Reinventing Your Life

by Jeffrey E. Young

Envy and jealousy are almost always facets of the Defectiveness lifetrap. You are constantly comparing yourself unfavorably to other people.

Alison idealizes other women and exaggerates her own flaws. When she makes comparisons, it is hard for her to win. She spends much of the time feeling that other women are more desirable than she.

Like Eliot, you may have learned to hide your feelings of jealousy, but inside you probably feel as they do: that the world is filled with more desirable competitors for your lover.

You may also find it difficult to tolerate criticism. You are probably hypersensitive to it. Even a slight criticism can lead you to feel enormous shame. You may vehemently deny that you have done anything wrong, or put down the person who is criticizing you. This is because to acknowledge any flaw is to let in a flood of painful feelings related to Defectiveness.

you protect yourself by denying any flaw, mistake, or error. Your defensiveness and inability to take crit...

you are likely to feel the most chemistry toward partners who trigger your Defectiveness lifetrap. The flip side is that you tend to get bored with people who treat you well. This is your paradox: you want love so much, but the m...

You have the most chemistry in situations that reinforce your defectiveness. It is consistent with your self-image.

These are the two sides of the swing for you. At one extreme you pursue someone you desire highly. You feel one-down. The chemistry is high and the fear is high. At the other extreme, you pursue someone who loves and accepts you. You are less afraid, but you soon devalue your partner and lose the chemistry.

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. Your whole sense of worth becomes built on your success. Any small deflation or failure may be enough to make you nervous. If something serious happens—if you get fired, go bankrupt, have a business reversal, or get snubbed by a higher-up—it throws you back into that shameful feeling.

Public speaking anxiety is particularly common among people with Defectiveness lifetraps. The sense is that somehow people will see through you.

CHANGING YOUR DEFECTIVENESS LIFETRAP 1. Understand your childhood feelings of defectiveness and shame. Feel the wounded child within you. 2. List signs that you might be coping with Defectiveness through Escape or Counterattack (i.e., avoiding or compensating). 3. Try to stop these behaviors designed to Escape or Counterattack. 4. Monitor your feelings of defectiveness and shame.

5. List the men/women who have attracted you most and the ones who have attracted you least. 6. List your defects and assets as a child and teenager. Then list your current defects and assets. 7. Evaluate the seriousness of your current defects. 8. Start a program to change the defects that are changeable. 9. Write a letter to your critical parent(s). 10. Write a flashcard for yourself. 11. Try to be more genuine in close relationships.

12. Accept love from the people close to you. 13. Stop allowing people to treat you badly. 14. If you are in a relationship where you are the critical partner, try to stop putting your part...

The first step is to re-experience your early feelings of defectiveness and shame. Where did the lifetrap come from? Who criticized and shamed you? Who made you feel invalid and unloved? Was it your mother? father? brother? sister? The answer almost certainly lies in your early family life.

Can you feel the wounded child who wanted approval and validation?

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 very closed about discussing personal feelings? Are you hypervigilant about rejection? These are the ways you Escape or avoid.

You try to disprove your defectiveness by proving you are of value. But the problem is, you overdo it. It becomes your sole focus, and your life starts to revolve around success.

His success never touches his core feeling of defectiveness. It just provides temporary relief.

Success is a pale substitute for finding one person who really knows and loves you.

We want you to get in touch with your defectiveness feelings so that we can begin to work on them.

Observe situations that trigger your lifetrap. Become aware. List situations in which you feel defective or ashamed. These feelings are cues that your lifetrap has been triggered.

List all the ways your lifetrap manifests itself: when you feel insecure, inadequate, or worried about rejection; when you compare yourself to others or feel jealous; when you feel sensitive to slights or defensive about criticism; when you allow yourself to be mistreated because you believe you do not deserve anything better. List all the situations that trigger Defectiveness for you.

acknowledging these feelings is the first step toward overcoming a problem that is bringing you great unhappiness.

We want you to get a more objective view of yourself. The view you have now is not objective. It is biased against you. Your cognitive style is to exaggerate your flaws and discount your positive features.

List your defects and assets, both when you were a child and teenager, and now.

We often find that the defects patients list are the result of their lifetrap, not the cause.

Both Alison and Eliot found that a lot of their flaws were actually mechanisms they had developed to cope with their feelings of defectiveness.

We want you to write letters to the people in your family who criticized you when you were a child. You are under no pressure to send these letters.

Make a flashcard that you can take out and read whenever your Defectiveness lifetrap is triggered

Stop trying to give the impression that you are perfect. Be vulnerable. Share some of your secrets. Acknowledge some of your flaws. Let other people inside more. You will find that your secrets are not as humiliating as they feel to you. Everyone has flaws.

It is going to be almost impossible for you to heal the Defectiveness lifetrap without ending unhealthy relationships. It is too difficult to fight this lifetrap when the people closest to you are continually reinforcing it.

How quickly you can change your Defectiveness lifetrap depends in part on how punitive your parent was. The more punishing and dramatic your parent’s rejection was, and the more hatred and violence there was connected to it, the harder it is to change. You may need help from a therapist.

Changing your lifetrap involves gradually improving how you treat yourself, how you treat others, and how you allow others to treat you.

Keep in mind that this is not a short-term issue. You will be working on it for years to come but there will be progress all along the way. Gradually you will come to accept that your defectiveness was something that was taught to you, and not something inherently true about you.

no matter what your actual status or degree of accomplishment, the inner world is the same. Whether you appear to be a success or not, most of the time you experience yourself as a failure.

You reinforce the Failure lifetrap primarily through Escape. Your avoidance is what holds you back. You avoid taking the steps necessary to widen your knowledge and advance your career. You let opportunities for success pass you by. You are afraid that if you try you will fail.

People avoid developing skills, tackling new tasks, taking on responsibility—all the challenges that might enable them to succeed. Often the attitude is, “What’s the use?” You feel there is no point in making the effort when you are doomed to fail anyway.

You procrastinate, you get distracted, you do the work improperly, or you mishandle the tasks you take on. These are all forms of self-sabotage.

Another way you surrender to your lifetrap is by constantly twisting events and circumstances to reinforce your view of yourself as a failure. You exaggerate the negative and minimize the positive.

ORIGINS OF THE FAILURE LIFETRAP 1. 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, etc. He/She may have been abusive. (Your lifetrap may be linked to Defectiveness or Abuse.) 2. One or both parents were very successful, and you came to believe you could never live up to their high standards. So you stopped trying. (Your lifetrap may be linked to Unrelenting Standards.)

3. You sensed that one or both of your parents either did not care about whether you were successful, or, worse, felt threatened when you did well. Your parent may have been competitive with you—or afraid of losing your companionship if you were too successful in the world. (Your lifetrap may be linked to Emotional Deprivation or Dependence.)

4. You were not as good as other children either in school or at sports, and felt inferior. You may have had a learning disability, poor attention span, or been very uncoordinated. After that, you stopped trying in order to avoid humiliation by them. (This may be linked to Social Exclusion.) 5. You had brothers or sisters to whom you were often compared unfavorably. You came to believe you could never measure up, so you stopped trying. 6. You came from a foreign country, your parents were immigrants, or ...

7. Your parents did not set enough limits for you. You did not learn self-discipline or responsibility. Therefore you failed to do homework regularly or learn study skills. This led to failure even...

As you can see, the Failure lifetrap may be associated with other lifetraps—Defectiveness, Abuse, Unrelenting Standards, Emotional Deprivation, Depe...

FAILURE LIFETRAPS 1. You do not take the steps necessary to develop solid skills in your career (e.g., finish schooling, read latest developments, apprentice to an expert). You coast or try to fool people. 2. You choose a career below your potential (e.g., you finished college and have excellent mathematical ability, but are currently driving a taxicab).

3. You avoid taking the steps necessary to get promotions in your chosen career; your advancement has been unnecessarily halted (e.g., you fail to accept promotions or to ask for them; you do not promote yourself or make your abilities widely known to the people who count; you stay in a safe, dead-end job).

6. You cannot commit to one career, so you float from job to job, never developing expertise in one area. You are a generalist in a job world that rewards specialists. You therefore never progress very far in any one career. 7. You selected a career in which it is extraordinarily hard to succeed, and you do not know when to give up (e.g., acting, professional sports, music). 8. You have been afraid to take initiative or make decisions independently at work, so you were never promoted to more responsible positions.

10. You minimize your abilities and accomplishments, and exaggerate your weaknesses and mistakes. You end up feeling like a failure, even though you have been as successful as your peers. 11. You have chosen successful men/women as partners in relationships. You live vicariously through their success while not accomplishing much yourself. 12. You try to compensate for your lack of achievement or work skills by focusing on other assets (e.g., your looks, charm, youthfulness, sacrificing for others). But underneath you still feel like a failure.

Many of these patterns boil down to the issue of Escape: you avoid taking the steps necessary to advance yourself. Through your avoidance, you constantly twist events to reinforce your view of yourself as stupid, untalented, and incompetent.