Stephanie Underwood RSW

08/16/2026

All 18 schema blog posts are officially out. 🎉

Over the past few months, I’ve been working through the 18 Early Maladaptive Schemas one by one as part of the Schema Origins Mini Series.

Each post explores what the schema actually is, how it can develop through early relational experiences, how it tends to show up in adulthood, and what healing can look like.

If you’ve ever wondered why certain fears, beliefs, relationship patterns, or emotional reactions seem to follow you even when you logically know better, schemas are a very good place to start looking.

The complete Schema Origins Mini Series is now available at healingnarrativescounselling.com.

I’ve also linked the individual schema posts below so you can jump directly to the ones that resonate with you. 👇

Save this post because you’re probably going to want to come back to it. 🧠🌿

Abandonment:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-abandonment-schema-why-you-re-always-waiting-for-people-to-leave

Emotional Deprivation:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-emotional-deprivation-schema-when-you-ve-always-felt-unseen

Defectiveness and Shame:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-defectiveness-and-shame-schema-what-it-is-how-it-forms-and-how-to-heal-it

Social Isolation and Alienation:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-social-isolation-and-alienation-schema

Enmeshment:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-enmeshment-schema

Failure:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-failure-schema

Vulnerability to Harm:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-vulnerability-to-harm-schema-why-some-people-can-never-fully-relax-into-safety

Mistrust and Abuse:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-mistrust-and-abuse-schema-when-the-nervous-system-learned-that-people-cannot-be-trusted

Self-Sacrifice:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-self-sacrifice-schema-why-putting-everyone-first-is-not-the-same-as-being-kind

Subjugation:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-subjugation-schema-when-shrinking-yourself-feels-like-the-only-way-to-stay-safe

Approval Seeking:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-approval-seeking-schema-why-some-people-have-never-learned-how-to-simply-be-themselves

Negativity and Pessimism:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-negativity-and-pessimism-schema

Emotional Inhibition:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-emotional-inhibition-schema-when-feeling-became-too-dangerous-to-risk

Unrelenting Standards:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-unrelenting-standards-schema-when-good-enough-was-never-an-option

Entitlement and Grandiosity:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-entitlement-and-grandiosity-schema-when-the-nervous-system-never-learned-that-others-are-real

Self-Punitive / Punitiveness:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/self-punitive-schema

The Insufficient Self-Control Schema:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-insufficient-self-control-schema

Series Overview, Understanding Schemas:
https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/how-to-actually-heal-your-schemas-and-why-most-people-never-do

Healing maladaptive schemas isn't about thinking your way out of old patterns. It's about understanding what schemas are, where yours came from, and why real change only happens one way. Hugh

08/03/2026

New blog post on the Enmeshment Schema ✨

https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-enmeshment-schema

The enmeshment schema develops inside families that look close and loving from the outside. But the child's identity was absorbed into the parent's needs, and the adult who results often doesn't know what they want, think, or feel without someone else's needs to organize around. Here is where it com...

07/30/2026

✨ Read my latest blog post on the Fear of Failure Schema; what it is, how it impacts your relationships and your decisions everyday, and how to heal it.

✨This is a good one.

https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-failure-schema

The failure schema is not a fear of failing. It’s the brain’s prediction that failure is inevitable, and that it reflects something inherent about who you are. Here is where it comes from, how it filters evidence to maintain itself, and what healing actually requires.

07/30/2026

Perfectionism. Procrastination. Performance anxiety. That’s what we see at the top of the iceberg.

These are frequently framed as motivation problems or discipline issues. Which, by the way, tend to reinforce the fear of failure schema itself, “what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just do this small task?”

But these have nothing to do with not being good enough. They’re what we call “Protective Adaptations” built by a brain that learnt early on that failure leads to rejection. And so the brain said, “we can’t let that happen. What can we do to make sure that rejection never happens?” and that’s when the fear of failure schema was born.

Your brain isn’t reacting to failure itself. It’s reacting to what it predicts failure will cost you relationally. And until that prediction is updated through experiences of safety, no amount of discipline or willpower will override a system designed to keep you alive.

When the prediction changes, the behaviour can change too.

Check out the brand new blog post for more insight on the Fear of Failure Schema:

https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-failure-schema

07/26/2026

🧠 Follow for evidence-based education on trauma, attachment, schemas, predictive processing, and the science of relational safety.

Relational Safety Framework® Advancing research and understanding of Attachment, Trust, and Safety

07/26/2026

Your brain doesn’t wait to know whether something is actually a threat or not. It doesn’t have the luxury of waiting because that could potentially cost your life. So it makes its best guess based on your past experiences and the current sensory information.

Every second, your brain combines what your senses are detecting with everything you’ve learned throughout your life to answer one question:

“How likely is it that I’m safe?” That process is called inference.

If your childhood taught your brain that people were generally safe and predictable, safety becomes the default prediction.

If your childhood taught your brain that relationships were unpredictable, critical, or emotionally unsafe, your brain learns that danger is more probable, even when there isn’t an objective threat in front of you.

The good news is that predictions aren’t permanent. As you accumulate new, safe experiences, your brain updates its predictions. Over time, what once felt dangerous can begin to feel safe.

Understanding how the brain makes these predictions changes how we think about trauma, attachment, schemas, and healing.

🧠 Follow for evidence-based education on trauma, attachment, schemas, predictive processing, and the science of relational safety.

07/24/2026

We view the world and ourselves through the lens of how we were raised. It’s only normal that a lack of safety in childhood will lead to the perception that the world is not a safe place in adulthood.

07/20/2026

If I were to ask you if you had ever piloted a plane, the odds are most likely that you haven’t. And If I told you, “Oh, you should REALLY learn how to fly a plane. It’s so odd that you haven’t done so already - it’s such a life changing experience”. Honestly, you probably wouldn’t care much at all. That’s because you’ve never piloted a plane, and you have no idea what it feels like to do so.

The same goes for a lot of these schemas, including the emotional inhibition schema. We don’t know what we don’t know. How we grow up feeling and thinking is no exception. We only know what we know. We don’t realize that our normal isn’t always so “normal”.

Learn more about the Emotional Inhibition Schema by checkout out the blog post below. 👇🏼

And check out my new Schema Shifts Guide - now available as a digital PDF product and available on Amazon in Paperback format. 📓

https://schemashiftworkbook.base44.app

https://www.healingnarrativescounselling.com/post/the-emotional-inhibition-schema-when-feeling-became-too-dangerous-to-risk

The emotional inhibition schema doesn't look like a wound. It looks like composure, reliability, and always being fine. Here's where it actually comes from, what it costs the body, and why insight alone is rarely enough to heal it.

07/19/2026

Attachment theory was never meant to be a personality label, a dating strategy, or a way to decide who’s the problem in a relationship.

It was developed to understand how human beings adapt to relational threat. That’s it.

This series breaks down attachment through an evidence-based lens grounded in research. We’re talking:

• What attachment actually is
• How it develops
• What it’s responding to
• And why your behaviors make sense when you understand the system behind them

Because once you understand attachment as a protective strategy instead of an identity… everything changes.

Welcome to the series. ✨