Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again (4 page)

In her first two years of college, Madeline started drinking and doing drugs. During this period, she had sex with more than thirty men. „None of them meant anything to me,“ she says.

MADELINE: I went wild in college. I slept around. There was one fraternity where every guy in there had slept with me. I was miserable. I felt cheap and dirty. I felt used. I just couldn’t say no. I would go out with a guy and end up sleeping with him even though I had promised myself I wouldn’t. I figured it was the only reason guys would go out with me. I really don’t know why I did it. That whole time was just like running out of control.

The experience of sexual abuse by her stepfather damaged her sexuality and capacity for intimacy with men. For her, sex and abuse are inextricably mixed.

Now, Madeline is back to avoiding men. She has not dated in many years and is worried that she will never be able to marry and have children.

The first treatment Madeline tried was conventional cognitive therapy. Her therapist focused on the present—on Madeline’s current avoidance of men. It was rare, for example, for Madeline to discuss her childhood in therapy. Instead, she and her therapist designed homework for her to do between sessions, such as striking up conversations with men or going to parties. The therapist helped her fight her distorted thoughts, such as „Men are only out for sex,“ by asking her for examples of men she knew who were caring and wanted intimacy.

Therapy went on for several months. Madeline began to date again, but she was drawn to abusive men. Although she recognized that many men were considerate, her experience with boyfriends did not bear this out. Madeline realized she needed something more to change her deeply ingrained pattern.

MADELINE: I felt like my therapist was asking me to change without understanding why I was the way I was. I mean, I know I have to change in the ways that she said. I have to start trusting men and stop avoiding closeness. But there are reasons why I avoid men. I need to understand what they are.

Madeline became angry at any man who seemed to approach her romantically. She could see that the anger was the result of distorted thoughts, but she still felt it. Madeline needed to direct her anger toward its true object—her stepfather. She needed to express her anger and have it validated.

During the first year and a half of lifetrap therapy, we helped Madeline to uncover her memories of abuse through imagery. We pushed her to ventilate her anger at her stepfather and to confront him with her accusations. We encouraged her to join a support group for survivors of incest. We also showed her how she maintained her pattern of abuse by selecting abusive boyfriends.

Madeline slowly resumed dating. Although she was still attracted to abusive men, she stayed away from them at our insistence, focusing instead on men who treated her respectfully, even though the chemistry was less intense. She worked on
demanding
respect, rather than leaving it to the man to give it to her. She learned to say „no.“

About a year later she fell in love with Ben, a gentle, sensitive man. Even with him, however, she experienced serious sexual inhibition. Ben was willing to work with her to overcome her sexual difficulties. She is now considering marriage.

In Chapter 16, we will provide many suggestions for changing the Mistrust and Abuse lifetrap. However, we want to emphasize that many lifetraps, Mistrust and Abuse in particular, take a long time to change and should be approached with the help of a therapist or support group.

Madeline’s treatment illustrates how lifetrap therapy retains the practical focus of cognitive and behavioral therapies: it builds skills and makes changes. But we are interested in more than short-term behavior modification. We also want to address lifelong issues, especially difficulties in relationships, self-esteem, and career problems. We want to address behavior, but we also want to address the ways that people
feel
and
relate.

The next chapter begins with a questionnaire to help you discover which lifetraps apply to you.

In this chapter, we will help you identify which lifetraps seem most pertinent to
your
life.

Rate each of the next twenty-two statements in terms of how true each is of you on this six-point scale.

SCORING KEY

1. Completely untrue of me
   
2. Mostly untrue of me
   
3. Slightly more true than untrue of me
   
4. Moderately true of me
   
5. Mostly true of me
   
6. Describes me perfectly
   

First, rate how true the statement was of you as a
child.
If your answer would be different for various times in your childhood, choose the rating that best fits the way you felt in general up until the age of twelve. Then, rate how true each item is of you now, as an adult. If your answer would be different for various periods Of your adult life, choose the rating that best applies to you in the past six months.

Now you are ready to transfer your scores from the questionnaire to the score sheet The sample questionnaire and sample score sheet below show you how to do this:

Questions 1 and 2 are both part of the Abandonment lifetrap. Let’s start with Question 1. Take your score for this item as a
child
and transfer it to the box just to the right of the word ABANDONMENT on the score sheet, next to the number 1 (under the
Child
column). Now take your score for this item
now
(as an adult) and transfer it to the next box 1 (under the
Now
column).

Next, look at your score for question 2 as a
child.
Transfer it to box 2, under the Child column. Then take your score for question 2
now
and transfer it to the next box 2, under the Now column.

Look at all four of your scores for the Abandonment lifetrap. Which one is highest? Transfer your highest score (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6) into the last box on the Abandonment row. If your highest score is 4, 5, or 6, put a check mark in the first column. This
√
means that Abandonment is probably one of your schemas. If your highest score is 1, 2, or 3, leave the box blank. This means Abandonment is probably
not
one of your schemas.

Now go ahead and fill in the rest of the score sheet in the same way.

We will now describe each of the eleven lifetraps briefly, just enough to acquaint you with each one. Refer to your score sheet: each lifetrap with a 7 next to it is likely to apply to you. Naturally, the higher your scores for each lifetrap, the more powerful it probably is for you, and the more impact it probably has had on your life. You will want to read more about each of the relevant lifetraps later, after you have finished the introductory chapters.