Module 09. Glossary
Terms of the module
- Attachment styles (4)
- “Breaking it into parts” (5 steps)
- Coping styles (3)
- Core emotional needs (5)
- Currents
- Early maladaptive schemas (18)
- Life programs (3)
- Negotiation strategies: “Touching” and “Fierce”
- Schema mottos
- Self-care (maternal and paternal aspects)
- Shoulds (9)
- Solid and empty
- Strategy (12 elements)
- Strengths as vulnerabilities
- Talking as equals
Attachment styles (4)
Four patterns of behavior in close relationships that take shape in early childhood. The secure style is the result of sensitive, responsive and consistent treatment by adults: comfort with closeness and trust. Anxious-avoidant — often the result of interacting with emotionally cold parents: detachment, devaluing closeness. Anxious-resistant — forms when parents behave inconsistently: a need for constant reassurance, fear of abandonment. Disorganized — usually connected with traumatic experience: a contradictory combination of longing and fear. The theory was created by the psychoanalyst John Bowlby, and the styles were seen by his colleague Mary Ainsworth in a simple experiment: a mother left the room where a one-year-old was playing and came back, and the reunion showed everything — the secure child ran to her and calmed down, the avoidant one pretended not to notice, the resistant one clung and was angry at the same time; the fourth style was described later by Mary Main, who noticed children who froze halfway when their mother returned — their source of comfort was also their source of fear.
A style is not a life sentence but a pattern that can gradually be shifted toward secure, including through secure relationships and work on yourself; researchers called this earned security, and it is in no way inferior to the inborn kind, and is often more conscious. A systematization of what in the fourth module you studied as emotional dependency, counter-dependency and healthy attraction; at its root is the need for secure attachment.
“Breaking it into parts” (5 steps)
A method for working with a complex, worrying task. What task is in front of you at the moment — phrased positively. What components it consists of — eight to twelve. Each component is rated from 1 to 10: what a ten would be, where it is now, what can be done. What the biggest problem is right now. Component X — excellent, and the same for each following item. Descartes formulated the second rule of his method four centuries ago — to divide each difficulty into as many parts as necessary to resolve it; the one-to-ten scale came from solution-focused therapy, where the question “what would be one point higher?” replaces the impossible “how do I fix everything.” Bion would have described what happens: an unbearable experience broken down into parts becomes something that can be thought about, and what can be thought about can be managed.
A big “I have to sort out my taxes” is paralyzing; “find the folder with the documents” can be done right now. The method lowers anxiety and brings back the sense of control: it is the whole that frightens, the work is done in parts, and usually out of twelve components only two turn out to be the problem. A practical antidote to catastrophizing (module 2) and a foundation for the power of small steps (module 10).
Coping styles (3)
Three ways in which a person deals with an active schema and its pain; all three formed in childhood as a way to survive, but in adult life they only maintain the schema. Surrender (“freeze”): accepting the schema as truth and recreating the conditions that confirm it — a person with Defectiveness chooses critical partners and engages in self-flagellation. Avoidance (“flee”): not thinking about the schema, not feeling its pain, avoiding the situations, people and tasks that trigger it — a person with Abandonment avoids close relationships. Overcompensation (“fight”): proving the opposite to yourself and the world, often excessively and unnaturally — a person with Defectiveness becomes a perfectionist workaholic, while inside the fear of being exposed remains. The three styles repeat the organism’s three ancient responses to threat — freeze, flee, fight — only here the threat is internal; the word “overcompensation” itself belongs to Adler, who was the first to describe how the loudest achievements grow out of a feeling of inferiority. Psychoanalysis calls the same thing defenses and knows their main property: they worked when they were needed, and they keep working long after they are no longer needed.
Recognizing your coping style shows exactly how you feed the schema, and where the healthy path lies: meeting the need rather than defending against the pain; overcompensation is the most deceptive of all, because from the outside it looks like health. It echoes the three kinds of passivity (module 8).
Core emotional needs (5)
Universal strivings necessary for healthy development. Secure attachment: I am accepted and loved as I am; even when I behave badly, I know and feel that I am needed; I don’t have to earn love with good behavior; nothing threatens me; the daily routine is predictable. Autonomy and competence: I act independently in a way that fits my age, I gain independence, my parents believe in my success and don’t compare me with others. Freedom to express my feelings and needs. Spontaneity and play. Realistic limits and self-control. The five were formulated by Jeffrey Young, the founder of schema therapy, who gathered into one list what psychoanalysis had been discovering for decades: the first need came from Bowlby, who showed that a child needs attachment no less than food; the second and fourth from Winnicott with his good-enough environment, which lets a child both play and separate; the fifth need, for limits, comes as a surprise to many — but a child who is allowed everything is just as deprived as one who is allowed nothing.
When the needs are met, a healthy personality forms; when one of them has been systematically unmet, a maladaptive schema takes shape in its place — like a bone that has knit wrongly where no splint was put on. Becoming aware of which needs were met and which were not helps uncover the roots of present difficulties and begin meeting them in adult life in a healthy way. The deepest layer of the theme you have followed from the three hungers (module 1) and emotional needs (module 3).
Currents
The third element of strategy: recurring processes, trends and cycles that act constantly in a situation — in the market, in people, in life. A strategist doesn’t row against them with the last of their strength, but recognizes and uses their force, the way a swimmer uses a river’s current and the builder of a hydroelectric plant uses rushing water. The image of water here also comes from Sun Tzu, who compared a skillful army to water that flows around heights and rushes downward, and behind him stands Taoist non-doing: not inaction but action along the natural course of things, where a small effort gives a big result because the flow does the main work. Currents are the only element of strategy that works even without you; the only question is whether for you or against you.
The practical question: “Which currents are already working for me or against me, and how can I rely on them?” The course’s signature emphasis: act by relying on the currents of the terrain, not against them; the person who opens a café on a dying street and the person who demands obedience from a fourteen-year-old are rowing against the same thing — a current they didn’t notice. The word first appears in preparing for a talk (module 5) and in time levers (module 4); in the vision-of-the-future session (module 10) currents are taken into account at every horizon.
Early maladaptive schemas (18)
Deep-rooted self-defeating patterns that formed in childhood or adolescence because core needs were systematically unmet, or because of trauma. A schema is not just a thought but a complex: beliefs about oneself, others and the world, together with the painful emotions, bodily sensations and reactions connected with them — a stable “think — feel — do” bundle that switches on automatically in similar situations. The eighteen schemas were described by Jeffrey Young, and in them it is easy to recognize what psychoanalysis calls internal object relations: in Fairbairn — internalized images of significant people together with oneself beside them; in Bowlby — internal working models of self and others; schema therapy gave these relationships names and a map, while psychoanalysis remembers that everyone’s territory is their own. Unmet attachment gives rise to Abandonment, Mistrust and expectation of abuse, Emotional deprivation, Alienation and social isolation, Defectiveness and shame. Suppressed autonomy — to Dependence and helplessness, Hypersensitivity to harm, Enmeshment and undeveloped identity, Negativity and pessimism, Doomed to failure. A ban on expressing feelings — to Subjugation, Self-sacrifice, Approval-seeking. Spontaneity taken away — to Emotional inhibition, Unrelenting standards and hypercriticalness, Punitiveness. The absence of limits — to Grandiosity and entitlement, Insufficient self-control.
A schema distorts perception in its own favor: with Abandonment even a reliable partner seems “about to leave”; with Defectiveness criticism is accepted as only natural, and the person doesn’t notice that they themselves choose those who criticize. Every schema has a motto and three ways of dealing with it — coping styles. The most rigorous look at what you studied as the script (modules 2 and 8): deep patterns have a map and names.
Life programs (3)
Three programs a life can run on. The biological one is guided by natural cycles and instincts — growth, having children, aging — and often shows up in society’s expectations: get married, have a baby, grandchildren on schedule. The social one is set by social norms and statuses — education, career, the material “candy wrappers,” the generally accepted “conveyor belt” of success. The individual one is based on searching for and realizing personal meaning, a mission and a life in keeping with your deepest values. Jung divided life into two halves and noticed that the program of the first — to establish yourself in the world — doesn’t suit the second: a person who by forty has got everything they are supposed to falls into gloom precisely because the tasks have run out while they haven’t; Frankl saw the way out in the third program — in a meaning that isn’t handed out along with a job title.
Crises in the biological and social programs arise when the external goals have been reached or have stopped bringing joy, while inner possibilities have turned out wider than the imposed frame; the individual program is more resistant to such crises, because its goals don’t run out. The course’s question — “What do you choose?” — sits alongside the logical levels: environment, actions, capabilities, beliefs, roles, mission. It rests on values (module 3) and the career map.
Negotiation strategies: “Touching” and “Fierce”
Two strategies for two different conflicts, each with eight steps. “Touching but unavoidable” — when the conflict arose from different pictures of the world, not from ill intent: establish positive contact by emphasizing what unites us; voice your belief that there is a solution; explore the interests behind the other person’s position — “help me understand what exactly the difficulty is”; present your view, starting with understanding; check that the other person has been able to see the situation through your eyes; formulate a common goal; look for options together; make the agreements specific and record them. “Fierce but necessary” — when agreements, rules or boundaries have been broken: calmly state the fact of the breach and fall silent; explore intentions — “do your actions mean that you want to end our agreements?”; explore the other person’s attitude to what happened; name the consequences agreed on in advance; name your boundaries — what I will not do; ask the side that broke the agreement for proposals; voice the alternative if no solution is found; finish positively but firmly. The first strategy is negotiation on interests, which Fisher and Ury contrasted with positional bargaining: behind any demand there is an interest, and it is only the interest that can be agreed on; the seventh step of the second is what the same authors called the best alternative to a negotiated agreement: the power at the table belongs to the one who knows what they will do if there is no agreement.
The key is first to determine the type of conflict precisely, then to choose the strategy: the “Fierce” one is applied to a deliberate breach, not to a mistake, and the most common misstep is using the “Fierce” one with someone who simply didn’t understand, and the “Touching” one with someone who understood and decided to test how firm you are. The “Fierce” strategy is not aggression but firmness based on the ten principles of agreements (module 1) and the defense formulas for boundaries (module 4); its first step, silence after stating the fact, does more than the other seven.
Schema mottos
Short first-person phrases by which you recognize a schema in your own inner monologue: “please don’t leave me, the way I was left once before,” “I’m defective, but I hope I can hide it,” “I can’t do anything without you,” “it’s never good enough,” “I treat myself the way you treat me.” A motto is the voice of the schema, and it sounds like the plain truth about yourself. Cognitive therapy calls such phrases core beliefs and reduces them to three families — “I am unlovable,” “I am helpless,” “I am worthless” — while transactional analysis sees them as early decisions: a child formulated them at the age of three to five as a conclusion drawn from their family, and ever since the phrase has lived in the person like a motto on a family coat of arms that no one chose but everyone wears.
The course exercise “Schema Detective” teaches you to work out, from a person’s inner monologue — in romantic relationships, with parents, with a manager — the motto, the schema behind it and the coping style the person uses to deal with it; an analyst does the same, listening not to the content of the complaint but to the recurring phrase that keeps saying itself. Once you catch a motto in the stream of thoughts, you can identify the active schema and not mistake it for reality — a targeted use of recognizing thoughts, that very step B of the ABC model (module 1).
Self-care (maternal and paternal aspects)
Love is an active concern for the life and growth of the one for whom we have this feeling — and for ourselves too. Maternal love is the inner aspect of our existence: unconditional acceptance of oneself, warmth, comfort. Paternal love is the outer aspect: boundaries and a place in the sun, the right to one’s achievements. The definition and the distinction come from Erich Fromm: maternal love says “you are loved because you are,” paternal love — “you are loved because you cope,” and Fromm called mature the person who has become both mother and father to themselves. Someone who grew up amid neglect never received the mechanism of self-care: they learn the craft of punishing themselves and then invite others to do the same, while self-care as a skill they never learn at all; Fairbairn called this the moral defense — it is easier for a child to consider themselves bad than those they depend on, and they go on paying for this bargain all their life.
Mature care combines both aspects: both being gentle with yourself and pulling yourself together. An imbalance shows at once: only the “maternal” — slackness with nothing to lean on; only the “paternal” — a race without warmth; the check is how you talk to yourself after a mistake, and whether there is at least one phrase in that conversation that you would say to a friend. The course’s questions: how can you show care for yourself; what does it mean to create comfortable conditions for yourself; to do what you love and earn a decent living; to increase your self-respect; to accept yourself however you are, always; to believe in yourself unconditionally. The Nurturing and Structuring Parent turned toward yourself (module 1).
Shoulds (9)
Irrational demands on oneself, others and the world that give rise to most conflicts: everyone must love me and approve of what I do; I must do everything perfectly, without mistakes; what happens must always match my expectations and plans; someone else must be to blame for my troubles; something bad must be about to happen, I must always be on guard; everything must stay as it is, change is unacceptable; I must always help people solve their problems, even if they don’t ask me to; there must be one single right way to do anything; I must be the best at everything. The list goes back to Albert Ellis, who collected his patients’ irrational ideas and found that they all come down to three “musts” — I must, you must, the world must — and gave this habit a name with a mockery rare among scientists: musturbation. Karen Horney saw behind it the tyranny of the idealized image of oneself, and psychoanalysis as a whole — the demands of the superego turned outward: a person who must do everything demands the same of the world and so is constantly offended by it.
Reality is not obliged to live up to these “musts,” and the collision with it gives rise to anger, guilt and resentment: anger when the other person must, guilt when I must, resentment when the world was supposed to. Softening “must” to “I would like” lowers the tension without canceling the wish. The course adds phrases for a conflict: a strike with values — “I don’t want to argue with you, but I consider it my duty to say…”; steering the spotlight of attention — “excuse me, what is your aim in asking this question right now?”; moving over to the other person’s side and then turning things around; emphasizing your motivation and the risks. The root of cognitive distortions (module 2).
Solid and empty
The eighth element of strategy: reliable or a bluff? Telling apart what you can really rely on — a fact, an asset, proven reliability — from what only seems to be support: an assumption, a promise, an illusion. The pair comes from Sun Tzu, who taught striking the empty and bypassing the solid, and it was brought into Russian management culture by Vladimir Tarasov with the rule “test it for solidity”: a partner’s promise that is written down nowhere is empty, a signed payment schedule is solid, “he’ll surely understand” is empty, “we discussed it and put it in writing” is solid. Psychoanalysis calls the same skill reality testing and knows that desire is the main producer of the empty: we take for support what we very much want to lean on.
A plan built on the “empty” collapses at the first push. The skill is to mark honestly where you have the solid and where the empty, and not to confuse hope with fact; a useful habit is to put the question “how do I know this?” against every “surely” in your own plan. A direct relative of the Virtual and the Real model (module 4), carried over into strategic analysis, and of Earth from the external defense (module 1): specifics based on facts.
Strategy (12 elements)
The framework of strategic thinking — twelve elements, each with its own question. Terrain: where and when, what are the external conditions — the market, geography, time, seasonality. Situation: what is happening now. Currents: which recurring processes, trends and cycles affect the situation. Goals: what is important for me to achieve, what will count as success. Plans: in what way, what is the sequence of steps. Resources: what do I have for this — knowledge, people, time, money, tools. Benefit and harm: in the present and in the future, short-term and long-term. Solid and empty: reliable or a bluff, what can be relied on. Strategy and tactics: a path or busywork, do the specific actions match the general line. Organizing efforts: when and where I will act. Applying efforts: how exactly. Process control: how I will check my actions and track progress. The framework’s lineage is the oldest treatise on strategy: Sun Tzu began with terrain, weather and knowing yourself and your enemy, and “the empty and the full” is the title of one of his chapters; the distinction between strategy and tactics was honed by Clausewitz — tactics wins the battle, strategy decides which battles are worth fighting — and the ninth element of the course is exactly about this: many battles won on an empty front are exactly what busywork is.
Unlike a to-do list, the framework makes you look at the situation as a whole — at both your own strengths and the environment; most plans fail not on the eleventh element but on the first three, because people acted without having looked closely at the terrain. It brings together goal setting (module 2), the vision of the future and the principles of professionalism (module 7); the conceptual core of the course in strategic thinking and the foundation of the session on four horizons (module 10).
Strengths as vulnerabilities
People are manipulated not only through their weaknesses but also through their good qualities. A sensible person will agree if promised convenience, well-being or safety. A thrifty person is hooked with a “fabulous deal” — “eighty percent off this fur coat.” A rational, clever person — with a “logical” justification or with flattery and shame: “you’re so smart, you understand that…”. A trusting person will take a distorted picture for the truth. A fair-minded person is pressured through conscience and a sense of duty. A person who loves themselves is caught with compliments: “you’ve lost so much weight” — and after that you can ask for anything. Research on fraud confirms the paradox: the victims of scams are not the foolish but the trusting and the hopeful, and Maria Konnikova, who studied con artists, found that they all work on the best human qualities — on faith in people and in a lucky break; Klein would have said that the one who is vulnerable is the one capable of love, and the price of protection from all hooks is to become incapable of it.
It is precisely through their best qualities that people are easiest to hook — that is where they respond most willingly. Knowing this protects your virtues from exploitation: you can stay kind, rational and fair, yet notice when someone is using that to pressure you; the sign is that you suddenly feel ashamed to disagree, even though a minute ago you owed nothing. A continuation of vulnerability buttons (module 6) and rescuer hooks (module 8) from an unexpected side.
Talking as equals
A position in dialogue where you are neither above nor below: without fawning and without pressure. The course’s training exercise is a job interview where a manager is looking for their own replacement: why is the manager the power and the applicant a nobody? This is a cognitive distortion based on social role, fear of rejection and insecurity, and Stanley Milgram’s experiments showed how far it can lead: ordinary people, on the instructions of a man in a lab coat, were ready to cause pain to a stranger, because the lab coat made them small. It takes courage and the skill of asking counter-questions, follow-up and clarifying questions to level the dialogue; in Berne’s language this is an Adult — Adult transaction where the roles invite a Parent — Child transaction, and Adler considered a sense of equal worth with other people the main sign of mental health. The algorithm: cushioning + an answer + a strengthened counter-question.
The course talks about an employee who sat himself on a little chair, and about how important it is for him to get the big chair back; the chair isn’t handed out by the job title but by the person themselves, and only they can take it back. Pre-empting from the strong position: “Make yourself comfortable, feel free to ask questions; it’s important for me to understand how useful we can really be to each other.” It continues the professional’s thinking (module 7): I am worth neither more nor less than the person I’m talking to; this is the Adult position (module 1) in action.