Schema coping modes are survival strategies for managing experiences when the person’s needs were not met in childhood. They served an important function back then, perhaps reducing the likelihood of physical abuse or preserving a relationship with a carer. Now, in adulthood, the coping modes block needs from being met. Coping modes are primarily a behavioural state – a combination of behaviours, thoughts and feelings that show up together repeatedly.
In my last blog here I described my work with a client who overcame a surrendering coping mode. The detached protector mode is the topic of this blog, which is a coping mode based on avoidance of feelings. It’s a mode that stops others from seeing how the person feels and supporting them. I’m going to talk about how this might look in therapy and how to work with this mode when chair dialogues aren’t enough.
What is the detached protector mode?
A coping mode that aims to avoid activating the schema through emotional disconnection. For example, the detached protector’s solution to the abandonment schema is to declare “I’m not like other people, I don’t need to get close to anyone”.
A coping mode that prevents other people from seeing and understanding the person’s true feelings.
A survival strategy to prevent the person from connecting with their own emotions because they were too overwhelming.
Why does this mode develop?
Imagery for assessment (described in my free assessing the critic guide which you can access here) is a beautiful way of developing an individualised understanding of how coping modes developed for your client. When there is a strong detached protector, keep an eye out for a lack of empathy from parents and carers. Children don’t know how to make sense of their overwhelming emotions alone. A lack of empathy and emotional regulation from significant adults can mean the emotions are avoided instead of integrated. Low empathy might also be accompanied by shame and humiliation for showing vulnerability, further encouraging the suppression of feelings.
What does the detached protector mode look like in therapy?
Lots of responses such as ‘I’m fine’
No expression of emotions or quickly shutting emotions down
Few details about what is going on in the person’s life and what has happened in the past – maybe a lack of early memories
Signs of dissociation
How to overcome this mode
The detached protector can block progress in therapy, as it stops the vulnerable child from being seen, understood, nurtured, empathised with and protected. In schema therapy, the healing starts with the vulnerable child having their needs met in the therapeutic relationship and so bypassing the detached protector is essential. I’ll often begin with the mode interview to increase awareness of this mode, which I’ll describe now. Frequently though, awareness is not enough to bypass the mode and the detached protector will gradually step aside with patience and a persistent focus on attunement, which I’ll discuss after.
Detached Protector Mode Interview with Empathic Confrontation
(Tena Davies skilfully demonstrated this in our Schema Skills series here)
Bring client’s awareness to detached protector and give the mode a chair. Ask client to speak as the detached protector from that chair.
Interview mode.
Ask client to move next to you into healthy adult chair to empathically confront the detached protector together.
Empathically confront the empty chair. Empathise with function but confront unhelpful consequences. State the need for change to get needs met.
Reflect with client about process.
Frequently, a mode interview alone is not enough to bypass the detached protector as the person doesn’t know how to tune into their emotions. In this case, I gently uncover the deeper layers of experiences, supporting clients to tune into their internal processes. This process meets the need for empathic attunement that was missing when the person was little.
Often in this mode, clients will gloss over the challenges in their life, either not thinking they’re relevant to share or not sharing any detail about why it was challenging due to a lack of connection with their internal experiences.
The steps here, discussed by Brockman and Stavropolos in their chapter of ‘Schema Therapy for Eating Disorders’, are a useful summary of the process of building attunement.
Step 1: Help your client to identify a specific situation where they have felt some emotions and focus on this in detail. Clients with a strong detached protector might find identifying a target challenging because of a lack of awareness of feelings and so you may need to spend time exploring how they know they have been emotionally affected. For example, it could be that they notice migraines or overthinking.
Be persistent and encouraging in your exploration of the situation. People with a strong detached protector can move on very quickly or resist the potential for further depth to their experience. Identify what the trigger was, focusing in on the worst bit and the image that goes with it.
Step 2: Explore the feelings associated with the worst bit of the situation. You may need to recreate the situation with imagery to connect with the feelings and body sensations that were activated. Encourage curiosity about any sensations that are identified and help your client to label their feelings.
Step 3: Continuing with your gentle curiosity and empathic stance, move on to identify the meaning of the experience. Elicit how your client feels about themselves in this experience by trying to understand what schema has been activated. Identifying the unmet need can also help you with this step.
Step 4: Throughout the process it is important to summarise what you are hearing and share it with your client to help them integrate this new level of understanding, specifically pulling together the trigger, feelings, body sensations and the meaning of the experience at the end of the process.
Step 5: Linking the current situation to the origins of the schema is the final step of this attunement process. This step helps your client to tune into the emotions and circumstances they experienced when they were little that led to their coping modes developing.
In summary, the detached protector mode is an avoidant coping mode, facilitating disconnection from painful emotions. The mode interview is a helpful exercise to bring awareness to the presence and the downsides of the mode, but a gentle and persistent process of attunement is needed to deepen the individual’s connection with their internal experiences.
Reference:
Brockman & Stavropolos (2019) Chapter 6: Repetitive Negative Thinking in Eating Disorders: Identifying and Bypassing Over Analysing Coping Modes and Building Schema Attunement. In Schema Therapy for Eating Disorders by Susan Simpson.
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