The "Imperfection Schema" is a deeply ingrained belief system, often formed in childhood, that leads individuals to feel fundamentally flawed, inadequate, and ashamed, impacting their perceptions, behaviors, and relationships throughout life.
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Do these sentences sound familiar to you?
I feel incomplete and flawed inside.
Most of the time I don't show my real face to other people.
Because the real me is not accepted.
I often experience the feeling of shame about myself.
I judge myself a lot, I criticize a lot.
I usually fall in love with people who won't.
I have little to no positives.
I have more negative, weak, weak sides.
If these sentences sound familiar to you, at least most of them
, then you may have a situation called the imperfection scheme.
So what is this imperfection scheme and how can we deal with it?
Let's talk about it in this video.
[Music]
The concept of schema is a concept used in cognitive psychology and
describes our rigid beliefs about ourselves, other people, and the outside world that we learn in the early years of life
. In fact, schemas can also be defined as the frames through which we see the outside world
. You perceive the outside world in accordance with
the schemas we have created since childhood
. Therefore, our schemas affect our perceptions, thoughts, and therefore our emotions and
behaviors.
Schemas are necessary because they give us a framework for what is how or what should be how
Therefore, as we narrow down in accordance with the schemas, we feel good and safe.
Moreover, even if those schemas are actually incompatible schemas.
However, some maladaptive schemas that we have
developed with our limited consciousness that we have developed since childhood can negatively affect our lives and somehow
cause us to experience repetitive problems in
our lives . For example, after some experiences in your childhood
, you may have developed a belief about yourself that you are worthless, flawed or inadequate,
and this belief becomes so solid after a while that you are now you, so
you mean that belief.
Moreover, giving up that belief is quite destructive for you.
Because if you don't have that belief, you don't know what to do.
That's why you continue to cling to that belief even if it hurts you as an adult.
This belief is strangely familiar and familiar, even if it is destructive.
And it makes you feel at home.
That's why almost everyone repeats these negative patterns from their childhood throughout their lives
. In other words, in our adulthood, we almost recreate these schemas from our childhood
. For example, did we grow up with the belief that we are imperfect?
In our adulthood, we are almost drawn towards people or environments
that will make us feel this and make us feel the same, and we make ourselves relive this feeling over and over again.
Freud calls this the repetition compulsion.
According to him, we constantly repeat our childhood pains.
For example, children of an alcoholic father marry an alcoholic, or an abused
child becomes an abuser himself.
Well, in summary, we said beliefs whose schemas come from our childhood and affect our day.
And one of the most common of these schemes is the Imperfection Scheme.
Individuals with the imperfection schema were raised by parents who
belittled, judged, criticised, and ignored them in childhood . Sometimes we see that
children who grew up in overprotective and caring families still have a defective schema
. Shame and anxiety
are two of the most common emotions experienced by individuals with an imperfect schema
. The person feels shame because of feeling incomplete and inadequate inside
. On the other hand, he is worried that others will notice his shortcomings and inadequacy
. However, these feelings, that is, the feelings of shame, anxiety or inadequacy
that the person has, are not so noticeable from outside.
The person feels these feelings internally, and people with these schemas
often develop various ways to cope with these schemas,
and these ways are often unhealthy.
One of these ways is avoidance.
In the case of avoidance, the person restricts his social relations and withdraws into himself in
order to compensate for this feeling, that is, to prevent the inadequacies he believes he
has from being noticed by others .
Does not form relationships with other people very often.
Builds more superficial relationships.
He almost avoids the others.
He doesn't open up too much to them.
Another way of coping is the opposite.
We overcompensate for that too.
In the case of overcompensation, individuals appear
to be extremely self-confident and very assertive from the outside
. It can even be perceived as being extremely arrogant and big-nosed at times
. They do their best to look perfect. However, no matter how successful they are, no matter how perfect
they seem from the outside, they cannot prevent that feeling of
inadequacy, the feeling that something is missing inside .
Another way of coping is to surrender.
Here the person acts in accordance with the belief he has.
So it looks insecure from the outside.
He reflects those feelings of inadequacy that he carries inside, and he somehow allows
people to experience this feeling, and he does not oppose it.
Even if there is information that somehow contradicts the schema he has, for example, when someone tells him, "You are
very beautiful" or "you are very talented", he usually belittles or ignores this information
. In other words, let's say that when someone compliments him, he does
n't, he distorts and ignores the data that seems to be acting like this to appear polite .
Depending on the situation, people can use these coping strategies alternately
. That is, depending on the situation, the person can sometimes use overcompensation, sometimes
use avoidance , and sometimes use surrender strategy.
However, these strategies are not healthy coping strategies, and all they
do is further establish that schema that the person has.
But what should be done to deal with this schema in a healthy way?
Let's talk about that a little bit.
Of course, the healthiest thing to do in this regard is to work with an experienced, trained and equipped
psychotherapist.
However, if you ask what else we can do besides this, first of all,
thanks to this video, you have at least got an idea about the coping strategies
you use.
First, take a piece of paper in front of you and think about it.
What strategy do you use to deal with the imperfection schema in your daily life
? Don't surrender?
Overcompensation?
Or is it avoidance? Or what strategies do you use in which situations?
Notice these.
Then write down these strategies and situations that you notice on this piece of paper.
Then ask yourself this question.
What kind of negativities does applying this strategy bring to my life?
So what am I losing?
For example, you can say that I realized that I am using the overcompensation strategy.
In this case, with the overcompensation strategy, I realized that trying to be perfect all the time,
trying to look perfect all the time, pretending to be successful all the time
actually
makes me tired
inside. As I realized this, notice the strategy you apply and the negative effects that
this strategy brings to your life, and write them down on a piece of paper.
Let this be our first stage, and in our second stage, we will express your feelings to the person or people whose
behavior in your childhood led to the formation of this schema.
How do we do this?
We will do this by writing them a letter.
And of course we will not send this letter.
In some way, the person who led to the formation of this schema in your childhood may be your mother,
your father , your teacher, your brother, your sister or even your friend
. No matter what, we will openly express and write freely about
our feelings towards this person, our
thoughts, our current situation, and what we actually needed as a child and were not met.
As I said, we will not send this letter anyway.
So please don't limit yourself while writing the letter.
Whatever comes to your mind, girl, shout, call, say bad words.
It does not matter. As long as you express your feelings, empty your feelings.
While you are doing this, that is, while you are writing the letter, a voice inside you may immediately become defensive
and defend those family members or those people and say that they never wanted
it to happen to them, or whatever they did, they saw it as much.
Maybe it's true, maybe it really is.
However, the forgiveness part of the job is to be able to freely express our feelings and
thoughts , which is our priority right now .
So please I repeat it again.
Without restraining yourself, if necessary, get angry, shout, call out whatever comes to
your mind on paper, so that that feeling does not swell inside.
Whether that emotion is expressed in some way, in writing or verbally.
Let it be processed mentally.
So let that feeling go.
For some people, even the process of writing this letter alone can be the beginning of feeling
better and healing.
So it's a very important step.
Believe me, you will feel much better after writing the letter.
Remember, your schemas reflect how you have been treated in the past, not what you really are
That is, because you have an imperfection scheme.
This does not mean that you are at fault.
However, it is obvious that someone has behaved towards you in a way that causes you to believe that way
.
So if I'm not my schematics, then what am I, who am I?
I need to start forming new belief patterns about myself, which may take some time,
but at least I have to start somewhere.
To begin with, for example, we can start by making a list about ourselves.
Take the forehead paper, the pen, sit in front of you, divide the paper in half and write
down the flaws and inadequacies you see in yourself on one side .
In which areas do you think you are flawed or inadequate?
Write them down. On the other side, write down the things you think you are capable of, the
things you think you do well .
Of course, you may not be very objective when making this list.
So making this list can also help you.
You will get support from some people.
For example, who might they be?
Ask some people who you
believe to know you really well, trust and trust their lenses to fill out this list about you.
So get feedback from other people.
Ask them. What are your strengths?
What are your weak points?
What do they see through their eyes?
Ask them to list them and read these sentences that others have written with great
care.
You will also see some expressions that may surprise you.
Maybe you will see your strengths that you are not aware of and have difficulty accepting
. However, read them carefully and try to understand them.
Yes, while we are dealing with this scheme, we
will use another technique, a technique that we use to deal with our negative thoughts or cognitive distortions , just like I
explained in my previous video .
That is, the proof-finding method and the thesis-antithesis method.
What are we going to do about it?
Now write down the sentences about your imperfection, that is, your beliefs that you are flawed, on
a piece of paper.
Let's say I can't do anything.
You wrote that I am very inadequate, very incompetent.
Then this is actually not a realistic sentence, of course.
But you are not aware of this.
Write a milder, more rational sentence to refute this sentence.
So no one is perfect in life.
There are areas where I am good.
There are areas where I am better, and maybe there are areas where I am weak sometimes.
It's more temperate, more rational.
Write an opposite sentence that will reduce the impact of that sentence.
Then think of the evidence to support this sentence you just wrote, that is, the more rational, milder sentence in
your life and write them down one by one.
For example, you said yes, there are good things that I do, and then think about it.
So when you think about the recent or the past, what do you do well when you think about the present, what are
you actually talented at?
Write them down one by one as proof.
Every time you do this after your thoughts about imperfection and incompetence
.
In other words, when you get used to collecting evidence that this is not the case,
you will see after a while that your opinion is actually not correct and
there is perhaps more evidence to the contrary .
Yes, one of the things we can do to deal with this schema is this.
Let other people love you and make you feel valued.
For example, start accepting compliments and compliments.
How should I know. When someone compliments or compliments you and says
how beautiful you are, how successful you are and so on, it's not like that.
Or don't give answers like that's your beauty.
Just say thank you.
In order to repair that child part of us that was once injured in some way, I
especially recommend that you watch my self-compassion meditation and peace with yourself video on my channel and
practice the meditation there.
Finally, while you are doing all this work, that is, somehow trying to recognize and deal with the schema
of Imperfection that exists with yourself, please but please be
kind to yourself and give yourself some time.
Because these strict beliefs were formed over the years.
Its disappearance or the creation of a new belief system is not something that can happen all of a
sudden .
It is indeed a painful process.
That's why, as I said at the beginning, the best thing to do is to work with an expert, experienced and
talented psychotherapist.
However, if you say you can't or can't do this, please give yourself time.
Don't blame yourself for not feeling well or for not feeling well all of a sudden
.
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