Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again Read Online Free PDF Page A

ran away. When I sensed that a boy liked me, I acted really cold until he went away.
     
    In her first two years of college, Madeline started drinking and doing drugs. During this period, she had sex with more than thirty men. „None of them meant anything to me,“ she says.
     
    MADELINE: I went wild in college. I slept around. There was one fraternity where every guy in there had slept with me. I was miserable. I felt cheap and dirty. I felt used. I just couldn’t say no. I would go out with a guy and end up sleeping with him even though I had promised myself I wouldn’t. I figured it was the only reason guys would go out with me. I really don’t know why I did it. That whole time was just like running out of control.
     
    The experience of sexual abuse by her stepfather damaged her sexuality and capacity for intimacy with men. For her, sex and abuse are inextricably mixed.
    Now, Madeline is back to avoiding men. She has not dated in many years and is worried that she will never be able to marry and have children.
    The first treatment Madeline tried was conventional cognitive therapy. Her therapist focused on the present—on Madeline’s current avoidance of men. It was rare, for example, for Madeline to discuss her childhood in therapy. Instead, she and her therapist designed homework for her to do between sessions, such as striking up conversations with men or going to parties. The therapist helped her fight her distorted thoughts, such as „Men are only out for sex,“ by asking her for examples of men she knew who were caring and wanted intimacy.
    Therapy went on for several months. Madeline began to date again, but she was drawn to abusive men. Although she recognized that many men were considerate, her experience with boyfriends did not bear this out. Madeline realized she needed something more to change her deeply ingrained pattern.
     
    MADELINE: I felt like my therapist was asking me to change without understanding why I was the way I was. I mean, I know I have to change in the ways that she said. I have to start trusting men and stop avoiding closeness. But there are reasons why I avoid men. I need to understand what they are.
     
    Madeline became angry at any man who seemed to approach her romantically. She could see that the anger was the result of distorted thoughts, but she still felt it. Madeline needed to direct her anger toward its true object—her stepfather. She needed to express her anger and have it validated.
    During the first year and a half of lifetrap therapy, we helped Madeline to uncover her memories of abuse through imagery. We pushed her to ventilate her anger at her stepfather and to confront him with her accusations. We encouraged her to join a support group for survivors of incest. We also showed her how she maintained her pattern of abuse by selecting abusive boyfriends.
    Madeline slowly resumed dating. Although she was still attracted to abusive men, she stayed away from them at our insistence, focusing instead on men who treated her respectfully, even though the chemistry was less intense. She worked on demanding respect, rather than leaving it to the man to give it to her. She learned to say „no.“
    About a year later she fell in love with Ben, a gentle, sensitive man. Even with him, however, she experienced serious sexual inhibition. Ben was willing to work with her to overcome her sexual difficulties. She is now considering marriage.
    In Chapter 16, we will provide many suggestions for changing the Mistrust and Abuse lifetrap. However, we want to emphasize that many lifetraps, Mistrust and Abuse in particular, take a long time to change and should be approached with the help of a therapist or support group.
    Madeline’s treatment illustrates how lifetrap therapy retains the practical focus of cognitive and behavioral therapies: it builds skills and makes changes. But we are interested in more than short-term behavior modification. We also want to address lifelong issues,