Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again (8 page)

We had to battle his Escape on every front. When we asked him to write down his negative thoughts for homework, he did not do it. He claimed, „Why think about things? They only make me feel worse.“ When we asked him to close his eyes and picture himself as a child, he said, „I can’t see anything. My mind is blank.“ Or he saw an image of a photograph of himself as a child, devoid of emotion. When we asked him how he felt about his abusive father, he insisted that he felt no anger. „My father was a good man,“ he said.

Brandon tries to escape his feelings of defectiveness. With Escape, we avoid thinking about our lifetrap. We push it out of our minds. We also escape feeling our lifetrap. When feelings are generated, we dampen them down. We take drugs, or overeat, or compulsively clean, or become a workaholic. And we avoid entering situations that might activate our lifetrap. In fact, our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors work as if the lifetrap never existed.

Many people escape whole areas of life where they feel vulnerable or sensitive. If you have the Defectiveness lifetrap, like Brandon you may avoid intimate relationships altogether, never letting anybody get too close. If you have the Failure lifetrap, you may avoid work, school tasks, promotions, or taking on new projects. If you have the Social Exclusion lifetrap, you may avoid groups, parties, meetings, conventions. If you have the Dependence lifetrap, you may avoid all situations that require you to be independent. You may be phobic about going into public places alone.

It is natural that Escape becomes one of the ways we cope with lifetraps. When a lifetrap is triggered, we are flooded with negative feelings—sadness, shame, anxiety, and anger. We are moved to escape from that pain. We do not want to face what we really feel because it is too upsetting to feel it.

The disadvantage of Escape is that we never overcome the lifetrap. Since we never confront the truth, we are stuck. We cannot change things that we do not admit are problems. Instead, we continue the same selfdefeating behaviors, the same destructive relationships. In trying to coast through life without feeling pain, we rob ourselves of the chance to change the things that are causing us pain.

When we escape, we strike a bargain with ourselves. We will not feel pain in the short run, but in the long run we will suffer the consequences of having avoided the issue year after year. As long as he escapes, Brandon will never get what he wants most—to love and be loved by another human being who really knows him. Love is what Brandon was denied in childhood.

With Escape we give up our emotional life. We do not
feel
We walk around numb—unable to experience real pleasure and pain. Because we avoid confronting problems, we often end up hurting those around us. We are also prone to the terrible consequences of addictions like alcohol and drugs.

M
a
x: He counter
a
tt
a
cks to cope with his feelings of
DEFECTIVENESS.

Max is a thirty-two-year-old stockbroker. On the surface he is self-confident and assured. In fact, he is a snob. He has an air of superiority. He is very critical of others while rarely acknowledging any faults in himself.

Max came to therapy because his wife was threatening to leave him. He insisted their problems were all her fault.

THERAPIST: So your wife is pretty angry with you?

MAX: If you ask me, she’s the one who’s causing all the problems. She blows things out of proportion, and she demands too much from me. She’s the one who needs to be in therapy.

In fact, Max chose a very passive, self-sacrificing wife who worshiped him. Through the years, he had become so verbally abusive and selfish that she had finally insisted that either they start therapy or she would leave.

Max creates situations where he is one up. He chooses friends and employees who will flatter him, rather than challenge and confront him. He enjoys feeling superior. He devotes most of his energy to gaining prestige and status. He manipulates and uses people in any way necessary to achieve these ends.

He tried to stay one up in therapy as well. He questioned our credentials, approach, competence, level of success, and age. And he kept reminding us how successful he was. When we told him we thought he was treating his wife badly, he became infuriated. He insisted we did not understand his feelings. He insisted that we should be willing to give him appointments whenever he wanted them because he is an important person. When we refused, he again became angry. He felt he was not getting the special treatment he deserved.

Max is not in touch with his lifetrap yet it is very much with him. In feeling superior, Max experiences the opposite of what he felt as a child. He is trying to be as different as possible from the worthless child that his parents made him feel he was. We might say he spends his whole life trying to keep that child at bay and to fight off the attacks of those he expects to criticize and abuse him.

When we Counterattack, we try to make up for the lifetrap by convincing ourselves and others that the
opposite
is true. We feel, act, and think as if we are
special, superior, perfect, infallible.
We cling to this persona desperately.

Counterattack develops because it offers an alternative to being devalued, criticized, and humiliated. It is a way out of that terrible vulnerability. Our counterattacks help us cope. But when these counterattacks become too extreme, they often backfire and end up hurting us.

Counterattackers can
appear
healthy. In fact, some of the people we admire most in society are counterattackers—some movie stars, rock stars, and political leaders. But although they fit in well with society and are successful in the eyes of other people, they are usually not at peace with themselves. They frequently feel defective underneath.

They deal with these feelings of inadequacy by putting themselves in situations where they will get the applause of an audience. Winning this applause is actually an attempt to compensate for a deep sense that they are worthless. They can counterattack by masking their flaws with success before they are discovered and put down.

Our counterattacks isolate us. We become so invested in appearing to be perfect that we stop caring who gets hurt in the process. We continue to counterattack, no matter how much it costs other people. There are bound to be some negative effects. Eventually people leave us or retaliate in some way.

Our counterattacks also get in the way of real intimacy. We lose the ability to trust, become vulnerable, and connect at a deeper level. We have met some patients who would rather lose everything—including their marriage, a relationship with someone they love—than risk becoming vulnerable.

Eventually, no matter how perfect we try to be, we are going to fail at something. Counterattackers never really learn to cope with defeat. They do not take responsibility for their failures or acknowledge their limitations. However, when there is a
major
setback, the counterattack collapses. When this happens, they often fall apart and become very depressed.

Underneath, counterattackers are usually very fragile. Their superiority is easily deflated. Eventually there is a crack in the armor, and the whole world feels as if it is collapsing. At these times, the lifetrap reasserts itself with enormous strength, and the original feelings of defectiveness, deprivation, exclusion, or abuse return.

All three men—Alex, Brandon, and Max—have Defectiveness as a core lifetrap. Deep down, all three feel worthless, unlovable, and defective. Yet they
cope
with their feelings of defectiveness in completely different ways.

Alex, Brandon, and Max are relatively pure types. Each one uses one primary coping style. In fact such pure types are rare. Most of us use a combination of Surrender, Escape, and Counterattack. We must learn to change these coping styles in order to overcome our lifetraps and become healthy again.

The next chapter shows you how to confront your lifetraps effectively without surrender, without escape, and without counterattack.

Lifetraps are long-term patterns. They are deeply ingrained, and like addictions or bad habits, they are hard to change. Change requires willingness to experience pain. You have to face the lifetrap head-on and understand it. Change also requires discipline. You have to systematically observe and change behaviors every day. Change cannot be hit-or-miss. It requires constant practice.

We will walk you through the steps of change using Danielle as an example. Danielle has the Abandonment lifetrap. She is thirty-one years old. She is in a relationship with a man, Robert, who will not make a commitment to her. They have been together for eleven years, and, although she has asked him many times, he will not marry her.

Every once in a while, Robert breaks up with her. When that happens, Danielle is devastated. She started therapy during one such breakup.

DANIELLE: I just want to stop feeling this way. I can’t take it anymore. All I can think about is Robert. I’m obsessed with him. I’ve got to get him back.

This obsessiveness is characteristic of the Abandonment lifetrap. During breakups, Danielle occasionally dates other men, but she never becomes interested in anyone other than Robert. The stable, steady types bore her.

These are the steps Danielle followed in order to change her pattern, and that we recommend for our patients:

The first step is to recognize what your lifetraps are. This can be accomplished by taking the Lifetrap Questionnaire in Chapter 2. Once you can identify a lifetrap and see how it affects your life, you will be in a better position to change it. By having a
name
for your lifetrap, like Defectiveness or Dependence, and reading about it in the second half of this book, you will understand yourself better. You will gain clarity about your life. This
insight
is the first step.

Danielle recognized her Abandonment lifetrap in a number of different ways. When she started therapy, we gave her the Lifetrap Questionnaire. She scored high on items in the Abandonment section.

DANIELLE: I guess on some level I’ve always been aware that I have an issue about people abandoning me. I’ve always been afraid of it, I’ve always been worried it’s bound to happen.

Patients often have this sensation when they identify a lifetrap. It is a sense of becoming clear about something they have vaguely known all along.

Danielle could easily see how the theme of abandonment played itself out in her current life. She was in a long-term relationship in which abandonment was the main theme. She also learned about her lifetrap through imagery of the past. When we asked her to close her eyes and let images come of her childhood, the predominant theme was abandonment.

DANIELLE: I see myself. I’m standing by the living room couch. I’m trying to get my mother to pay attention to me, but she’s drunk. I can’t get her to pay attention to me.

Danielle’s mother was an alcoholic as far back as she could remember. When Danielle was seven, her father left the family to marry another woman. He gradually drifted further away from the family as he had children with his new wife. He left Danielle and her sister with a mother who clearly could not take care of them adequately.

Danielle was abandoned by both parents. Her mother abandoned her through alcoholism, and her father abandoned her literally—by leaving the family. Their abandonment of her was the central truth of her childhood.

Eventually Danielle came to see the theme of abandonment weaving through her life from the past to the present. The idea of the lifetrap
organized her experience for her in a way she could clearly understand.

Your lifetrap is your enemy. We want you to know your enemy.

The second step is to
feel
your lifetrap. We have found that it is very difficult to change deep pain without first reliving it. We all have some mechanisms for blocking this pain. Unfortunately, by blocking the pain, we cannot get fully in touch with our lifetraps.

To feel your lifetrap, you will need to remember your childhood. We will ask you to close your eyes and let the images come. Do not force the images—just let one rise to the top of your mind. Get into each one as deeply as you can. Try to picture these early memories as vividly as possible. If you do this a few times, you will begin to remember what you felt as a child. You will feel the
pain
or emotions connected with your lifetrap.

This kind of imagery is painful. If you feel completely overwhelmed or frightened by the experience, that is a sign you need therapy. Your childhood was so painful that you should not remember it alone. You need a guide, an ally. A therapist can be this for you.

Once you have reconnected with your childhood self, we will ask you to open a dialogue with this child. This inner child is frozen. We want to bring it back to life, where growth and change are possible. We want this child to heal.

We will ask you to talk to your inner child. You can do this by actually talking aloud, or you can do it through writing. You can write a letter to this child in your dominant hand (the hand you usually write with), and have the child write a response in your non-dominant hand. We have found that your child-self can come out in the handwriting of your non-dominant hand.

The idea of talking to your inner child may sound strange at first.

You will understand more about it as the book proceeds. Here is an example of Danielle talking to her inner child. It is during the same scene we described above, when she is trying to get her drunk mother to pay attention to her.