Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again (54 page)

The process of change is very difficult, as we have stated repeatedly. Above all, be compassionate with yourself. You are struggling to do your best. Be understanding of your limitations and flaws. Remember that lifetraps are hard to change. It is vital that you remember how you became the way you are.
Remember the origins of your lifetraps, and try to empathize with yourself when you were a child.

However, it is also important to take responsibility for changing. Many self-help groups have been criticized for encouraging members to feel like victims of their parents without teaching them to take responsibility for changing. We think this is a serious risk. It is vital that you keep confronting yourself. Be persistent. Do not keep putting off change, waiting for a more convenient time. The best time to begin changing is now. No matter how damaged you were as a child, this does not excuse you from taking responsibility for change.
Childhood pain explains why change is so difficult and takes so long; it does not explain why someone allows destructive patterns to continue without working hard to alter them.

Be honest with yourself. Place a high value on facing reality. So many people delude themselves, holding on to illusions of what they would like themselves to be or what they would like other people to be. They are unwilling to face the reality of what they are like—of their coldness, their sadness, their anger, their anxieties. Look at the reality of your situation. Self-delusion will only lead you to continue acting in self-defeating ways, and keep you from having genuine relationships.

Confront yourself to change at the speed and level you can handle. We cannot face everything all at once, so we usually have to confront lifetraps in gradual increments. Have faith that you can reach the place you want to go. Faith will help you ride out failure and disappointments in between your successes. Be patient. If you persist, you will eventually achieve your vision.

Unfortunately, some changes cannot be accomplished in small steps. They require a leap of faith, a high level of risk. Sometimes we must make major changes in order to grow; these include leaving a relationship, switching careers, or moving to another city. As we become more aware of our natural inclinations and overcome our lifetraps, we may have to make major breaks with the past. You may have to surrender the security of childhood patterns in order to grow into the adult you want to be.

It is hard to change alone. Change is easier when you have support. Reach out for help to the people who love you. Let friends and supportive family members get involved. Tell them what you are trying to do and enlist their assistance.

Sometimes friends or supportive family members can serve as mentors or role models for reaching your personal goals. They can provide advice, guidance, and inspiration. Knowing someone well who has already met some of your goals can make the process more
real
to you, and can give you faith that change is possible.

Friends and supportive family members are often more objective than you are. They can help you to analyze the evidence, and push you to confront the tasks you are avoiding. It is going to be difficult for you to change without the help of
some
person who can see you clearly and realistically, because you will have trouble seeing your own distortions.

Unfortunately, turning to family and friends may not be an option for you. You may not have close family and friends, or they may be too disturbed themselves to be of much help to you. Often family members reinforce your lifetraps, rather than help you change. If this is the case, consider seeking professional help.

There are other times to consider seeing a professional. When your symptoms are so severe that they interfere with your functioning; when you have been stuck for a long time and do not know how to change; when change feels hopeless—these are times to consider getting professional help. Consider it when you are going through a life crisis, such as the break-up of a long-term relationship or the loss of a job; at these times, you need support and may be more receptive to change. Consider help if you had a traumatic childhood that included emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. Finally, if you are hurting other people because of your problems, then professional help is clearly indicated.

If your symptoms are very serious, psychiatric medication might help you. For example, you might be seriously depressed: you feel worthless, your eating and sleeping are disturbed, you feel slowed down, you cannot concentrate, you have lost interest in things that used to give you pleasure, or you are actually doing less. You may even be considering suicide. If you have symptoms of depression, especially if you feel suicidal, seek professional help immediately.

You may have serious symptoms of anxiety, such as panic attacks, multiple phobias, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, or intense generalized anxiety. You may be so fearful of social situations that you avoid them, wreaking havoc on your social and work lives. If these symptoms of anxiety characterize you, getting professional help is advisable.

You may be addicted to alcohol or drugs. You may have „post traumatic stress disorder,“ in which something from your past is haunting you. You may have flashbacks or nightmares, or you may feel numb and detached. Or you may have a serious eating disorder, such as bulimia or anorexia. Your desire to lose weight is so intense that you binge on foods and then somehow purge them, or you eat less and less, becoming dangerously thin. By all means, seek out a professional if you suffer from these serious disorders.

Once you have decided to seek professional help, you have to grapple with the question of what type of therapist to see. There is no single answer that is right for everybody. Rather, selecting a therapist is another example of following your natural inclinations.

It is important to select a therapist with adequate credentials. In general, we believe it is better to see a professional therapist than a nonprofessional. After all, you are entrusting your well-being to another person. You want someone well trained and bound by a code of ethical standards. Although we are psychologists ourselves, we also recommend social workers, psychiatrists, and psychiatric nurses,
if they have had experience with your kind of problem.
All of these professions require at least a university degree and a state license. By selecting one of these professions, you are more likely to find a therapist with adequate knowledge, clinical training, connection to professional associations with high standards and codes of ethics, and accountability to the public. The more serious your symptoms, the more crucial it is that you select one of these professionals.

There are also many different schools of therapy. As we stated earlier in this chapter, we believe that it is usually a mistake to select a therapist committed to only one approach or model. We feel that the best therapists can blend a variety of techniques and strategies, depending on the needs of the patient. That is why we have a preference for integrative therapists.

It is extremely important that you find a therapist with whom you „mesh“ emotionally. You want someone who is warm and accepting of you, who makes you feel safe. You want someone who is empathic and understands you. You want someone who seems genuine, whom you can trust. And you want someone who can handle you—who sets clear limits and confronts you when you get off track. Be skeptical of a therapist who always agrees with you and makes you feel good, who seems cold or distant, who is too critical of you, or who seems to have ulterior motives for working with you.

Avoid inappropriate „chemistry“ in therapy that might be generated by your lifetraps. For example, if you have a Defectiveness lifetrap, you might feel a lot of attraction to a critical, „superior“ therapist, even though this is destructive to you. You would do better with a therapist who seems to like and respect you. If your problem is disconnection, a therapist who is cold and remote is not the one for you. You need someone who will push you to relate. You do not want a therapist who generates chemistry, but someone who will provide a healing environment for your particular problem.

In some respects you want a therapist who can be the parent you never had. We call this „limited reparenting“ in therapy. One aspect of therapy involves providing a
partial antidote
to problems in your childhood. If you did not get enough nurturing, your therapist nurtures you. If you were overly criticized, your therapist supports and validates you. If you had a parent who was too intrusive, your therapist respects your boundaries. If you were abused, the therapist contains and protects you.

Naturally, you cannot expect a therapist to substitute completely for the parenting you lacked. This is unrealistic. There is only so much reparenting you can receive in one or two therapy hours a week. In fact, we urge you to be wary of therapists who encourage you to be too dependent on them, or who promise a level of support that is unprofessional and goes beyond the limits of psychotherapy.

Your therapist can also be a role model in a domain where you are having difficulty. For example, your therapist can be assertive where you are timid, or demonstrative where you are closed. Your therapist can model effective ways of resolving problems.

We also encourage you to join reputable self-help groups. Twelve-step programs such as AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics), AL-ANON (relatives of alcoholics), CODA (Codependents Anonymous), NA (Narcotics Anonymous), and OA (Overeaters Anonymous), are well established and nationally recognized. These groups have programs designed to help you change in specific ways.

Beware of „cult“ groups. These are groups that have charismatic leaders, require you to recruit new members (proselytizing), and generally cost large sums of money to join or complete. Cult groups foster dependency and subjugation. Members are made to feel special, that they have a secret that no one else does. In reality, cult members are encouraged to remain children rather than come to grips with the demands of adulthood. They are encouraged to follow the rules of the leader, instead of discovering their own natural inclinations. If you are considering joining a group and are not sure whether it is reputable, you can consult with one of the mental health professionals mentioned above or call their respective professional associations.

If you would like a referral to a therapist in your area trained in the lifetrap approach, feel free to contact us. Furthermore, if you would like to share your experience using our approach (positive or negative), we welcome your feedback. Tell us your personal story. Although we cannot provide direct psychological assistance by mail, we would genuinely like to hear from you as you go through the process of change. You can write or call us at:

We would like to conclude with a quotation from T. S. Eliot’s
Little Gidding:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

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respond to the coping styles of
mainte
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