Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthough Program to End Negative Behavior...and Feel Great Again

by Jeffrey E. Young

You become very critical of your partner once you feel accepted, and your romantic feelings disappear. You then act in a demeaning or critical manner.

You hide your true self so you never really feel that your partner knows you.

You constantly compare yourself unfavorably with other people and feel envious and inadequate. 5. You constantly need or demand reassurance that your partner still values you.

You feel like an impostor when you are successful. You feel extremely anxious that you cannot maintain your success. 11. You become despondent or deeply depressed over career setbacks or rejections in relationships.

This is your paradox: you want love so much, but the more your partner gives you love, the less attracted you feel.

If you use success in your career to make up or compensate for feelings of defectiveness, then your sense of well-being may be quite fragile.

Are you hypercritical of other people? Are you defensive about criticism? Do you devalue the people you love? Do you overemphasize status or success? Do you try to impress people? Do you ask for reassurance incessantly? These are the ways you Counterattack or overcompensate.

Do you abuse alcohol or drugs? Do you overeat or overwork? Do you avoid getting close to people?

Are you hypervigilant about rejection? These are the ways y...

Success and status often become addictions. You try to get more and more, but you can never get enough to make you feel good. Success is a pale substitute for finding one person who really knows and loves you.

ASSETS AS A CHILD OR TEENAGER 1. I was smart. 2. I was sensitive. 3. I was pretty good to other people.

DEFECTS AS A CHILD OR TEENAGER 1. It’s hard for me to say what my defects were. I just didn’t have much to offer anyone. No one really wanted to be with me. I have always felt that there is something about me that people don’t like. I can’t really say what it is. It is something about me that other people can see. Boys in particular didn’t like me. When I was a teenager, boys didn’t ask me out.

You know, each positive quality that people told me about, my first reaction was that I knew that, but I just didn’t think it was very important. I mean, I know I’m a nice person, I know there were good things about me. I just didn’t think that it mattered in terms of my total worth. THERAPIST: You automatically devalue everything you do well.

It is hard for you to tolerate situations where people take care of you, praise you, and support you. You try to push it away or discount it.

You had a parent (often your father) who was very critical of your performance in school, sports, etc. He/She often called you stupid, dumb, inept, a failure,

Your parent may have been competitive with you—or afraid of losing your companionship if you were too successful in the world.

You have been afraid to take initiative or make decisions independently at work,

You try to compensate for your lack of achievement or work skills by focusing on other assets (e.g., your looks, charm, youthfulness,

Submission is the second form of the Subjugation lifetrap. You submit to the subjugation process involuntarily. Whether you actually have a choice or not, you feel as though you have no choice. As a child, you subjugated yourself in order to avoid punishment or abandonment, probably by a parent. Your parent threatened to hurt you or to withdraw love or attention. There was coercion in the subjugation process. You are almost always angry, even if you do not recognize your anger.

ROSE: NINETEEN YEARS OLD, EXERTS SUCH TIGHT CONTROL OVER HER EATING THAT SHE IS ANOREXIC. Some people make up for their feelings of subjugation by engaging in excessive self-control. Because they feel out of control of most areas of their lives, they seize control of some aspect of themselves. This is what happened to Rose, who has the eating disorder known as anorexia nervosa. Rose has starved herself until she has become excessively thin, all the while insisting that she is still too fat.

Your parent(s) withdrew emotionally or cut off contact with you if you disagreed with them about how to do things.

Your parent(s) did not allow you to make your own choices as a child.

You had to be very careful about what you did or said as a child, because you worried about your mother’s/father’s tendency to become worried or depressed.

Your partner has a very strong sense of self and knows exactly what he/she wants in most situations.

Your partner pouts or pulls away from you when you do things your way. 6. Your partner is easily hurt or upset, so you feel you have to take care of him/her.

Your partner makes you feel guilty or accuses you of being selfish when you ask to do something your way. 12. Your partner becomes sad, worried, or depressed easily, so you end up doing most of the listening.

You are too eager to please—you will do almost anything to be liked or accepted.

You do not like to disagree openly with other people’s opinions. 4. You are more comfortable when other people are in positions of control. 5. You will do almost anything to avoid confrontation or anger. You always accommodate.

You resist doing what other people want you to do in an indirect way. You procrastinate, make mistakes, and make excuses. 21. You cannot get along with authority figures.

People tell you that you are not aggressive or ambitious enough. 25. You play down your accomplishments. 26. You have trouble being strong in negotiations.

KATHERINE: THIRTY YEARS OLD. SHE DID WELL IN SCHOOL, BUT CANNOT FUNCTION INDEPENDENTLY IN THE WORKPLACE. Katherine is a lawyer working in a small firm. She had an excellent record as a student in law school, where she was closely tied to the professor who served as her mentor.

However, the most likely scenario is that you express your anger passive-aggressively.

Stop behaving passive-aggressively. Push yourself systematically to assert yourself—express what you need or want. Start with easy requests first.

The compulsive is the person who keeps everything in perfect order. You are the type who attends to every detail no matter how slight, who fears making any mistake no matter how minor. You feel frustrated and upset when things are not just right.

Some get angry at themselves. It may be that you blame yourself more than your surroundings.

the blocks are internal, they get angry at themselves. They are not pushing hard enough, or doing well enough at something. They feel a constant sense of internal irritation.

Your Unrelenting Standards developed as a way to compensate for feelings of defectiveness, social exclusion, deprivation, or failure.

Alternately, you may have had loving parents who gave you lavish love and approval when you met their high expectations. The important thing is that meeting some standard of school achievement, beauty, status, popularity, or sports became the most effective way for you to win your parents’ love, respect, or perhaps even adulation. Your parents may have placed you on a pedestal because of your success.

I never used to think of my parents as perfectionistic. I always thought of them as just normal average people with normal average standards. It wasn’t until I started looking at it more closely that I realized my mother had to have the house perfect. There was never a trace of mess. If I walked in and left a piece of paper on the table, within five minutes my mother would be asking me to put it away where it belongs.

And my father was completely perfectionistic about his work. He owned his own business, and whatever it was, even hanging up a sign, he had to do it himself and do it perfectly. He was always working.

No one ever said to Pamela, “You must do very well.” She learned it purely through modeling, by observing her parents. If you have parents who themselves have high standards, they have, either subtly ...

Although people with Unrelenting Standards are usually remarkably successful as adults, their childhood memories rarely focus on feelings of success. In fact, they are much more likely to remember feeling defective, excluded, or lonely. Regardless of how hard they tried, they rarely got the respect, admiration, attention, or love they wanted.

Pamela’s family, doing very well was treated as just average. Praise was rare.

Your health is suffering because of daily stresses, such as overwork—not only because of unavoidable life events. 2. The balance between work and pleasure feels lopsided. Life feels like constant pressure and work without fun.

Too much of your energy goes into keeping your life in order. You spend too much time keeping lists, organizing your life, planning, cleaning, and repairing, and not enough time being creative or letting go. 5. Your relationships with other people are suffering because so much time goes into meeting your own standards—working, being successful, etc. 6. You make other people feel inadequate or nervous around you because they worry about not being able to meet your high expectations of them. 7. You rarely stop and enjoy successes. You rarely savor a sense of accomplishment. Rather, you simply go on to the next task waiting for you.

You feel overwhelmed because you are trying to accomplish so much; there never seems to be enough time to complete what you have started. 9. Your standards are so high that you view many activities as obligations or ordeals to get through, instead of enjoying the process itself. 10. You procrastinate a lot. Because your standards make many tasks feel overwhelming, you avoid them. 11. You feel irritated or frustrated a lot because things and people around you do not meet your high standards.

Once you are in a relationship, you can be extremely critical and demanding. You expect other people (especially those closest to you, like your spouse or children) to live up to your standards. And without realizing it, you probably devalue them for not meeting the standards you set. Of course, because these standards do not seem high to you, you feel that your expectations are normal and justified.

Consider what the effects would be if you lowered your standards about 25 percent.

Gradually try to change your schedule or alter your behavior in order to get your deeper needs met.

If you are the dependent type, you feel entitled to depend on other people. You place yourself in the weak, incompetent, needy role, and expect other people to be strong and take care of you. You feel entitled much in the same way as a child feels toward a parent. It is your right. People owe it to you.