From Autopilot to Authenticity: How to Stop Our Fears from Hijacking Our Interactions.

Joanna Szczeskiewicz
4 days ago
13 min read

Updated: 1 day ago

Introduction: The Sunday Morning Paradox

Picture a typical Sunday morning. It is 10:00 AM, the coffee is brewing, and the light is streaming through the kitchen window in that particular, lazy way that suggests a day of rest. You are standing at the counter, and you have a very specific vision of who you are. You see yourself as a patient partner, a loving parent, a person of integrity who values reason and kindness above all else. You have promised yourself—perhaps just last night, perhaps a thousand times before—that you are done with the bickering. You are going to be the adult in the room.

And then, your partner walks in. They look at the unwashed dishes in the sink—the ones you promised to do last night—and they let out a sigh. It is not a loud sigh. It is barely audible. But it is a sigh that carries a specific frequency, a resonance that seems to bypass your auditory nerve and strike directly at the base of your spine.

In less than a second, the person you promised to be has vanished. Your heart rate spikes to 120 beats per minute. Your skin flushes. You don’t ask for clarification. You don’t apologize. Instead, you turn around and say something devastating, something about how they are controlling, how nothing you do is ever enough, how you are sick of being managed.

Ten minutes later, you are sitting alone in the living room, locked in misery, wondering what just happened. You possessed the intention. You had the desire for integrity. Yet, you acted with the emotional maturity of a wounded child.

We tend to look at these moments and ascribe them to a lack of willpower, or perhaps a fundamental incompatibility with our partners. We blame them for the sigh, or we blame ourselves for the anger. But there is a different explanation. We are not always conscious authors of our own actions. In these high-stakes emotional moments, we are marionettes. There are invisible strings attached to our limbs and our tongues, and there are hidden emotional gears grinding beneath the surface of our consciousness.

To understand why we fight, and to find a way back to the integrity we crave, we have to stop looking at the argument itself—the dishes, the toilet seat, the credit card bill—and start looking at the puppet master pulling the strings.

The Invisible Gears

In the 1990s, a psychologist named Jeffrey Young expanded on traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to create a framework for understanding these "traps." He called them Schemas.

Think of a schema not as a thought, but as a lens—a pair of glasses fused to your face that you forgot you were wearing. This lens was ground and polished through your early experiences, shaped by the way your needs were met or ignored. It is the operating system running in the background of your brain, and like any operating system, it has programmed rules about how data is interpreted. When you are at work, or dealing with a casual acquaintance, the schema is usually dormant. You are rational. You are you. But schemas are hyper-vigilant. They are scanning the environment for specific triggers.

The diagram below can help you understand the hidden mechanism.

A trigger can be anything: a comment, the need to make a request, your loved one not hugging you when you arrive home (conclusion: I am unlovable) or your loved one hugging the moment you arrive (conclusion: they want to manipulate me). It is the past superimposing itself on our present reality. Once the schema is activated, we start reacting. We go on autopilot. Our response include body physiological reactions (sensations), emotions as well as thoughts and beliefs (standard CBT components) as well as memories. We go fast down the memory lane. It is not only the slight of today but a whole litany of unjust criticisms. Our recall is state dependent - when we feel hurt or frustrated, the imprints of similar past experiences come calling. Our actions tend to match our schemas and interpretations rather than the situation at hand. Even worse, the inevitable consequences of such actions act to further reinforce our schemas.

Let’s go back to the kitchen and the work of Jeffrey Young. The sigh was the trigger. If you have a secure history, the sigh is just a sigh. It means your partner is tired. You wash the dishes; you move on. But if you possess a Defectiveness Schema, that sigh is not a soundwave. It is a confirmation.

The Defectiveness Schema is the deep-seated belief that you are internally flawed, unwanted, or inferior. It whispers that if anyone truly saw you, they would leave. So, when your partner sighs, your brain doesn't register "tired partner." It registers "Judge." It doesn't hear a breath; it hears a verdict: You are not good enough. You are unlovable.

Or perhaps you have an Emotional Deprivation Schema. This is the belief that your primary needs for nurturance, empathy, and protection will never be met by others. If this is your lens, the unwashed dishes aren't about hygiene; they are about care. If your partner complains, you don't hear a request for help; you hear a rejection of your efforts. You feel invisible.

Young categorized these schemas into five domains, and understanding which one owns you is the first step to cutting the strings:

Disconnection and Rejection: This includes Abandonment (the belief everyone will leave), Defectiveness (the belief you are flawed), and Social Isolation (the belief you don't fit in).
Impaired Autonomy: This includes Dependence (you can't handle life alone) and Vulnerability to Harm (catastrophe is always around the corner).
Impaired Limits: This is where we find Entitlement (the rules don't apply to me).
Other-Directedness: This includes Subjugation (I must do what others want to avoid anger) and Self-Sacrifice (I must help others at my own expense).
Overvigilance: This includes Unrelenting Standards (everything must be perfect) and Punitiveness (mistakes must be punished) [1]

These are our puppet masters -- the annoying autocomplete function that acts up when you try to text in a language other than English but your phone is not programmed for it.

The Biological Hijack: Why you Can't "Just Calm Down"

It would be nice if we could just intellectually identify the schema and move on. It is a necessary yet insufficient step. The puppet master has a direct line to your physiology. Once the schema is activated, you are no longer in the realm of logic; you are in the realm of survival.

This is where State-Based Retrieval comes in. Memory is not a filing cabinet; it is a chemical state. When you are happy, your brain retrieves happy memories. When you are triggered, your brain floods with cortisol and adrenaline. In this chemical soup, your brain physically cannot access the memories of your partner being kind, or the times you succeeded. It can only retrieve information that matches the current emotional frequency.

Suddenly, you aren't arguing about a toilet seat. Your brain has instantaneously retrieved a highlight reel of every time you have ever felt criticized, ignored, or inadequate, stretching back to your fourth-grade teacher and your distant father. You are told to "leave the past in the past," but your brain has dragged the past into the present. To the activated brain, there is no history. There is only the eternal, painful now.

We cope with this pain in three specific ways. Young adapted the evolutionary "Fight, Flight, or Freeze" response into three schema coping styles. This is how the puppet dances:

Surrender (Freeze/Fawn): We accept the schema as true. If your schema is Subjugation, you let your partner yell at you, and you apologize for things you didn't do, because feeling small feels "correct" to your nervous system.
Avoidance (Flight): We arrange our lives to avoid triggering the schema. If you have a Failure schema, you procrastinate or never apply for that promotion. If you don't try, you can't confirm you are a failure.
Overcompensation (Fight): We fight the schema by acting the opposite. If you feel Defective, you become a narcissist or a perfectionist. You attack others before they can attack you.

When you yelled in the kitchen, you were Overcompensating. You felt the shame of the Defectiveness schema, and to protect yourself from that unbearable feeling, you attacked. You became the aggressor to avoid being the victim.

The Hidden Telephone Game

If this were just happening inside your own head, it would be difficult enough. But relationships are systems. There are two people in the kitchen. That means there are two lenses, and two distinct realities colliding. We assume communication is a straight line. I say "X," and you hear "X." But in a relationship, the signal must pass through the distortion field of my schema, become a behavior, pass through the distortion field of your schema, and finally arrive as a message. Just have a look at the picture below.

Let’s look at Arthur and Elena. They are a couple who love science fiction. On paper, they are compatible. But Arthur has a Social Isolation schema; growing up, he felt different and unsafe in groups. He craves solitude to feel secure. Elena has an Abandonment schema; she had unpredictable parents and equates physical presence with love.

Comic-Con comes to town. Elena buys tickets, excited to share this passion. Arthur, feeling the anticipatory anxiety of the crowd (Trigger), suggests, "Why don't you go with your friends? I’ll stay home and read."

To Arthur, this is a rational compromise. He is managing his anxiety. But Elena’s Abandonment schema wakes up. She doesn't hear, "I find crowds overwhelming." She hears, "I don't want to be with you. You are not worth the effort." She reacts with Overcompensation (Fight). She yells, "You never want to do anything with me! You’re so selfish!"

Arthur’s schema interprets her anger not as hurt, but as criticism of his social awkwardness. He feels defective. He retreats further (Avoidance), walking out of the room. Elena sees him retreating, which confirms he is abandoning her. She screams louder.

Neither person is reacting to reality. Arthur loves Elena. Elena loves Arthur. But their schemas have hijacked the interaction. They are not acting with integrity—that is, acting in accordance with their values of love and partnership. They are acting in accordance with their fears.

Map of Misery: Why Conflict is Unavoidable

We often operate under the delusion that if we just find the "right" partner or say the "right" things, conflict will vanish. This is a fantasy that keeps us stuck. Conflict is not a sign of failure; it is a mathematical certainty.

Imagine a Venn diagram. Circle A is "What You Want." Circle B is "What The Other Person Wants." Circle C is "What is Realistically Available."

The "No Conflict Zone" is that tiny sliver where all three overlap. It is remarkably small. Most of life happens in the friction zones.

Consider the case of the Elderly Parent. You have a mother who lives alone. She is lonely. She wants you to visit every day. You love her, but you have a job, a spouse, children, and a need for sleep. Your mother has an Abandonment schema. When you don't visit, she feels terrified. She guilt-trips you. You perhaps have a Subjugation or Self-Sacrifice schema. You feel responsible for her emotions. You feel that if you say "no," you are a bad child.

So, you visit. You burn out. You resent her. You snap at your spouse. The conflict exists because her desire (daily visits) and your reality (limited time) do not overlap. No amount of "communication skills" will make more hours in the day.

This is the hard truth: You cannot make everyone happy. You cannot always feel safe. You cannot always be validated. To restore integrity, you have to stop trying to resolve the unresolvable and start negotiating the reality.

The Solution: A Script for the Real World

We need to move from a "Top-Down" approach (trying to fix our entire personality or the relationship as a whole) to a "Bottom-Up" approach (fixing this single interaction). If you can handle the "dish incident" differently, you rewrite a tiny line of code in your brain. Do that ten times, and you alter the habit.

But when the cortisol is flooding, you can't improvise. You need a script. We can adapt principles from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (specifically Linehan’s DEAR MAN GIVE FAST) into a simplified acronym: OPEN [2].

O - Objective P - Plan E - Explanation N - Negotiation

Most interactions fail because we don’t know what we want. We think we want "respect," but that is too vague. In the kitchen, do you want your partner to apologize? Do you want them to help? Or do you just want to stop fighting?

Step 1: The Self-Negotiation Before you speak, apply OPEN to yourself. This is where you cut the strings.

Let’s apply this to the Elderly Parent scenario. You feel the guilt trigger. You pause. Objective: What is my goal? To make Mom never feel lonely again? (Impossible). To maintain a relationship with her while preserving my mental health? (Possible). Plan: I will set boundaries on visits but increase the quality of connection when I am there. Explanation: I am doing this because if I burn out, I will resent her, and the relationship falter leaving her feel even more lonely. Negotiation: I will offer specific times, but I will not be on call 24/7. We will also have a code word for true emergencies.

Step 2: The Script Now, you speak. You are no longer a puppet reacting to her guilt-trip. You are an agent of your own values.

"Mom, I know you are lonely, and I deeply want you to feel connected to us (Objective). However, I cannot come over every night; I’m burning out, and that means I’m not good company when I am here. I propose we do dinner every Sunday and a video call every Wednesday (Plan). This way, I can give you my full, undivided attention, rather than rushing and checking my phone (Explanation). I know this is less than you want, and I know that is hard, but it’s the most I can give while staying healthy. Can we try this schedule for a month? (Negotiation)."

This is not a magic spell. She might still be angry. Her Abandonment schema might scream. But here is the crucial difference: You have maintained your integrity. You did not surrender to the guilt, and you did not attack her for having needs. You pulled your own strings.

The Necessary Training: Interpersonal Exposure Ladder

Reading this article is easy. Doing it when your heart is pounding is terrifying. If you are a "People Pleaser" (Subjugation schema), setting a boundary feels like violence. If you are an "Aggressor" (Overcompensation), asking gently feels like weakness. Your brain will scream that you are in danger.

This is why we need Exposure. In medicine, residents practice "Code Blues" on plastic dummies hundreds of times because, in a real crisis, you fall to the level of your training. You cannot think; you can only execute the script.

To practice, let’s create an Exposure Ladder. Start by drawing a matrix. On one side, list people: Safe Friend, Partner, Boss, Critical Parent. On the other, list topics: Choosing a Restaurant, Asking for a Favor, Disagreeing on Politics, Enforcing a Boundary.

Assign them a SUD rating (Subjective Units of Distress) from 0 to 100. Telling your safe friend you don't want pizza? Maybe a 20. Telling your mother "No"? That’s a 90.

Do not start with the mother. Start with the pizza. Use the OPEN script. Feel the anxiety, do it anyway, and watch what happens. The world doesn't end. Your brain registers a data point: I asserted a need, and I was not abandoned.

Then move to the 30. Then the 40. By the time you get to the 90, it will feel like a 60. You are physically rewiring the neural pathways of your schemas. You are proving the puppet master wrong, one interaction at a time. Schemas are the original echo chambers; they filter out contradictory information. By forcing a new behavior, you force the schema to update.

No Need to Wait for Others to Change

You don't need to wait for your partner to read this article, nor do they need to go to therapy first. As recognized in systems theory, relationships are intricate, interconnected systems where each member's actions influence the whole.

Imagine your relationship as two people joined by a complex web of interwoven strings. For years, you and your partner have been pulling these strings in a particular, predictable pattern – a dysfunctional equilibrium, if you will. When they pull an 'attack' string, you immediately respond by pulling a 'defend' string. When they tug you forward with a demand, you habitually recoil back. This creates a perfectly synchronized, yet often miserable, systemic loop.

If you decide, today, to change how you pull your strings—if you disrupt this established pattern by responding to an 'attack' string with the gentle pull of 'curiosity,' or to a 'guilt-trip' string with a firm but calm 'boundary' pull—the old system cannot continue as before. Your partner might initially feel the unexpected slack or the new tension in the strings. They might even get angry that you're no longer pulling the strings in the ways they know, as the system resists change. They might pull harder on the old strings, attempting to re-establish the familiar dynamic.

However, a fundamental tenet of systems theory is that a change in one part of the system necessitates an adjustment in other parts. Your partner cannot maintain the old string-pulling pattern alone when your side of the connection has fundamentally shifted. Eventually, they must adjust their own pulls in response to your new behavior, as the system seeks a new equilibrium. Your change, therefore, becomes the catalyst for a systemic shift, regardless of their initial actions.

Conclusion

We are all walking around with history etched into our neural circuitry. We are all prone to being hijacked by the invisible schemas that whisper that we are unlovable, unsafe, or incompetent. We might act on things we don't even notice. Our relationships are constantly changing, being influenced by external pressures, our personal growth or mistakes. Restoring relationships cannot be done on autopilot. That's what got us in trouble in the first place. Defining our objectives, making a plan, grounding it in logical explanation, and negotiating our progress is a must.

Additional shift happens when we apply these principles to ourselves. When we accept that we are part of the system, we realize that we possess the lever to impact the relationship without having to wait for other people to make the first move. By defining our own conflicting desires, anchoring our boundaries in deep values rather than fleeting emotions, and negotiating a compassionate pace for our own growth, we stop reacting and start influencing. You might not get exactly what you want from the other person. You might get a "No." But you will certainly gain something else: Integrity. You will know that your actions are chosen, not conditioned. You will pull your own strings.

Do not worry about trying to identify your schema perfectly right away. The best way to start is to create a plan to achieve a specific goal and then look at the excuses our mind will generate to stop us in our tracks. The Doing What Makes Sense worksheet can help you do just that. The name of the schema is less important than your ability to bypass it.
I am not aware of OPEN script being mentioned anywhere. It developed organically when talking about "open communication" while facilitating an Assertiveness Group and a DBT Skill training during my time at Trillium Hospital. The acronym is much shorter than DEAR MAN GIVE FAST but it still pays heed to Linehan's emphasis of being truthful, fair and, most importantly, having goal clarity before starting difficult conversations.

The relationships module that eventually made it into the CBT for Depression Group can be accessed here. Planning for Difficult Interactions is a standalone worksheet that can help organize your thoughts. If you want even more materials, all of the worksheets and group materials are available under the Self-Help tab.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

416-550-1072
Mississauga, Ontario

From Autopilot to Authenticity: How to Stop Our Fears from Hijacking Our Interactions.

Recent Posts