Know The Failure Scheme

Schemas are mental structures that influence our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. We are talking about patterns, conditioned by our experiences, messages and learnings that each of us generate, modify and use. These patterns begin to be configured in childhood and end up being outlined with the last beat of our heart. In addition, although they contain common lines, they are still personal.

In this way, there are so many schemas as experiences and moments. One of the most typical molds is the failure scheme. Sometimes the origin of this scheme lies in feelings of failure in childhood and how they were managed.

Although the variability is great in terms of failure patterns, studies with patients point to a recurring origin. A father who is very critical of his children, who frequently uses comparisons with siblings and who shares very little quality time with them. Somehow, he is only present to correct or punish. We also find it in those perfectionist people who have seen this attitude reinforced.

Be that as it may, the failure scheme is a mental conception that makes us move around the world trying to confirm said failure. The person is so clear on an unconscious level that he is a failure that he puts the means for reality to confirm it. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Obviously, the failure schema patient is not happy in this way, but he also does not know how to get out of the circle. Therapy will then be aimed at teaching the patient to modify his failure scheme. 

Signs left by a failure scheme

There are some signs that can make you see that you suffer from the failure scheme. In the first place, if as we have said before, your parents were very critical of you when you were little or the other way around, they did not take into account your performance, it is possible that you have developed this pattern.

Other clues that can make us think about the failure scheme are:

• You are not taking the necessary steps to develop stable and secure skills in your profession.
• You choose professions below your merits or your potential.
• You avoid promotions or advancements within your work or academic life.
• You get a job, but you end up getting fired for procrastination, lack of punctuality, or sloppiness.
• You don’t commit to a profession, constantly changing from job to job.
• You select a very hard or difficult professional career and you do not know when you will exercise it (actor, footballer …).
• You are afraid to take initiatives or decisions at work.
• You choose couples who are successful.
• You try to compensate for your lack of performance or work ability by focusing on other issues: physical, parenthood or motherhood …

If you feel strongly identified with these little traps of life, chances are that you carry a failure scheme in your backpack that is a drag.

This scheme has been trying to confirm itself over and over again throughout your life and to this day it keeps you locked out. It is very possible that your feelings are sad or disappointed with yourself, because you really do not feel capable of carrying out those skills that you have.

You have to realize the origin of your scheme and understand why it happens to you. From there, stop whipping yourself. No one is to blame for his story or what he learned when he was little.

It is normal that the scheme tends to implement measures that confirm it. It is what the brain learned in the past and for him walking along its paths is like walking through his childhood home.

What can I do to break my scheme?

Breaking the scheme is not an easy task, in part because it involves changing some of our habits on two levels: the mental and the behavioral.

On the other hand, the patient / client who goes to schema therapy will have to make these changes in a structured way. Some of the therapeutic objectives that are usually proposed to combat the failure scheme are:

• Acknowledge the activation of your scheme. It is essential that the patient / client is aware of the situations in which his scheme is activated. Typically, these situations will have to do with academic, work or performance issues. The patient can carry out a record so that the therapist can observe the most common activation situations. Once you are aware that your scheme is activated in this way, try not to merge with it and let yourself be guided by it. One dialogue you can use is: “My failure scheme is activating now. I’m not going to move based on what he tells me is what I’ve always done ”.

• Make decisions that involve changes. The failure scheme has you dizzy, it guides you to make decisions inspired by a negative emotional context, only with the aim of confirming that the taste of your destiny is one of defeat. Now your task is to know this information and circumvent its trap. Force yourself every day to make a decision: with your partner, in the greengrocer, with the decoration of your house, etc. The key is to familiarize yourself with decision making. Once you gain skill in everyday settings, you can generalize it to other fields.
• Make a reminder card. You can make a card for when you look back at the scheme for the purpose of using it.
• Choose activities you feel intrinsically motivated. Try to include goals in your life that satisfy you for the path that leads to them and not so much for their achievement.

• Make a list of your skills, abilities, abilities, and successes. It will help you, when the sky is cloudy, to remember that in your biography not only bad luck has prevailed, the frustration of expectations or performances that have not exceeded standards.

The key is to disengage the brain from the usual pattern. We have already seen that this way of acting has not worked for us. At first, the change will be complicated due to the inertia of the scheme – it is perfectly integrated into our lives.

With practice and perseverance, the failure scheme will fade, replacing it with another that contributes to our growth instead of acting as a brake on it.