When a client treats therapy as a task and getting emotionally better as a mission, everything can become stressful.
Yet the difficulty is that different clients may need very different things. Some may need more permission, allowance, and acceptance. Others may need more practice tolerating distress without immediately retreating or giving up. And some may need both.
These needs are often interwoven.
The more we push for change, the less acceptance a client may feel. Yet the more allowance and reassurance we provide, the more stressed they may become about not getting better quickly enough.
For some clients, it can feel as though they are allowed to be only one way or the other, and that the two positions are mutually exclusive.
How the Perfectionistic Overcontroller Mode Turns Self-Improvement Into Self-Criticism
In Schema Therapy, one way of understanding this is through the Perfectionistic Overcontroller mode. This mode tries to help a client “self-improve” all the time. If they do not improve, they may criticise or punish themselves internally.
For many people, this is how they learned to show up in the world: being careful, competent, and conscientious, and always wanting to improve.
Yet this mode can also see things in very dichotomous terms: good or bad, right or wrong, success or failure. It is constantly evaluating the person internally. Sometimes it even appears during a happy moment: Am I happy enough?
We do not need to know Schema Therapy to recognise that this kind of part exists in many people, particularly those who come from competitive or demanding environments.
Why Constant Self-Improvement Can Be Difficult to Let Go of
It can be a very useful way of functioning. In some environments, it helps people thrive—or at least survive. A mindset of constant improvement may also be strongly socially reinforced. In some cultural contexts, it can earn approval, connection, attention, and even love.
This is one reason it can be very difficult to let go of.
If someone has practised this way of functioning for many years, moving away from it can feel like stepping outside their comfort zone. And sometimes the comfort zone is not comfortable at all. It is simply familiar.
At least I know how uncomfortable this is.
Outside it, I am walking into the unknown.
This can be a very tricky place in therapy. Our clients may be highly competent and may have benefited greatly from this mode being dominant in their lives.
At times, I find myself needing to stay alongside the client for quite a long time while they gradually “grow another part of themselves.” I sometimes imagine it like a tree growing a new branch. It takes time before that new branch becomes strong enough for the person to shift their balance.
Mindfulness can sometimes be a gift in this process.
Mindfulness practice can help us develop a more neutral relationship with our own experience. It gives us another place to stand. From that position, compassion and acceptance can sometimes emerge more naturally, especially with guidance.
For some clients, another difficulty is that they cannot remain with vulnerable feelings for long enough. They may move into avoidance very quickly.
And sometimes the Perfectionistic Overcontroller mode can become a camouflage for avoidance:
I am busy. I am doing something important. I am being productive.
I have repeatedly encountered another version of this over the past few years.
At times, I may be offering a form of care, presence, or limited reparenting that my client does not yet know how to receive.
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I then become aware that before the intervention can really land, the client may first need to learn another way of expressing themselves—and perhaps another way of being in the therapy room.
How Relational Cultural Backgrounds Can Shape Therapeutic Needs
This has been particularly noticeable for me when working with clients from more relational cultural backgrounds.
In these contexts, interpersonal relationships may be more intense, the sense of self may overlap more with significant others, and how a person feels may be closely connected to how other people around them feel.
In these situations, a significant amount of therapeutic work may involve helping the client recognise that what is happening in the therapy room is not only an expression of “what happened.”
It may also be an attempt to manage a relational need within the therapeutic relationship itself.
The client may be communicating, protecting the relationship, trying not to burden the therapist, managing the therapist’s feelings, or attempting to remain acceptable in the eyes of another person.
In Schema Therapy terms, this becomes part of the work of strengthening the Healthy Adult mode.
The aim is not simply to help the client become less perfectionistic, less avoidant, or more emotionally expressive. It is to help them develop enough internal flexibility that striving and acceptance no longer have to be enemies.
They can want change without attacking themselves.
They can tolerate distress without immediately escaping it.
And they can receive care without needing to turn therapy itself into another task they have to perform well.
For clinicians who would like to explore these ideas in more depth, I also write about culturally responsive psychotherapy and Schema Therapy on Substack.