Reinventing your Life: 16. "I can have whatever I want", the entitlement life trap

Entitlement Questionnaire

1. I have trouble accepting "no" for an answer.
2. I get angry when I cannot get what I want.
3. I am special and should not have to accept normal constraints.
4. I put my needs first
5. I have a lot of difficulty getting myself to stop drinking, smoking, overeating, or other problem behaviors.
6. I cannot discipline myself to complete boring or routine tasks.
7. I act on impulses and emotions that get me into trouble later.
8. If I cannot reach a goal, I become easily frustrated and give up
9. I insist that people do things my way
10. I have trouble giving up immediate gratification to reach a long-range goal.

Three types of Entitlement

1. Spoiled Entitlement - You are indifferent to normal social expectations and consider yourself above the law. You believe other people should be punished when they violate social norms, but you should not be punished.
2. Dependent Entitlement - When someone fails to take care of you, you feel like a victim. You feel weak and vulnerable. You need help, and people must give it to you.
3. Impulsive - You act on your desires and feelings without regard for the consequences.

Origins of Entitlement

Weak Limits: Parents fail to exercise sufficient discipline and control over their children. Children are given whatever they want, whenever they want it. They are not forced to take responsibility and complete assigned tasks. Parents allow children to act out impulses such as anger, without imposing sufficient negative consequences.

Dependent Overindulgence: overindulge their children in ways that make the children dependent on them. The environment is so safe and protected and so little is expected of the child that the child comes to demand this level of care.

Counterattack for other life traps: overcompensation for other core life traps: Defectiveness, Emotional Deprivation, Social Exclusion.


Danger Signals in Partners

Spoiled Entitlement: attracted to partners who

1. Sacrifice their own needs for yours.
2. Allow you to control them
3. Are afraid to express their own needs and feelings
4. Are willing to tolerate abuse, criticism, etc
5. Allow you to take advantage of them
6. Do not have a strong sense of self, and allow themselves to live through you.
7. Are dependent on you, and accept domination as the price of being dependent.

Dependent Entitlement: You are drawn to strong partners who are competent and willing to take care of you.

Impulsivity: Drawn to partners who are organized, disciplined, compulsive, etc, and who thus offset your own tendency toward chaos and disorganization.

Spoiled Entitlement Life trap

1. You do not care about the needs of the people around you You get your needs met at their expense. You hurt them.
2. You may abuse, humiliate, or demean the people around you.
3. You have difficulty empathizing with the feelings of those around you. They feel you do not understand or care about their feelings.
4. You may take more from society than you give. This results in an inequity and is unfair to other people.
5. At work, you may be fired, demoted, etc for failing to follow rules.
6. Your partner, family, friends, or children may leave you, resent you, or cut off contact with you because you treat them abusively, unfairly, or selfishly.
7. You may get into legal or criminal trouble if you cheat or break laws, such as tax evasion or business fraud.
8. You never have a chance to experience the joy of giving to other people unselfishly - or of having a truly equal, reciprocal relationship.
9. If your Entitlement is a form of counterattack, you never allow yourself to face and solve your underlying life traps. Your real needs are never addressed. You may continue to feel emotionally deprived, defective, or socially undesirable.

Dependent Entitlement Lifetraps

1. You never learn to take care of yourself, because you insist that others take care of you.
2. You unfairly impinge on the rights of people close to you to use their own time for themselves. Your demands become a drain on the people around you.
3. People you depend on may eventually become fed up or angry with your dependence and demands, and will leave you, fire you, or refuse to continue helping you.
4. The people you depend on may die or leave, and you will be unable to take care of yourself.

Impulsivity Lifetraps

1. You never complete tasks necessary to make progress in your career. You are a chronic underachiever, and eventually feel inadequate as a result of your failures.
2. The people around you may eventually get fed up with you.
3. Your life is in chaos. You cannot discipline yourself sufficiently well to have direction and organization. You are therefore stuck.
4. You may have difficulty with addictions, such as drugs, alcohol, or overeating.
5. In almost every area of your life you lack of discipline prevents you from achieving your goals
6. You may not have enough money to get what you want in life.
7. You may have gotten into trouble with authorities at school, with police, or at work because you cannot control your impulses.
8. You may have alienated your friends, spouse, children, or bosses, through your anger and explosiveness.

The issue of motivation to change being low is a big one with the Entitlement life trap. Unlike the other life traps, this does not feel painful. Rather, it seems to feel good. It is the people around you who are in pain.

Helping yourself overcome entitlement problems

1. List the advantages and disadvantages of not accepting limits. This is crucial to motivate yourself to change.
2. Confront the excuses you use to avoid accepting limits.
3. List the various ways that your limits problem manifests itself in everyday life. 
4. Make flashcards to help you fight your Entitlement and self-discipline problems in each situation.
5. Ask for feedback as you try to change.
6. Try to empathize with the people around you. Work on empathizing without getting defensive.
7. If your life trap is a form of counterattack, try to understand the core life traps underlying it. Follow the relevant change techniques. Your Entitlement is all or nothing. Either you get everything you want or you are deprived; either you are perfect or you are defective; either you are adored or you are rejected. You need to learn that there is a middle ground, that you can get your needs met in a normal way. 
8. If you have self-discipline problems, make a hierarchy of tasks, graded in terms of boredom or frustration level. Gradually work your way up the hierarchy.
9. If you have difficulty controlling your emotions, develop a "time-out" technique. Do not attack the person. State what the person has done that upsets you.
10. If you have Dependent Entitlement, make a hierarchy of tasks, graded in terms of difficulty. Gradually start doing the things you allow other people to do for you. Start proving to yourself that you are competent.

Writing an entitlement flashcard

1. Tune into the needs of the people around you. Try to understand how they are feeling. Empathize.
2. Aim towards reciprocity, fairness, and equity as principles to guide your actions with others.
3. Ask yourself if your immediate need is important enough to risk the negative consequences (e.g. alienating friends, losing your job)
4. Learn to tolerate frustration as a means to achieving your long range goals. As the saying goes, "No pain, no gain"

Find appropriate ways of getting your ore needs met - ways that respect the rights and needs of others. You do not have to be so demanding, controlling, and entitled to get what you want. Give up your counterattacks. Start placing emphasis on intimate relationships, on trying to get your needs met through closeness with other people. Learn to ask for what you want without demanding it. Try being more honest with yourself. Be more open about who you are. Learn to say who you are, without trying to cover up, conceal, or impress.


Helping someone you know overcome limits problems

1. Identify your sources of leverage. What do you have that he/she values? your respect? money? job? love?
2. How far you are willing to go to get change? Would you be willing to leave your partner? Fire an employee?
3. Approach the entitled person and express your complaints in a non-attacking way. Ask if he/she is aware of how you feel. Is he/she willing to work on changing?
4. If he/she is willing, go through the other steps in this chapter together.
5. If he/she is unreceptive, tell him/her the consequences if he/she will not try to change. Try to setup a hierarchy of negative consequences. Begin to implement them one at a time, until the entitled person is willing to work with you. Try to empathize with how hard it is for I'm/her o change, but remain firm.
6. Remember that it is often impossible to get someone with this life trap to change. If you do not have enough leverage, you will probably be unsuccessful. Be prepared to accept the price of carrying through on your decision to push for change. Make a list of advantages and disadvantages of pushing for change by risking conflict and possibly ending your relationship. Make an informed choice.

Demonstrations of hurt are almost useless with an entitled person.

Studies have shown that the more distressed patients display when they come to therapy, the more likely they are to change. Until you overcome your entitlement, you will never fulfill your potential for love and work.