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

a guide, an ally. A therapist can be this for you.
    Once you have reconnected with your childhood self, we will ask you to open a dialogue with this child. This inner child is frozen. We want to bring it back to life, where growth and change are possible. We want this child to heal.
    We will ask you to talk to your inner child. You can do this by actually talking aloud, or you can do it through writing. You can write a letter to this child in your dominant hand (the hand you usually write with), and have the child write a response in your non-dominant hand. We have found that your child-self can come out in the handwriting of your non-dominant hand.
    The idea of talking to your inner child may sound strange at first.
    You will understand more about it as the book proceeds. Here is an example of Danielle talking to her inner child. It is during the same scene we described above, when she is trying to get her drunk mother to pay attention to her.
     
    THERAPIST: I want you to talk to your inner child. Help her. DANIELLE: Well... (pause) I come into the image and take little Danielle onto my lap. I say, „I’m so sorry this is happening to you. Your parents aren’t able to be there for you the way you need. But I will be here for you. I will help you get through this and make sure you come out all right.“
     
    Giving comfort to your inner child, offering guidance and advice, and empathizing with how the child feels are some of the things we will ask you to do. Even though these exercises may seem silly or uncomfortable to you at first, we have found that most people benefit enormously from them.
     
• 3. The Third Step is to Build a Case Against Your Lifetrap.
Disprove its Validity at a Rational Level. •
     
    Your life has utterly convinced you of the truth of your lifetrap. Danielle believes with her whole being that anyone she loves will abandon her. She accepts her lifetrap emotionally and intellectually.
    This change step involves attacking your lifetrap on an intellectual level. In order to do this, you must prove that it is not true, or at least that it can be changed. You must cast doubt on the validity of your lifetrap. As long as you believe that your lifetrap is valid, you will not be able to change it.
    To disprove your lifetrap, you will first list all the evidence pro and con regarding the lifetrap throughout your life. For example, if you feel Socially Undesirable , first you will list all the evidence that supports your lifetrap—that you are undesirable. Then you will make a separate list of all the evidence against your lifetrap—that you are socially desirable.
    In most cases, the evidence will show that your lifetrap is false. You are not, in fact, defective, incompetent, a failure, doomed to be abused, etc. But sometimes the lifetrap is true. For example, you may have been so rejected and shunned all your life that you have failed to develop social skills, and thus really are socially undesirable in certain ways. Or you may have avoided so many school and career challenges that you have failed in your chosen field.
    Look at your list of pros. Is any evidence supporting the lifetrap inherently true of you, or were you brainwashed into thinking this way by your family or peers during childhood? For example, were you born incompetent, or was your incompetence so drummed into you by a critical parent that you came to believe it was true (Dependence)? Were you really special as a child, or did your parents spoil and pamper you, and teach you to feel entitled to more than everyone else (Entitlement)? And ask yourself, is any evidence supporting the lifetrap still true of you? Or was it only true in your childhood?
    If, after all this analysis, you still feel the lifetrap is true, then ask yourself, „How could I change this aspect of myself?“ Explore what you could do to remedy the situation.
    Here is a sample from Danielle’s list of evidence supporting her Abandonment lifetrap:
     

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    EVIDENCE