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The Irony of Life Repeating Itself
Are you repeatedly drawn into relationships with people who are not good for you? Do you feel even the closest people in your life do not care or understand you? Do you put the needs of others above your own so that your needs are never met – so much so, that you don’t even know what your real needs are anymore? Do you find that, regardless of how much public acclaim or social approval you receive, you still feel unhappy, unfulfilled or undeserving?
We call patterns like these, lifetraps – a lifetrap is a pattern that starts in childhood and reverberates throughout life. It began with something that was done to us by our families or by other children. We were perhaps abandoned, constantly criticised, overprotected, abused, excluded or deprived, causing us damage in some way. Eventually, this lifetrap becomes part of us. Long after we leave the home we grew up in, we continue to create situations in which we are mistreated, ignored, put down or controlled – we fail to achieve our most desired goals and miss out totally on fulfilling our true potential.
The fact we keep repeating the pain of our childhood years is one of the core insights of psychoanalytical psychology. Freud called this the repetition compulsion, where we may see the child of an alcoholic grow up to marry an alcoholic; the abused child grow up to marry an abuser, or become an abuser himself; the sexually molested child grow up to become a prostitute; the overly controlled child allowing others to totally dominate or control her……and many more similar examples I could quote that I’m sure we’re all too aware of……
This is a baffling phenomenon. Why do we do it? Why do we re-enact our pain and prolong our suffering? Why don’t we, or can’t we, build better lives and escape these patterns? Almost everyone repeats negative patterns from childhood in self-defeating ways. This is the strange truth with which we therapists devote our time to contend. Somehow, we manage to create, in adult life, conditions remarkably similar to those that were so destructive in childhood, and a lifetrap is all the ways in which we continue to repeat these patterns.
The technical term for a lifetrap is a schema, a term that comes from cognitive psychology. Schemas are deeply entrenched beliefs about ourselves, and the world, learned in early life. These schemas are central to our sense of self. To give up our belief in a schema would be to surrender the security of knowing who we are and what the world is like, therefore we cling to it, even when it hurts us.
These early beliefs provide us with a sense of predictability and certainty; they are comfortable and familiar. In an odd sense they make us feel at home – a real irony, and the main reason why many cognitive psychologists say that schemas are so difficult to change………difficult, yes, but impossible, no. Once you begin to learn about lifetraps such as: Failure, Abandonment, Emotional Deprivation, Mistrust/Abuse, Dependence, Entitlement, Pessimism/Negativity, Approval Seeking, Defectiveness, Social Isolation, Subjugation and others, and how to recognise them and understand their origins, we can then begin the real work on how to change them for good.
If you recognise elements of yourself in the above listed schemas and you’d like to book a session to discuss lifetraps and how to shift them, please contact us directly on [email protected]