Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Reinventing your Life: 12. "I'm worthless", the Defectiveness life trap ***

The Defectiveness Questionnaire


  1. No man or woman could love me if he/she really knew me.
  2. I am inherently flawed and defective. I am unworthy of love.
  3. I have secrets that I do not want to share, even with the people closest to me.
  4. It was my fault that my parents could not love me.
  5. I hide the real me. The real me is unacceptable. The self I show is a false self.
  6. I am often drawn to people - parents, friends, and lovers - who are critical and reject me.
  7. I am often critical and rejecting myself, especially of people who seem to love me.
  8. I devalue my positive qualities.
  9. I live with a great deal of shame about myself.
  10. One of my greatest fears is that my faults will be exposed.
The emotion that is most connected to the Defectiveness lifetrap is shame. Shame is what you feel when your defects are exposed. You will do almost anything to avoid this feeling of shame. Consequently you go to great lengths to keep your defectiveness hidden.

You feel that your defectiveness is inside you and not immediately observable. You feel completely unworthy of love. Feeling unworthy and angry at yourself is a large part of depression. You may feel that you have been depressed your whole life - a kind of low-level depression lurking in the background.

If your primary coping style is Escape, you may have addictions or compulsions. Drinking, drugs, overworking, and overeating are all ways of numbing yourself to avoid the pain of feeling worthless.

The origins of the defectiveness lifetrap
  1. Someone in your family was extremely critical, demeaning, or punitive toward you. You were repeatedly criticized or punished for how you looked, how you behaved, or what you said.
  2. You were made to feel like a disappointment by a parent.
  3. You were rejected or unloved by one or both of your parents.
  4. You were sexually, physically, or emotionally abused by a family member.
  5. You were blamed all the time for things that went wrong in your family.
  6. Your parent told you repeatedly that you were bad, worthless, or good-for-nothing.
  7. You were repeatedly compared in an unfavorable way with your brothers or sisters, or they were preferred over you.
  8. One of your parents left home, and you blamed yourself.
The Defectiveness lifetrap comes from feeling unlovable or not respected as a child. You were repeatedly rejected or criticized by one or both of your parents.

Defectiveness lifetrap is not usually based on a real defect. Even people who have serious physical or mental handicaps do not necessarily develop this lifetrap. The crucial factor is not the presence of a defect, but rather how you are made to feel about yourself by your parents and other members of your family. If you are loved, valued, and respected by your family members - regardless of your actual strengths and weaknesses- you will almost certainly not feel worthless, ashamed or defective.

Danger signals while dating
  1. You avoid dating altogether.
  2. You tend to have a series of short, intense affairs, or several affairs simultaneously.
  3. You are drawn to partners who are critical of you and put you down all the time.
  4. You are drawn to partners who are physically or emotionally abusive toward you.
  5. You are most attracted to partners who are not that interested in you, hoping you can win their love.
  6. You are only drawn to the most attractive and desirable partners, even when it is obvious that you will not be able to attain them.
  7. You are most comfortable with partners who do not want to know you very deeply.
  8. You only date people you feel are below you, whom you do not really love.
  9. You are drawn to partners who are unable to commit to you or to spend time with you on a regular basis. They may be married, insist on simultaneously dating other people, travel regularly, or live in another city.
  10. You get into relationships in which you put down, abuse, or neglect your partners.
You might avoid dating people who really interest you. You only date people you know you could never love. If you have the defectiveness lifetrap, be careful when there is very strong chemistry. You probably have the most powerful attraction to partners who criticize and reject you. They reinforce your feelings of defectiveness. Critical partners will feel familiar because they echo your childhood environment. Stop dating partners who do not treat you well rather than try to win them over and gain their love.

Defectiveness Lifetraps
  1. You become very critical of your partner once you feel accepted, and your romantic feelings disappear. You then act in a demeaning or critical manner.
  2. You hide your true self so you never really feel that your partner knows you.
  3. You are jealous and possessive of your partner.
  4. You constantly compare yourself unfavorably with other people and feel envious and inadequate.
  5. You constantly need or demand reassurance that your partner still values you.
  6. You put yourself down around your partner.
  7. You allow your partner to criticize you, put you down, or mistreat you.
  8. You have difficulty accepting valid criticism; you become defensive or hostile.
  9. You are extremely critical of your children.
  10. You feel like an impostor when you are successful. You feel extremely anxious that you cannot maintain your success. 
  11. You become despondent or deeply depressed over career setbacks or rejections in relationships.
  12. You feel extremely nervous when speaking in public.
If you do form a relationship with a partner who loves you and whom you could love, there are many ways you can reinforce your defectiveness lifetrap within the relationship. Your criticalness can be a major problem.

You may try to devalue your partners. You believe a truly desirable partner will see your flaws and ultimately reject you.

At what point do you win her? I guess it's when she starts to care about me.

You may find it difficult to tolerate criticism. You are probably hypersensitive to it. Even a slight criticism can lead you to feel enormous shame. You may vehemently deny that you have done anything wrong, or put down the person who is criticizing you. This is because to acknowledge any flaw is to let in a flood of painful feelings related to Defectiveness. Thus, you protect yourself by denying any flaw, mistake, or error. Your defensiveness and inability to take criticism can be a serious problem.

You tend to get bored with people who treat you well. This is your paradox: you want love so much, but the more your partner gives you love, the less attracted you feel. It feels alien to have someone you value value you.

One way to try to allay feelings of shame is by being critical. Putting down others make you feel better about yourself, at least temporarily.

Many people who attain quick success then become self destructive. Success is so discrepant from what they really feel that they are unable to maintain it. The pressure to maintain the success when they feel so bad about themselves become overwhelming and many fall apart. If you use success in your career to make up or compensate for feelings of defectiveness, then your sense of well-being may be quite fragile. Your whole sense of worth becomes built on your success. Any small deflation or failure may be enough to make you nervous.

Changing your Defectiveness Lifetrap

  1. Understand your childhood feelings of defectiveness and shame. Feel the wounded child within you.
  2. List signs that you might be coping with Defectiveness through Escape or Counterattack (ie. avoiding or compensating)
  3. Try to stop these behaviors designed to escape or counterattack.
  4. Monitor your feelings of defectiveness and shame.
  5. List the men/women who have attracted you most and the ones who have attracted you least.
  6. List your defects and assets as a child and teenager. Then list your current defects and assets. Play down qualities of the false self. Do not minimize your good qualities.
  7. Evaluate the seriousness of your current defects.
  8. Start a program to change the defects that are changeable.
  9. Write a letter to your critical parents. In this letter, try to stop defending them and just focus on being honest about what happened and how it made you feel.
  10. Write a flashcard for yourself. Remember to give yourself love and list qualities in you that are good.
  11. Try to be more genuine in close relationships. If you are too vulnerable try to protect yourself better. If you are not vulnerable enough, try to reveal more of who you are.
  12. Accept love from people close to you. You are very uncomfortable being treated well. It is so alien. You are much more comfortable being mistreated or ignored. It is hard for you to tolerate situations where people take care of you, praise you, and support you.
  13. Stop allowing people to treat you badly. Some continue to live or work with critical or unloving parents. It is strongly advised you do not continue close contact with a critical parent.
  14. If you are in a relationship where you are the critical partner, try to stop putting your partner down. Do the same in other close relationships. Face what you have done, forgive yourself, and change starting right now. Praise the ones you love, they have qualities that are valuable and deserve credit. 

Success and status often become addictions. You try to get more and more, but you can never get enough to make you feel good. Success is a pale substitute for finding one person who really knows and loves you.

If you are always running away from your feelings of defectiveness - if you are always drinking, avoiding close relationships, or hiding your real thoughts and feelings - your lifetrap cannot change. Your feelings of defectiveness remain frozen.

Sample Flashcard
Right now I feel humiliated and inadequate. I feel surrounded by people, especially women, who seem superior to me in every way - looks, brains, personality. I feel their presence diminishes me totally. 

But this is not true. What is really going on is that my lifetrap is being triggered. The truth is that I am worthy too. I am sensitive, intelligent, loving, and good. The truth is that many people have found me to be worthy of love. Generally I have not given people a chance to get close enough to really know and appreciate me. But believing what I say on this card will help me move in this direction.

Changing your lifetrap involves gradually improving how you treat yourself, how you treat others, and how you allow others to treat you. Patients gradually feel better about themselves. Become less defensive and more able to take in love. Feel closer to people. Feel more valued and more loved.

Gradually you will come to accept that your defectiveness was something that was taught to you, and not something inherently true about you. Once you can open yourself up to the idea what your defectiveness is not a fact, the healing process can begin to work.











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