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Key points
- People with the mistrust/abuse schema have learned rules from what they experienced as a cruel, mean, abusive world.
- With this schema, one's brain considers relationships to be a potential threat, so it keeps the stress response turned on.
- The key to recovery is training your brain to understand that you are not a powerless child anymore.
This post is one in a series of 18 posts, covering each of the 18 schemas outlined originally by Jeffrey Young. Based on my own clinical experience and style, I’m presenting my own take on these concepts in addition to Young’s original definitions. See this post for more background on the definition of schemas, which I call the "DNA” of your personality. This series describes what it’s like to have each schema, how to notice it, and how to manage it.
Mistrust/Abuse Schema
I like to point out that schemas are what we, in childhood, take in as “the rules” of how the world works, how relationships work, how we are supposed to survive, and often how we are supposed to feel about ourselves. People who have the mistrust/abuse schema have learned rules from what they experienced as a cruel, mean, abusive world. This experience is forged in early abusive relationships with parents, adults, and caregivers in situations of neglect and physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse, and certainly dehumanizing, exploitative treatment over time.
It's important to take in how all-encompassing this schema can be in a child’s experience. When you add symptoms of complex trauma to the mix, even as a child starts to grow into their teens, it’s very difficult to escape the repeated experience of feeling and being mistreated. It feels like destiny, like this is how the world is: A cruel, hurtful place. There’s no escape, so you have to adapt.
This is a hard, painful schema, and very often adults are unaware that they have it. But how can that be?
For those with this schema, once they grow up and become independent, it would seem that “the danger is over,” they don’t have to rely on a world ruled by harmful adults, and they are able to take care of themselves, right? While that’s true, if you have this schema, you’re still intuitively operating by the rules you learned growing up. Your brain considers relationships to be a potential threat, so it keeps the stress response turned on. If you see someone as a potential threat, it’s harder to believe or even see the good gestures they may make to you.
It's like, as an adult, you’ve developed a blind spot for when people treat you well—and this blind spot can lead to periods of depression or anxiety as you keep trying to cope with relationships, longing, and need while burdened with the schema.
6 Signs of Mistrust/Abuse Schema
- You have difficulty trusting people, even those close to you like your partner or spouse. You may find yourself believing they are trying to control you.
- You believe people are by their nature selfish and will take advantage if they can get away with it or find a weakness.
- Since everyone is potentially hurtful and untrustworthy, you decide you might as well be with someone, even if they treat you poorly.
- You may miss red flags that someone is not good for you when you meet them and end up hurt, which reinforces your mistrusting outlook.
- You may associate relationships with having to submit to another.
- You may have a mean or sadistic part of yourself that lashes out at others when you’re hurt.
How to Start Letting Go of This Schema
The idea of letting go of the mistrust/abuse schema can seem a lot like saying to yourself, “Hey, how about just going into the world completely defenseless and vulnerable to anyone deeply hurting you?” To the stress response part of your brain, this sounds utterly reckless. People with this schema often have a hard time deeply connecting with a therapist, because as the therapist tries to help them build trust, they just kind of go along with the program without deeply believing in a trusting relationship. An experienced therapist will see these signs, respect where they come from, and meet the client where they are, helping them become more aware, and building trust step-by-step, out of the skepticism and guardedness.
It's hard to discuss mistrust/abuse schema without discussing complex trauma, and the idea that, as a matter of survival, people with this schema often detach or dissociate from certain thoughts, beliefs, or feelings. So you may have the experience of consciously wanting to trust your spouse, but criticizing yourself for not being able to, which leaves you feeling flawed.
To find a hopeful way out of mistrust/abuse schema, there are two major goals:
- It’s important to take in the idea that what you experienced as a child doesn’t have to be the rules for living as an adult.
- Then you can focus on training yourself to have different boundaries, and start testing the idea that you can trust others after you use good judgment about their character first.
Easy for me to say! These two goals are deceptively simple, but involve a lot of practice, making small steps, and taking small risks trusting others, then building on the wins.
A major insight to hold onto in this process is that when your mistrust/abuse schema is activated, it’s like the part of your brain from childhood is triggered, as a self-protective move. This abused child part of your brain takes over. And when you connect so deeply with the flashback childhood experience of danger and lost control, it’s like part of you becomes that powerless child again.
It feels like you have no choice in managing your relationship boundaries.
And that’s the key to recovery: training your brain to understand that you are not a powerless child anymore. You need to learn to trust yourself as an adult with power who has choices and can take care of you.
You need to help that abused child part of you see that you’re a grown-up adult, that you can say no, and that you can bring goodness, safety, and love into your life.
