Reinventing Your Life

by Jeffrey E. Young

And you require the people you love to restrict their lives as well.

Counting, checking, washing, cleaning—these are all examples of obsessive-compulsive rituals you may engage in to make life magically safe. Such rituals are a further drain on your life energy.

CHANGING YOUR VULNERABILITY LIFETRAP 1. Try to understand the origins of your lifetrap. 2. Make a list of your specific fears. 3. Develop a hierarchy of feared situations. 4. Meet with the people you love—your spouse, lover, family, friends—and enlist their support in helping you face your fears. 5. Examine the probability of your feared events occurring. 6. Write a flashcard for each fear. 7. Talk to your inner child. Be a strong, brave parent to your child. 8. Practice techniques for relaxation. 9. Begin to tackle each of your fears in imagery. 10. Tackle each fear in real life. 11. Reward yourself for each step you take.

Were your parents phobic? Overprotective? Underprotective? In what areas did you learn to feel vulnerable? Was it illness? Traveling? Money? Dangers in your environment? Losing control? The origin of the lifetrap is usually obvious. You may know it already. Insight into the origin is important.

You have chosen many of the people around you because they reinforce your lifetrap. You have to get them to stop if you want to overcome your Vulnerability lifetrap.

The problem is that your intuition is simply wrong because it is under the sway of your lifetrap.

Exaggerating the odds is part of your tendency to catastrophize. You jump to the worst possible conclusion and consider it to be the most likely one. In fact, the likelihood of most catastrophic events happening to you is extremely low.

The feelings connected to your lifetrap are child feelings. They are the feelings of your vulnerable inner child. You need to develop an inner parent to help this inner child. You can use imagery.

The emotion that is most connected to the Defectiveness lifetrap is shame. Shame is what you feel when your defects are exposed. You will do almost anything to avoid this feeling of shame. Consequently you go to great lengths to keep your defectiveness hidden.

You feel that your defectiveness is inside you. It is not immediately observable.

Almost half our patients have Defectiveness as one of their primary lifetraps. However, on the surface, these patients look very different. Each copes with feelings of shame in different ways. Some lack confidence and look insecure (Surrender). Some look normal (Escape). And some look so good you would never believe they had the lifetrap (Counterattack).

Alison believes strongly that no one could possibly care about her. She constantly discounts evidence that people like her and want to be with her.

Alison’s Defectiveness lifetrap makes her much too vulnerable in relationships. The other person has so much power to hurt her. She does not protect herself or defend herself. Eliot is at the opposite end of the spectrum. He has a quality of invulnerability. No one can touch him. He has developed the Counterattacking style of coping so effectively that most people never suspect; in fact, Eliot himself is largely unaware of his own deep feelings of shame.

Eliot is an example of a fragile narcissist. A narcissist is someone who lacks empathy, blames others for problems, and has a strong sense of entitlement. People like Eliot have developed this narcissism to fight back against their underlying feelings that no one will ever love or respect them.

It is as if they are saying to the world: “I will be so demanding, act so superior, and become so special that you will never be a...

He would rather lose everything than risk making himself vulnerable.

the threat of abandonment is one thing that can sometimes motivate a narcissist to change.

He rejects her, and she is the victim of rejection. Together they reenact their original drama of rejection by the parent.

If you have the Defectiveness lifetrap, you probably lie somewhere between the two extremes represented by Alison and Eliot. Perhaps you allow yourself to be quite vulnerable in some areas but not in others.

They come in very willing to talk about their lives, but when certain topics arise, they skirt the issue. These topics ma...

Feeling unworthy and angry at yourself is a large part of depression. You may feel that you have been depressed your whole life—a kind of low-level depression lurking in the background.

If your primary coping style is Escape, you may have addictions or compulsions. Drinking, drugs, overworking, and overeating are all ways of numbing yourself to avoid the pain of feeling worthless.

THE ORIGINS OF THE DEFECTIVENESS LIFETRAP 1. Someone in your family was extremely critical, demeaning, or punitive toward you. You were repeatedly criticized or punished for how you looked, how you behaved, or what you said. 2. You were made to feel like a disappointment by a parent. 3. You were rejected or unloved by one or both of your parents. 4. You were sexually, physically, or emotionall...

6. Your parent told you repeatedly that you were bad, worthless, or good-for-nothing. 7. You were repeatedly compared in an unfavorable way with your brothers or sisters, or they were preferred over you. 8....

The Defectiveness lifetrap comes from feeling unlovable or not respected as a child. You were repeatedly rejected or critici...

As a child, you blamed yourself. Everything happened because you were so worthless, inadequate, flawed, and defective. For this reason, you probably did not feel angry about the way you were treated. Rather, you felt ashamed and sad. Alison’s lifetrap is largely the result of her father’s criticalness.

She incorporated her father’s criticalness. Her father’s view of her became her view of herself.

Shame may have dominated your childhood. Each time your defectiveness was exposed, you felt ashamed.

We might ask why Alison’s father was so cold and rejecting. One strong possibility is that he had a Defectiveness lifetrap himself. However, he coped with his lifetrap by Counterattacking. He made himself feel better by putting Alison down and making her feel that she was the defective one. He scapegoated her. Perhaps in Alison he saw a reflection of his own defectiveness.

Many times it seems that the parents have defectiveness issues themselves, which they pass along to their children.

Parents who give rise to the Defectiveness lifetrap are usually punitive and critical. There may be physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. Defectiveness and Abuse often go hand-in-hand. While it is possible for a child who is abused to feel that it is unfair and to be angry without feeling defective, this is seldom the case.

Many children find some way to make up for their feelings of defectiveness. This is where the lifetrap starts to blend with Entitlement and Unrelenting Standards. Many people who have grown up being criticized and made to feel defective compensate by trying to be superior in some area. They set high standards and strive for success and status. They may act arrogant and entitled. With money and recognition, they try to allay that inner feeling of defectiveness.

Defectiveness is often formed through comparisons with a favored sibling.

Eliot learned to hide his true thoughts and feelings. His true self became a secret, known only to him. This way, he felt less vulnerable. He could maintain a sense of pride. It was too dangerous to reveal himself.

We pay a high price for burying our true self in the way Eliot did. It is a great loss, like a death. Spontaneity, joy, trust, and intimacy are all lost, and they are replaced by a guarded, shut-down shell. The person constructs a false self. This false self is harder, less easily wounded. But no matter how hard the exterior, deep inside there is pain about losing one’s true self.

often feel better day-to-day. At least on the surface, you seem to be doing well. But it is an illusion. Inside you still feel defective and unloved. The problem with the shell is that you never really address the core issue. A true self that stays hidden cannot heal.

It is very important to realize that the Defectiveness lifetrap is not usually based on a real defect.

The crucial factor is not the presence of a defect, but rather how you are made to feel about yourself by your parents and the other members of your family. If you are loved, valued, and respected by your family members—regardless of your actual strengths and weaknesses—you will almost certainly not feel worthless, ashamed, or defective.

You may cope with your Defectiveness lifetrap by avoiding long-term, intimate relationships altogether. You may have no relationships at all, only short relationships, or multiple relationships. By avoiding long-term commitment, you make certain that no one gets close enough to see your inner flaws.

Another way you might avoid intimacy is by becoming involved with someone else who does not want to be intimate. Even though you are dating, you lead parallel lives where you never get too close.

Like Eliot, you might avoid dating people who really interest you. You only date people you know you could never love. You might have a relationship with a person who lives at a distance, or who is traveling all the time. You can only see the person on weekends. There are many ways you can set up relationships to escape the intimate contact you fear.

Many people who get into masochistic relationships—in which they tolerate being badly mistreated—have Defectiveness lifetraps. They basically feel that this is all they deserve.

Critical partners will feel familiar because they echo your childhood environment. We strongly recommend that you stop dating partners who do not treat you well rather than try to win them over and gain their love.

DEFECTIVENESS LIFETRAPS 1. 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. 2. You hide your true self so you never really feel that your partner knows you. 3. You are jealous and possessive of your partner. 4. 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. 6. You put yourself down around your partner. 7. You allow your partner to criticize you, put you down, or mistreat you. 8. You have difficulty accepting valid criticism; you become defensive or hostile. 9. You are extremely critical of your children. 10. You feel like an impostor when you are successful. You feel extremely anxious that you cannot maintain your success. 11. You become despondent or ...

Your criticalness can be a major problem. If you are narcissistic, you may be more comfortable with a partner you can see as one-down. Then you do not have to worry so much about being found out, judged, or rejected.

If you have the Defectiveness lifetrap, you may also try to devalue your partners. You believe that a truly desirable partner will see your flaws and ultimately reject you.

You believe that only your false self is worthy of love. By hiding your true self, you never believe that your partner loves the real you. By not being completely open, you reinforce your sense that the real self is shameful and unlovable.

You may even, like Alison, consider ending the relationship. The situation is so fraught with anxiety that you feel that you cannot stand it anymore.