Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again (3 page)

This is a baffling phenomenon. Why do we do this? Why do we reenact our pain, prolonging our suffering? Why don’t we build better lives and escape the pattern? Almost everyone repeats negative patterns from childhood in self-defeating ways. This is the strange truth with which therapists contend. Somehow we manage to create, in adult life, conditions remarkably similar to those that were so destructive in childhood. A lifetrap is all the ways in which we recreate these patterns.

The technical term for a lifetrap is a schema. The concept of a schema comes from cognitive psychology. Schemas are deeply entrenched beliefs about ourselves and the world, learned early in life. These schemas are central to our sense of self. To give up our belief in a schema would be to surrender the security of knowing who we are and what the world is like; therefore we cling to it, even when it hurts us. These early beliefs provide us with a sense of predictability and certainty; they are comfortable and familiar. In an odd sense, they make us feel at home. This is why cognitive psychologists believe schemas, or lifetraps, are so difficult to change.

Let us now look at how lifetraps affect the
chemistry
we feel in romantic relationships.

PATRICK: A THIRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD BUILDING CONTRACTOR. THE MORE HIS WIFE, FRANCINE, HAS AFFAIRS WITH OTHER MEN, THE MORE HE DESIRES HER. PATRICK IS CAUGHT IN THE
ABANDONMENT
LIFETRAP.

Patrick is acutely unhappy. His wife keeps having affairs with other men. Whenever she has an affair, he becomes desperate.

PATRICK: It’s like I’ll do anything to get her back. I can’t stand it. I know if I lose her I’ll fall apart. I can’t understand why I put up with this; it’s as if I love her more when I know she’s not there for me. I start thinking, „If only I could be better, she wouldn’t need to do this. If only I were better, she would stay with me.“ I can’t stand the uncertainty.

Francine keeps promising to be faithful, and each time Patrick believes her. And each time his hopes are dashed.

PATRICK: I can’t believe she’s doing this to me again. I can’t believe she’d put me through it. After last time I was sure she would stop. I mean, she saw what she did to me. I was almost suicidal. I can’t believe she would do it again.

Patrick’s marriage is a roller coaster. He rides, out of control, from wild hope to despair, rising and crashing again and again.

PATRICK: The hardest part for me is the waiting. Knowing what she is doing and waiting for her to come home. There have been times when I have waited days. Just sat there and waited for her to come home.

While Patrick waits, he alternates between sobbing and rage. When Francine finally comes home, there is a scene. A few times he has hit her, afterward always begging her forgiveness. He wants to get off the roller coaster. He says he wants some stability and peace. Yet this is the irony of the Abandonment lifetrap: the more unpredictable Francine is, the more he is drawn to her at a deep emotional level. He feels more chemistry when she threatens to leave.

Patrick’s childhood was fraught with loss and unpredictability. His father abandoned the family when Patrick was only two years old. He and his two sisters were raised by their mother, an alcoholic who neglected them when she was drunk. These feelings are familiar to him, and he has managed to recreate them by marrying Francine and tolerating her infidelity.

Patrick was in psychoanalysis (Freudian therapy) for three years. He saw his analyst three times a week for fifty minutes each time—at considerable expense.

PATRICK: I would go in and he down on the couch and talk about whatever came into my mind. It was very lonely for me. My analyst said very Httle in the whole three years. Even if I was crying or yelling at him he usually wouldn’t say anything. I felt like he wasn’t really there.

He talked a lot about his childhood, and about what it felt like to lie there on the couch.

He became frustrated with analysis. He found his progress very slow. He
understood
his problems better, but he still had them. (This is a common complaint about psychoanalysis: Insight is not enough.) He wanted a therapy that was quicker and more directive. He wanted more guidance.

The lifetrap approach offered Patrick the guidance he needed. Instead of being distant and neutral with Patrick, we
collaborated
with him. We helped him see exactly what his pattern was and how he could break it. We taught him how to become more selective in his relationships with women. We warned him of the danger in romantic relationships of being drawn to destructive partners who generate a lot of sexual chemistry. He was confronted with the painful reality that he, like many of us, had fallen in love with a partner who reinforced his lifetrap.

After a year and a half of lifetrap therapy, Patrick decided to end his marriage to Francine. In that time he had given her every chance. He had tried to correct his behaviors that were destructive to the relationship—and that were inadvertently driving her away. He had stopped trying to control her. He had given her more freedom. He had asserted himself when she treated him badly. But through it all Francine had not changed. In fact, things had grown worse.

When we first asked if he had considered leaving Francine, Patrick insisted that he was too afraid he would fall apart. But when he finally left her and ended his marriage, he did not fall apart. Instead, he became calmer and more self-confident. He saw that he could have a life apart from Francine. We think he was right to leave the self-destructive relationship.

Patrick slowly started seeing other women. At first, he dated women who were just like his wife—unstable and unable to support him. It was as though he were running through the whole cycle again in fast motion. We gradually helped him to make healthier choices, even though the chemistry he felt was not quite as high. He has been living for six months with Sylvia, a very stable and reliable woman who seems devoted to him. While she is less glamorous than Francine, for the first time in his life Patrick is learning to be content in a consistent, nurturing environment.

The lifetrap approach shows you exactly what types of relationships are healthy for you to pursue, and what types to avoid, given your particular lifetraps. Often, this is not easy. Like Patrick, you may have to make choices that are painful in the short run and even go against your gut feelings in order to escape a rut that you have been mired in throughout your life.

CARLTON: THIRTY YEARS OLD, WORKS FOR HIS FATHER IN A FAMILY TEXTILE BUSINESS. HE IS NOT VERY GOOD AT MANAGING OTHER PEOPLE AND WOULD MUCH RATHER BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE. CARLTON IS CAUGHT IN THE
SUBJUGATION
LIFETRAP.

Carlton is a people-pleaser. He puts everyone’s needs before his own. He is the one who always says, „I don’t care, you decide,“ when other people ask him what he wants.

Carlton tries to please his wife by saying „yes“ to everything she says and wants. He tries to please his children by never saying „no.“ He tries to please his father by going into the family business, even though it means doing a job he does not like.

Ironically, despite the fact that he tries so hard to please, other people often feel irritated with Carlton. He is so self-sacrificing. His wife is angry that he has no backbone. Although the children take advantage of his permissiveness, at some level they are angry that he fails to set limits. His father is constantly annoyed with Carlton’s weakness and lack of aggressiveness at work, particularly in dealing with employees.

Although Carlton does not know it, he is angry, too. Deep inside he is angry about having denied his own needs for so long. This is a pattern he learned early in life. His father is considered a tyrant; he thrives by domineering and controlling others. Everything has to be his way. As a child, if Carlton disagreed or argued, his father spanked and belittled him. His mother adopted a completely passive role. She was depressed much of the time, and Carlton often found himself in the role of caretaker, trying to make her feel better. There was no place he could go to get his needs met.

Before coming to us, Carlton was in an experiential treatment called Gestalt therapy for two years. His therapist encouraged him to stay in the present and get in touch with his feelings. For example, the therapist had him try imagery exercises in which he would picture his father and practice talking back to him. This approach was helpful. He started to feel how angry he was.

The problem was that the therapy lacked direction. It did not have a consistent focus. Carlton drifted from session to session, exploring whatever feelings were most prominent at the moment. Naturally, his anger at his loved ones kept surfacing, but he did not
act
on his feelings and he did not understand why. The therapist did not draw all the components of his problem together for him and then teach him specific change techniques to overcome his subjugation.

Lifetrap therapy provided Carlton with a simple, straightforward
conceptual framework
that allowed him to see that subjugation was a primary theme running through his life, and he learned ways to change it. He made rapid progress. We often find that the Subjugation lifetrap takes the least amount of time to break.

Carlton developed a stronger sense of self. He became more aware of his own desires and feelings, which he had learned to suppress. He started developing opinions and preferences. He also became more assertive with his father, employees, and his wife and children. Particularly, he worked on expressing anger; he learned to state his needs in a calm and controlled manner. Although his wife and children put up some minor resistance at the beginning, once they recognized they were losing power, they soon settled down. In truth, they liked him better. They wanted him to be strong.

He had a more difficult battle with his father. Although his father tried to squelch Carlton’s rebellion and reassert his dominant position, Carlton discovered that he had more leverage with his father than he realized. When he threatened to leave the business if his father would not let him assume a more equal role, his father backed down. Carlton is now beginning to take over many of his father’s responsibilities as his father prepares for retirement. He has also discovered that his father has a newfound respect for him.

This case illustrates the importance of going beyond getting in touch with our feelings. Many so-called experiential therapies, such as inner-child work, provide a valuable role in helping us
feel
the links between what we experience in our daily lives today and what we felt as children. But these approaches rarely go far enough. Participants often feel much better after therapy sessions or workshops, but they usually drift back to their old patterns quickly. The lifetrap approach provides structured behavioral homework assignments and continual confrontation to help you maintain progress.

Lifetrap therapy is an outgrowth of an approach called cognitive therapy, developed by Dr. Aaron Beck in the 1960s. We have incorporated many aspects of this treatment into the lifetrap approach.

The basic premise of cognitive therapy is that the way we
think
about events in our lives (cognition) determines how we
feel
about them (emotions). People with emotional problems tend to distort reality. For example, Heather was taught by her mother to view everyday tasks such as riding a subway as dangerous. Lifetraps lead us to view certain kinds of situations in an inaccurate manner. They push our cognitive buttons.

Cognitive therapists believe that if we can teach patients to become more accurate about the way they interpret situations, we can help them feel better. If we can show Heather that she can travel on her own without much danger, then she will be less frightened and can begin living again.

Dr. Beck suggests that we examine our thoughts logically. When we are upset, are we exaggerating, personalizing, catastrophizing, etc.? Do our thoughts really make sense? Are there other ways to look at the situation? Further, Beck says we should
test
our negative thoughts by performing little experiments. For example, we asked Heather to walk around the block alone during the winter to see that nothing harmful would happen to her, even though she was convinced she would get sick or be mugged.

Cognitive therapy has gained wide respect. A large, growing body of research supports its effectiveness with such disorders as anxiety and depression. It is an active approach that teaches patients to control their own moods by controlling their thoughts.

Cognitive therapists usually combine cognitive methods with behavioral techniques, which are designed to teach patients practical skills they may never have learned such as relaxation, assertiveness, anxiety management, problem solving, time management, and social skills.

However, we have found over the years that cognitive and behavioral methods, while invaluable, are not sufficient to change lifelong patterns. Thus we developed the Lifetrap approach, which combines cognitive and behavioral techniques with psychoanalytic and experiential techniques. Madeline, the final patient we will discuss in this chapter, demonstrates both the value and limitation of using only cognitive behavioral methods.

MADELINE: A TWENTY-NINE-YEAR-OLD ACTRESS AND SINGER. SHE WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED BY HER STEPFATHER, AND CONTINUES TO SUFFER THE EFFECTS. MADELINE IS STILL PLAYING OUT THE
MISTRUST AND ABUSE
LIFETRAP.

Madeline has never had a long-term relationship with a man. Instead, she has gone from one extreme to the other: either she has avoided men altogether or she has been promiscuous.

Until she went to college, Madeline avoided boys. She never dated or had a boyfriend.

MADELINE: I never let a guy near me. I remember the first time a boy kissed me. I ran away. When I sensed that a boy liked me, I acted really cold until he went away.