Read Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again for Free Online
Authors: Jeffrey E. Young, Janet S. Klosko
constant support. As a child you were made to feel incompetent when you tried to assert your independence. As an adult, you seek out strong figures upon whom to become dependent and allow them to rule your life. At work, you shrink from acting on your own. Needless to say, this holds you back.
• VULNERABILITY •
With Vulnerability, you live in fear that disaster is about to strike—whether natural, criminal, medical, or financial. You do not feel safe in the world. If you have this lifetrap, as a child you were made to feel that the world is a dangerous place. You were probably overprotected by your parents, who worried too much about your safety. Your fears are excessive and unrealistic, yet you let them control your life, and pour your energy into making sure that you are safe. Your fears may revolve around illness: having an anxiety attack, getting AIDS, or going crazy. They may be focused around financial vulnerability: going broke and ending up on the streets. Your vulnerability may revolve around other phobic situations, such as a fear of flying, being mugged, or earthquakes.
Two lifetraps relate to the strength of your emotional connections to others: Emotional Deprivation and Social Exclusion.
• EMOTIONAL DEPRIVATION •
Emotional Deprivation is the belief that your need for love will never be met adequately by other people. You feel that no one truly cares for you or understands how you feel. You find yourself attracted to cold and ungiving people, or you are cold and ungiving yourself, leading you to form relationships that inevitably prove unsatisfying. You feel cheated, and you alternate between being angry about it and feeling hurt and alone. Ironically, your anger just drives people further away, ensuring your continued deprivation.
When patients with emotional deprivation come to see us for therapy sessions, there is a loneliness about them that stays with us even after they have left the office. It is a quality of emptiness, of emotional disconnection. These are people who do not know what love is.
• SOCIAL EXCLUSION •
Social Exclusion involves your connection to friends and groups. It has to do with feeling isolated from the rest of the world, with feeling different. If you have this lifetrap, as a child you felt excluded by peers. You did not belong to a group of friends. Perhaps you had some unusual characteristic that made you feel different in some way. As an adult, you maintain your lifetrap mainly through avoidance. You avoid socializing in groups and making friends.
You may have felt excluded because there was something about you that other children rejected. Hence you felt socially undesirable. As an adult you may feel that you are ugly, sexually undesirable, low in status, poor in conversational skills, boring, or otherwise deficient. You reenact your childhood rejection—you feel and act inferior in social situations.
It is not always apparent that someone has a Social Exclusion lifetrap. Many people with this lifetrap are quite comfortable in intimate settings and are quite socially skilled. Their lifetrap may not show in one-to-one relationships. It sometimes surprises us to realize how anxious and aloof they may feel at parties, in classes, at meetings, or at work. They have a restless quality, a quality of looking for a place to belong.
The two lifetraps that relate to your self-esteem are Defectiveness and Failure.
• DEFECTIVENESS •
With Defectiveness , you feel inwardly flawed and defective. You believe that you would be fundamentally unlovable to anyone who got close enough to really know you. Your defectiveness would be exposed. As a child, you did not feel respected for who you were in your family. Instead, you were criticized for your „flaws.“ You blamed yourself—you felt unworthy of love. As an adult, you are afraid of love. You find it difficult to believe that people close to you value you, so you expect
• VULNERABILITY •
With Vulnerability, you live in fear that disaster is about to strike—whether natural, criminal, medical, or financial. You do not feel safe in the world. If you have this lifetrap, as a child you were made to feel that the world is a dangerous place. You were probably overprotected by your parents, who worried too much about your safety. Your fears are excessive and unrealistic, yet you let them control your life, and pour your energy into making sure that you are safe. Your fears may revolve around illness: having an anxiety attack, getting AIDS, or going crazy. They may be focused around financial vulnerability: going broke and ending up on the streets. Your vulnerability may revolve around other phobic situations, such as a fear of flying, being mugged, or earthquakes.
Two lifetraps relate to the strength of your emotional connections to others: Emotional Deprivation and Social Exclusion.
• EMOTIONAL DEPRIVATION •
Emotional Deprivation is the belief that your need for love will never be met adequately by other people. You feel that no one truly cares for you or understands how you feel. You find yourself attracted to cold and ungiving people, or you are cold and ungiving yourself, leading you to form relationships that inevitably prove unsatisfying. You feel cheated, and you alternate between being angry about it and feeling hurt and alone. Ironically, your anger just drives people further away, ensuring your continued deprivation.
When patients with emotional deprivation come to see us for therapy sessions, there is a loneliness about them that stays with us even after they have left the office. It is a quality of emptiness, of emotional disconnection. These are people who do not know what love is.
• SOCIAL EXCLUSION •
Social Exclusion involves your connection to friends and groups. It has to do with feeling isolated from the rest of the world, with feeling different. If you have this lifetrap, as a child you felt excluded by peers. You did not belong to a group of friends. Perhaps you had some unusual characteristic that made you feel different in some way. As an adult, you maintain your lifetrap mainly through avoidance. You avoid socializing in groups and making friends.
You may have felt excluded because there was something about you that other children rejected. Hence you felt socially undesirable. As an adult you may feel that you are ugly, sexually undesirable, low in status, poor in conversational skills, boring, or otherwise deficient. You reenact your childhood rejection—you feel and act inferior in social situations.
It is not always apparent that someone has a Social Exclusion lifetrap. Many people with this lifetrap are quite comfortable in intimate settings and are quite socially skilled. Their lifetrap may not show in one-to-one relationships. It sometimes surprises us to realize how anxious and aloof they may feel at parties, in classes, at meetings, or at work. They have a restless quality, a quality of looking for a place to belong.
The two lifetraps that relate to your self-esteem are Defectiveness and Failure.
• DEFECTIVENESS •
With Defectiveness , you feel inwardly flawed and defective. You believe that you would be fundamentally unlovable to anyone who got close enough to really know you. Your defectiveness would be exposed. As a child, you did not feel respected for who you were in your family. Instead, you were criticized for your „flaws.“ You blamed yourself—you felt unworthy of love. As an adult, you are afraid of love. You find it difficult to believe that people close to you value you, so you expect
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