteem starts to grow. So, I turned my project into an orderly bunch of doable baby steps, assuring myself that I only had to do that one small thing in the time allotted and I could congratulate myself for having kept my word.

If this all starts to sound like Project Management 101, it is. But it is so easy to forget that when your head is spinning with self-recriminations. Self-doubt: Will I ever finish it? Self-disgust: How many times have I failed to “get it done?” Self-judgment: I am a failure. My experience says that it is at that point that you find out what kind of commitment you really have to the project. Sometimes it is better to just admit that the project is not worth doing, or you are no longer interested, and move on to something else.

When a back burner project will not die and will not go away, however, you need to muster the commitment to move it up to the front burner. The front burner need only be creating a schedule and then putting it away until the time is right. For me, the best way to move a project forward, whether long-term or short, is to first and foremost, create a timeline or schedule for it, one that is broken down into various components, with days estimated for how long each step will take to complete. After that, the dates go on a calendar.

In long-term projects, you can assure yourself that the work will not be forgotten and that it will be broken down into small, doable steps when the assigned time comes. It is a slow path to accomplishment because it is stretched out over a long period, but one that will take you where you want to go. For short-term projects, the timeline/schedule allows you to budget daily hours so that you make sure there is time set aside for the here-and-now needs of the project. In both cases, it is the recognition of your own commitment to the value of the project that will assure you that, no matter at what speed, progress will be made.

David Bowman LMFT is a licensed psychotherapist based in Los Angeles, California.

Photo licensed from Shutterstock.

After spending some time doing psychotherapy, many of my clients have identified changes they would like to make in themselves and their lives, and we have worked together to map out goals, objectives, and even detailed plans and schedules. Often, I have become a kind of life coach at this point, helping clients create action plans and breaking their changes down into manageable steps. However, some of the most well-intentioned and highly motivated clients often run across seemingly unconnected events and circumstances that prevent them from carrying out their plans. After encountering a certain number of puzzling obstacles, we are forced to consider the possibility of self-sabotage. Are these clients either consciously or unconsciously preventing their own growth and change?

Subconscious Messages

Some of the more obvious self-sabotaging behaviors include excessive drinking and drug use, binge eating, self-injury such as cutting, or even simple procrastination. These are all ways that we can prevent ourselves from acting in our best interest. In addition, there are self-sabotaging, subconscious beliefs, which are perhaps even more profound and far-reaching, underlying scripts that play out with messages such as, “I don’t deserve to be/do/have…,” “ I’m not worthy of him/her/it …,” “I have no control over …,” “it’s my fault that …,” “ I’m too fat/thin/dumb/smart/ugly/beautiful to ….” The variety and the effects of these statements are endless. Now we must return to psychodynamic inquiry to look for clues as to why we would subconsciously act against our own best interests?

Creative Blocks

Creative types such as actors, musicians, writers, and artists often face creative blocks, a stubborn form of self-sabotage that can feel entirely beyond their control. And is it any wonder? For people who daily must display their innermost thoughts and feelings and vulnerabilities and strengths to others, the ever-present threat of personal rejection can be paralyzing or crippling. Having to face that every day can create a kind of trauma.

Freud and Resistance

Freud would call self-sabotage a form of resistance—avoidance of subjects and behaviors that are too painful or uncomfortable to accept. In fact, many of us resist improving our behaviors or attitudes or changing our lives because we are not sure of (or perhaps even afraid of) what life will be like once we’ve made that change. We get comfortable in our discomfort, and the misery we know is safer than the unknown life we cannot yet even picture. We have spent years, possibly decades, developing coping mechanisms, using avoidance techniques, even creating outside people and circumstances that will make it impossible for us to make the needed change, or make it necessary for us to stay the same.

It is important to remember that despite it having a destructive effect on life now, self-sabotage was originally developed as a defense, a way to save pain and suffering. It is the work of therapy to uncover and even honor that pain and suffering, for until we understand the very personal reason for self-sabotage, we will continue to remain at its mercy.

David Bowman LMFT is a licensed psychotherapist based in Los Angeles, California.

Photo credit: Alice Achterhof UNSPLASH

For anyone who is not 100 percent heterosexual, coming out of the closet is another form of self-actualization, as you are forced to be truthful about your sexuality in order to be truer to your real self. Later in life, self-actualization is a kind of continual coming out, too, as you must continually reveal your true and better self, both to yourself and to others, in order to fulfill yourself. Normally, coming out is an issue that presents itself to us earlier in life than questions of self-actualization do. The urgency of hormones, the wish to love and be loved, and the need to be touched usually drive human behavior much sooner in life than questions of the meaning of life and how to live your life in accordance with your own meaning.

The coming out process is a long and complicated one, and one that takes place on many levels, both inwardly and outwardly, privately and publicly. Recently, I saw that a “Gay Teenaged Hero” was going to be profiled on a local TV newsmagazine, a light-skinned Latino kid in junior high school who had come out and started a Gay-Straight Alliance at his school. I made sure to tune in, prepared to be proud of this kid who had so much courage. What struck me was the way the boy spoke and acted: If my eyes weren’t open, I would have sworn I was hearing RuPaul in her most bitchy, queenly, judgmental, snap! snap! GURRRL!!! tone of voice. This was that 12-year-old kid’s idea of what gay people sound like. For a gay-identifying kid, what role models does the culture provide? For many of my clients, too, the choice is between a caricature of a drag queen or a closet case on the down-low.

What the lack of role models results in—stunted character growth—can also be caused by inability to resist peer pressure. Some of my 20- and 30-something clients, emerging from the college and postgrad experience, where cliques of friends have defined their respective lives for years, have great difficulty coming out or self-actualizing, because it means now separating from the pack. While that is always a hard thing to do, often it is required or even life-saving. You can suffocate in many different kinds of closets.

The bravery required to make a change and not to know what your life is going to be on the other side is often only seen as bravery by others. For those who are forced to take these steps, however, it can be a matter of survival, survival of our entire physical, psychological, sexual, and intellectual being. Is it any wonder, then, that a 12-year-old boy takes solace in the identity of a proud and sassy drag queen until he finds the bravery to discover his own particular kind of gay? Or a mid-30-something professional wrestles with demons of wanting to stay with his college fraternity brothers whom he has long outgrown? In therapy, we try to find some compassion for them and for ourselves. Growing up is hard to do—at any age.

David Bowman LMFT is a licensed psychotherapist based in Los Angeles, California.

Photo credit: Daniel Watson UNSPLASH