Free Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again by Jeffrey E. Young, Janet S. Klosko

therapy during one such breakup.
     
    DANIELLE: I just want to stop feeling this way. I can’t take it anymore. All I can think about is Robert. I’m obsessed with him. I’ve got to get him back.
     
    This obsessiveness is characteristic of the Abandonment lifetrap. During breakups, Danielle occasionally dates other men, but she never becomes interested in anyone other than Robert. The stable, steady types bore her.
    These are the steps Danielle followed in order to change her pattern, and that we recommend for our patients:
     
• 1. Label and Identify Your Lifetraps. •
     
    The first step is to recognize what your lifetraps are. This can be accomplished by taking the Lifetrap Questionnaire in Chapter 2. Once you can identify a lifetrap and see how it affects your life, you will be in a better position to change it. By having a name for your lifetrap, like Defectiveness or Dependence, and reading about it in the second half of this book, you will understand yourself better. You will gain clarity about your life. This insight is the first step.
    Danielle recognized her Abandonment lifetrap in a number of different ways. When she started therapy, we gave her the Lifetrap Questionnaire. She scored high on items in the Abandonment section.
     
    DANIELLE: I guess on some level I’ve always been aware that I have an issue about people abandoning me. I’ve always been afraid of it, I’ve always been worried it’s bound to happen.
     
    Patients often have this sensation when they identify a lifetrap. It is a sense of becoming clear about something they have vaguely known all along.
    Danielle could easily see how the theme of abandonment played itself out in her current life. She was in a long-term relationship in which abandonment was the main theme. She also learned about her lifetrap through imagery of the past. When we asked her to close her eyes and let images come of her childhood, the predominant theme was abandonment.
     
    DANIELLE: I see myself. I’m standing by the living room couch. I’m trying to get my mother to pay attention to me, but she’s drunk. I can’t get her to pay attention to me.
     
    Danielle’s mother was an alcoholic as far back as she could remember. When Danielle was seven, her father left the family to marry another woman. He gradually drifted further away from the family as he had children with his new wife. He left Danielle and her sister with a mother who clearly could not take care of them adequately.
    Danielle was abandoned by both parents. Her mother abandoned her through alcoholism, and her father abandoned her literally—by leaving the family. Their abandonment of her was the central truth of her childhood.
    Eventually Danielle came to see the theme of abandonment weaving through her life from the past to the present. The idea of the lifetrap organized her experience for her in a way she could clearly understand.
    Your lifetrap is your enemy. We want you to know your enemy.
     
• 2. Understand the Childhood Origins of Your Lifetrap. Feel the Wounded Child Inside You. •
     
    The second step is to feel your lifetrap. We have found that it is very difficult to change deep pain without first reliving it. We all have some mechanisms for blocking this pain. Unfortunately, by blocking the pain, we cannot get fully in touch with our lifetraps.
    To feel your lifetrap, you will need to remember your childhood. We will ask you to close your eyes and let the images come. Do not force the images—just let one rise to the top of your mind. Get into each one as deeply as you can. Try to picture these early memories as vividly as possible. If you do this a few times, you will begin to remember what you felt as a child. You will feel the pain or emotions connected with your lifetrap.
    This kind of imagery is painful. If you feel completely overwhelmed or frightened by the experience, that is a sign you need therapy. Your childhood was so painful that you should not remember it alone. You need