Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again (36 page)

ALISON: 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.

When you think of good qualities, do not minimize them and leave them off the list. If people give you positive feedback that you find hard to believe, include it anyway. Include everything, without passing judgment.

Play down qualities that are success-oriented—assets that may be part of your false self. And when you ask people what they value about you, be sure to get specifics. Do not settle for general comments like „You’re great,“ or „I like you.“ Unless they specify what they like, you will assume they are describing only your false self and not the real you.

You will be surprised to find that people are happy to give you feedback. We have seen amazing changes in patients’ feelings about themselves just by being willing to ask for positive feedback from their friends and loved ones.

7. Evaluate the Seriousness of Your Current Defects.
When your list is finished, ask yourself how you would feel about someone else who had these assets and liabilities. Keep in mind that everyone has flaws. Everyone has both good and bad qualities.

ALISON: I have to admit I would think this was an okay person. Maybe someone who has problems with men, but an okay person. But I still feel that I’m not okay. I mean I know I’m okay, but I still feel like I’m not.

Like Alison, you may not feel better at this point. But we want you to recognize, intellectually at least, that you are a worthwhile person. And we want you to be able to say why.

Review your assets list daily. Try not to discount them anymore. Chip away at the lifetrap. This will help you make the gradual transition from intellectual knowledge to emotional acceptance.

8. Start a Program to Correct the Flaws That Are Changeable.
Which of your limitations could you change? Many people find that their defects are situational or changeable, not inherent or immutable. Start a program to correct the limitations you can change.

We often find that the defects patients list are the result of their lifetrap, not the cause. That is, they are the manifestations of the lifetrap itself. Both Alison and Eliot found that a lot of their flaws were actually mechanisms they had developed to cope with their feelings of defectiveness.

For example, we tried to piece together Alison’s defect, that „boys didn’t like me“ (which translated into „Men don’t find me attractive“ on her adult list). She asked some of her male friends, and they confirmed she had some attributes that might be unattractive to men. Basically, she came across as too eager and too insecure. We could confirm this as well, based on her relationship with us. But,
all of these behaviors are lifetrap-driven.
In fact, Alison could not name a single defect that was independent of her lifetrap. Clearly, her defectiveness reflected how she had been treated as a child, and not anything about who she was.

Once Alison became aware of these lifetrap-driven behaviors, it was fairly easy for her to stop them.

ALISON: When I’m with Matthew, and I feel all needy and jealous, I tell myself it won’t help at all to start bugging him about it. I tell myself it will just make me feel worse.

THERAPIST: How will it make you feel?

ALISON: Weak and kind of worthless. Plus it gets him mad at me. It just Doesn’t help. I do the same thing when I’m at work, and I get the urge to call him to make sure he still cares. I stop myself. I tell myself it won’t help at all. I feel much better since Pve stopped making those frantic phone calls.

THERAPIST: So, if you don’t start acting needy, what do you do instead? ALISON: I talk to myself. I tell myself it’s okay, he loves me. I tell myself I’m worthy of his love.

THERAPIST: Good. You comfort yourself.

Similarly, Eliot’s flaws were mostly forms of counterattack or ways he overcompensated: his criticalness, his need to impress people, his workaholism, his infidelity. As we noted before, Eliot agreed to stop these behaviors for one month.

ELIOT: The odd thing is that I feel more relaxed and more in control Especially at work. Nobody’s throwing me off at all.

THERAPIST: It’s a feeling of being more centered.

What was hard for Eliot was spending time with his wife and children being himself. Suddenly he was face-to-face with them, with his mask off.

ELIOT: I feel nervous around them. Like I don’t quite know what to talk about. And I feel ashamed of how I treated them. Especially the kids.

THERAPIST: The important thing is that you’re treating them well now.

ELIOT: It’s true. Maria and the kids seem happier.

THERAPIST: What about you?

ELIOT: Yes. At some level I’m happier too. like the other day, my younger daughter threw her arms around me and gave me a kiss. It startled me. She hadn’t done that in a long time.

9. Write a Letter to Your Critical Parent(s).
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.
In fact, you probably will not want to send them. The important thing is for you to feel totally free to express your feelings in the letters. We want you to vent the anger and the sadness in response to the people who treated you badly. We want you to
talk back.

Tell them what they did to you when you were a child. Tell them how it felt to be criticized and invalidated. Explain why you did not deserve to be treated this way. Stress the good qualities you had that they overlooked or downplayed.

Tell them how you wished it could have been. Tell them about the support and approval you needed—what it would have meant to you and how it would have changed your life. And tell them what you want from them now.

Do not make excuses for these family members, or rationalize their criticisms. You can do that
later
, if you choose. The road to healing is long; at the end, you may forgive them, when you do not feel defective anymore. But first you must stand up for yourself and vent the feelings you have buried.

We understand that you may have a strong impulse to defend your parents, even if they were the ones who hurt you. You want to see your parents as good people. So you say things like, „They didn’t know any better,“ or „They had problems themselves,“ or „They were doing it for my own good.“ In this letter, try to stop defending them and just focus on being honest about what happened and how it made you feel.

Here is the letter Eliot wrote to his father:

Dear Dad,

You were cruel to me when I was a child. You acted as though I had nothing worthwhile about me, nothing special or great. I just didn’t matter to you. You didn’t care that I had feelings, that I could feel pain or get hurt. You couldn’t be bothered to give me love.

What hurt most was how you always compared me to [my brother] Rick. You made me feel like nothing next to him. When you were around Rick, you’d act all happy and excited. But when you were around me, you were mean and disgusted. Like I was such a disappointment.

You criticized everything about me. I had no part of me I felt safe to show you. Anything I loved, I kept hidden from you. When I remember my childhood, the thing that stands out most is feeling ashamed.

Despite how you treated me, I had some great qualities as a kid. I was smart. I could wheel and deal. By the time I was sixteen,

I had a little business going in baseball cards. I had my own interests (not that you cared), different from Rick’s. Maybe I wasn’t perfect, but it was wrong to treat me the way you did.

I hate you for what you did to me. My wife is threatening to leave me, my kids are miserable, and I’m working myself sick trying to just feel like a worthwhile person. I’ve shut out the ones I love, and instead I spend all my time boosting my ego with cocaine or trying to pick up chicks I couldn’t care less about. And all these things are happening because I have such low selfesteem, because you and the rest of the family were so crummy to me.

All of you let me down. Did you ever think what it would have meant for me to have you once seem happy about me, once seem proud or pleased with who I was? It made me shut down. It made it so I didn’t want to show anyone who I was.

I am trying now to grope towards a more meaningful life. Part of this is that it’s no longer acceptable for you to insult me in any way. If you want to maintain a relationship, you are going to have to change how you treat me. And if you can’t, our relationship is over.

Eliot

It was not easy by any means for Eliot to get to the point where he could write this letter. It took courage and strength on his part. But one thing was certain. He felt markedly better afterwards.

You will find the same. Writing a letter like this can be a healing process. It is a statement of what happened to you. „Your truth shall set you free.“

10. Write a Flashcard for Yourself.
Make a flashcard that you can take out and read whenever your Defectiveness lifetrap is triggered—whenever, as Alison says, „the voice of my father starts yammering in my head.“ We want you to chip away at the critical parent within you.

ALISON: I want to be better to myself but getting down on myself is a hard habit to break. I keep deciding not to do it, but then find myself doing it a minute later.

THERAPIST: Yes. And, like every habit, the way to stop is to catch yourself, and to stop yourself every time.

The flashcard is a weapon against the voice of the lifetrap. It keeps you aware that there are two sides. There is the critical or unloving parent you have internalized, who is always putting you down, ignoring you, and making you feel defective and ashamed. But there is also the vulnerable child inside, who wants love, acceptance, approval, and validation. The flashcard helps you push the critical parent out, so your healthy side can give the child what he or she wants. Ultimately this healing process is about self-love. The flashcard helps you remember to give yourself love.

The flashcard should have on it all of the qualities in you that are good. It should invalidate your parents’ criticisms—why the things they said were either wrong or less important than they made them out to be. Use objective evidence. Tell yourself to use a
constructive
tone with yourself, not a
punitive
tone.

Here is the card Alison wrote:

A DEFECTIVENESS FLASHCARD

Right now I feel humiliated and inadequate. I feel surrounded by people, especially women, who seem superior to me in every way— looks, brains, personality. I feel their presence diminishes me totally.

But this is not true. What is really going on is that my lifetrap is being triggered. The truth is that I am worthy too. I am sensitive, intelligent, loving, and good. The truth is that many people have found me to be worthy of love: [lists their names]. Generally I have not given people a chance to get close enough to really know and appreciate me. But believing what I say on this card will help me move in this direction.

Carry the card around. Use it to review your good points. Refute your constant put-downs of yourself. It is another way to fight the feeling of shame and unlovability.

11. Try to Be More Genuine in Close Relationships.
Alison and Eliot are at opposite extremes of the lifetrap. Alison is too vulnerable, while Eliot is not vulnerable enough. Alison had to learn to protect herself better, and Eliot had to learn to reveal more of who he was.

If you are more like Eliot, try to be more genuine in close relationships. 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.

ELIOT: I did something that surprised me. The other night Maria and I went to a party. One of her friends from college, this guy Richard, was there.

They were talking and I got jealous. I always get jealous when they’re together, because they seem so into talking to each other. They look so happy. Like Maria and I never are.

My usual maneuver would have been to start hitting on some chick. But I didn’t do that. Instead I told Maria. I told her I felt jealous. THERAPIST: What happened?

ELIOT: Her reaction was, „So you care? I didn’t think you cared!“

Because he was so afraid of looking insecure, Eliot withheld from Maria the signs of his caring. He was afraid to show her he loved her. In this case, showing a normal and appropriate amount of jealousy was actually helpful.

You can pace how much you reveal of yourself. Reveal yourself little by little. Keep a sense of control. In the early stages of a relationship, exposing too much insecurity can, in fact, turn the other partner off. There is an inevitable strategic element during the first few months. However, as you become more intimate and you sense that your partner seems genuinely to care for you, you can disclose more and more. It can be a risk to expose everything all at once.

Sometimes patients say, „But I don’t know what a normal rate of showing vulnerability is.“ If this is the case, one solution is to pace yourself according to your partner. As your partner shows more vulnerability, you show more. Try to keep a balance in the relationship.

If you have secrets—humiliating things that happened to you, for example—gradually tell them to people close to you. There is an expression, „You are only as sick as your worst secret.“ Many things that we hide from people are not as bad as we think. Once we share them with someone, we see that they are not so shameful. We see that the person still loves us, and we feel better about ourselves.