Quotes from Jeffrey E. Young

Surrender extends our childhood situation into our adult life. For this reason it often leads us to feel hopeless about changing. All we know is the lifetrap, which we never escape. It is a self-perpetuating loop.

Brandon tries to escape his feelings of defectiveness. With Escape, we avoid thinking about our lifetrap. We push it out of our minds. We also escape feeling our lifetrap. When feelings are generated, we dampen them down. We take drugs, or overeat, or compulsively clean, or become a workaholic. And we avoid entering situations that might activate our lifetrap. In fact, our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors work as if the lifetrap never existed.

The Dependence lifetrap can originate either in parents who are overprotective or parents who are underprotective.

However, when there is a major setback, the counterattack collapses. When this happens, they often fall apart and become very depressed.

Most of us use a combination of Surrender, Escape, and Counterattack. We must learn to change these coping styles in order to overcome our lifetraps and become healthy again.

Change cannot be hit-or-miss. It requires constant practice.

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.

Your anger is part of your healthy side. It is serving a useful purpose, telling you that you need to change the way you relate to other people. Your anger can help you to get in touch with the part of yourself that wants something different—that wants to change and grow. One powerful way to get in touch with this sense of yourself is through your anger. Your anger may be your only clue that there is something else that you want.

What William wanted was of no importance, and he gradually lost his sense of self. He once described himself as an empty hole inside. If you have no sense of self, you are totally dependent. There is an emptiness inside, and the only way to fill it is to rely on someone else, someone who has a sense of self.

he has trouble separating from his family for even short periods of time. He cannot grow up and leave home. He has a fused self.

You have few responsibilities, few worries, few challenges. Although this may seem to be a satisfactory arrangement for you, it is time for you to consider the price you pay to maintain your dependence. It costs you your will, your freedom, and your pride. It costs you your very self.

R?kimas - psichologinio pralaim?jimo ženklas. Nepulkite kito žmogaus. Tiesiog pasakykite, koks jo elgesys jus nuli?dino.

Jeffrey Young, Ph.D. Cognitive Therapy Center of New York 3 East 80th Street, Penthouse New York, New York 10021

Right away I started to panic, and I was running around looking for him. When I found him, he was standing behind a column, laughing at me. He was watching me the whole time and laughing. He thought it was funny, just a joke. I could have killed him.

The boundary between who you are and who they are becomes blurred. You might adopt other people's goals and opinions as your own. You might adopt other people's values. You might lose yourself in the other. There is a chance that you might subjugate yourself to a group, particularly a group with a charismatic leader. You might even find some attraction to cult groups.

The first is that they subjugate themselves out of guilt, or because they want to relieve the pain of others; and the second is that they subjugate because they anticipate rejection, retaliation, or abandonment. These reasons correspond to two types of subjugation.

some children are neglected in both domains, emotionally and materially. No matter where they turn, they encounter deprivation. These children usually just give up and learn to expect nothing (the Surrender coping style).

Adults appreciate differences more. It is only children—or immature adults—who feel that pressure to be exactly the same.

Your life becomes painful only when you are no longer able to avoid the serious negative consequences that result from your Entitlement—for example, when you actually lose your job because you cannot complete the work properly, or when your spouse threatens to leave you. Only then will you acknowledge that other people are not happy with your behavior and that your entitlement is a problem. You finally realize that the lifetrap has a cost—that it can really damage your life.

As most people get older, they become more tolerant and accepting. But you do not see this. You are frozen in childhood, unaware that the world has changed around you. You ascribe the mentality of a child to the adults around you. So you avoid situations where you might get exactly the positive feedback that you need. You never find out that you might actually be accepted.