Reinventing Your Life: Life Traps & Negative Behaviours

Hello unique individual, This is the introduction and paraphrasing of the book "Reinventing your life: the breakthrough program to end negative behaviour and feel great again" by Jeffrey E. Young and Janet S. Klosko Ph.D. In this informative talk, I am introducing "Lifetraps" also named schema's from schema therapy, and explaining lifelong patterns we repeat from having such life traps. In addition, I talk briefly about basic needs from childhood and how such life traps came about.

Transcript

Are you caught in a life trap?

Are you drawn into relationships with people who are selfish or cold?

Are you afraid of showing other people who you really are because you think they might reject you?

Do you feel inadequate compared to people around you?

Do you sacrifice relaxation and fun because you're always trying to be your best?

I'm going to not perfectly paraphrase from the book Reinventing Your Life the breakthrough program to end negative behaviour and feel great again.

The authors are Jeffrey Young and Janet Klosko.

Some of you might know these life traps actually as schemas based on schema therapy.

If you answer yes to any of these following questions,

This track might actually be useful for you to listen to.

Well,

I know I have learned a lot from this book.

So here are the life traps.

Are you repeatedly drawn into relationships with people who are cold to you?

Do you feel that even the people closest to you do not care or understand enough about you?

Do you feel that you are at your core somehow defective and that no one who truly knows you could possibly love and accept you?

Do you put the needs of others above your own,

So your needs never get met?

Do you fear that something bad will happen to you so that even a mild sore throat sets off a dread of more dire disease?

Do you find that regardless of how much public acclaim or social approval you receive,

You still feel unhappy,

Unfulfilled or undeserving?

And this is what the book calls life traps,

Later on translated into schemas.

And there are some common life traps which we all have.

And I will go more into them into detail,

So you might recognize them better but also understand their origins and how to hopefully change them.

And I am now sharing these with you because they have helped me so much.

I'm still working on my schemas life traps but in the process I thought,

Why not record them and share them with you?

The thing is,

These life traps,

They originate from your childhood and it's really difficult to change them if you want to completely change them at all,

Because sometimes that's really difficult.

These life traps,

They start in childhood and they just continue throughout life.

You might have been abandoned,

Criticized,

Overprotected,

Abused,

Excluded or deprived or even had a perfect childhood.

But most of us were damaged in some way and eventually these life traps become part of us.

And long after you might have left home,

You might have left the situation,

You are not even on speaking terms with your parents perhaps,

I don't know.

But you still hold on to these consciously or subconsciously.

And I encourage you to try to fill in the questionnaire to figure out which life trap you score highest.

So the book and online you can find many online questionnaires about life trap schemas.

I will name them briefly.

There is abandonment,

Mistrust and abuse,

Dependence,

Vulnerability,

Emotional deprivation,

Social exclusion,

Defectiveness,

Failure,

Subjugation,

Unrelenting standards,

Entitlement and more but those are the core ones.

On Inside Timer I've published already a series about perfectionism and that really has to do with the schema life trap unrelenting standards.

If you're interested in that,

Have a listen but here I will keep with the basics of these life traps and each episode I will go into them deeper.

The thing with these life traps,

These schemas is that they are a lifelong pattern or a theme in our life.

They are self-destructive and we can struggle for survival.

And hopefully by explaining the life traps more in detail you might become aware of them because the thing is we actually recreate these conditions of our childhood that were most harmful for us.

So what do I mean with this?

The thing is we start recreating these sort of situations.

For example if you were abandoned you're going to choose partners who will abandon you and you will do this subconsciously.

The book also gives one for example if you're self-destructive you also might seek out partners who abuse you if in your childhood you were for example abused by one of your parents or caregivers.

And these are very straightforward examples but other things might happen which we aren't even aware of until now.

The thing is everyone has different life traps,

Different schemas depending on their childhood.

You even might have siblings who have completely different views on their childhood but also different life traps.

And this has to do with your temperament and other things happening in your childhood.

For example growing up in a destructive early environment.

So when did you grow up in a destructive environment?

What are some examples?

One of your parents might have been abusive or the other one was passive and helpless.

Your parents were emotionally distant and had high expectations for achievements.

And this is an important one because I actually have many friends who always thought well I didn't grow up in a destructive environment and then I told them well were your parents emotionally there?

And did they only give you praise when you got high grades?

You know and this is an extreme example and it doesn't mean they were completely destructive.

But this is one of the examples given in the book.

Another example could be your parents fought all the time.

You know you were caught in the middle of maybe one parent was sick,

Depressed and the other one was absent.

And this could be again absent physically but also emotionally and you had to become the caretaker.

Another interesting example is you became enmeshed with a parent.

So you were expected to act as a substitute spouse.

Or maybe you recognized yourself in that a parent or caregiver was a phobic and overprotected of you.

You know they were afraid to leave you alone and they clung to you.

Or your parents criticized you,

Nothing was ever good enough.

Or they overindulged you,

They didn't set limits.

Or you were rejected by peers and felt different.

These could all be examples of destructive early environments.

What did we actually need as children?

What we needed to thrive instead of those self-destructive environments?

We needed basic safety,

Connection to others,

Autonomy,

Self-esteem,

Self-expression and realistic limits.

And basic safety is so important.

People who were abused or abandoned as children are the most damaged.

You know they don't feel safe.

And especially lifetraps such as abandonment,

Mistrust and abuse.

They grow really strong with these children.

So these lifetraps they really have to do with also the needs you didn't get as a child.

So again basic safety,

Connection to others,

Autonomy,

Self-esteem,

Self-expression and realistic limits.

And I will go into these things you need as a child to thrive when I go more into depth with the lifetraps.

Because they might be difficult to follow right now.

So I invite you to take a test online regarding lifetrap schemas and see whether or not you score high on what lifetrap.

There might be multiple ones and don't worry,

We all have them.

The thing is certain lifetraps like I mentioned before can be more inherent with things you miss as a child.

Another example could be connection to others so that you really want to be connected and feel connected with other peers,

Children of your age.

And the lifetraps you might have then are emotional deprivation and social exclusion.

So they all interrelate.

So what I'm going to do with the following tracks,

I'm going to focus on one lifetrap or maybe multiple ones based on the things you needed as a child.

So if you are like well I didn't score as high you of course don't need to listen to it but as always it's very informative.

And I will be paraphrasing the book Reinventing Your Life by also the founder of schema therapy Jeffrey Young.

And I'll be giving some of my own experiences just to inform you.

Again this doesn't mean that I'm giving professional advice or I'm giving therapy.

Rather I am paraphrasing a book and I just want to share my experience.

And I will be explaining these lifetraps because otherwise we keep repeating them,

Repeating them.

I've always called it a repetition compulsion and this is a baffling phenomenon and unfortunately we do this.

I can relate.

I have reenacted many of my lifetraps and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy right?

I keep interchanging the word lifetrap or schema.

And schema is based on cognitive psychologies and these are deeply entrenched beliefs about ourself and the world learned in early life.

I hope you are really curious now about the lifetraps and that you want to do the questionnaire and maybe listen to my following tracks here on Inside Timer.

So thank you so much for listening.

Namaste.

Reviews

Helpful

This is going to start me on a VERY useful mindfulness journey. Such a great perspective that I hadn't heard stated so clearly before now. Thank you!