News
Are you caught in a life-trap?
- Are you repeatedly drawn into relationships with people who are cold to you? Do you feel that even the people closest to you don’t care or understand enough about you?
- Do you feel that you are, at your core, somehow defective, that no-one who truly knows you could possibly love and accept you?
- Do you put the needs of others above your own, so your needs are never met – to the point that you don’t even know what your needs are?
- Do you fear that something bad will happen to you, so that even a mild sore throat sets off the dread of a more serious illness?
- 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, life-traps. Such patterns start off in childhood and they reverberate throughout our lives. It can begin with something that may have been “done” to us by family or other children – perhaps being abandoned, criticised, over-protected, abused, bullied, excluded or deprived. Eventually, this life-trap becomes part of who we are and, long after we leave home, we continue to create situations where we may be mistreated, ignored, put down or controlled, where we fail to reach our most desired goals, make our dreams a reality, never mind fulfil our potential.
Life-traps are powerful things and can get a grip on you like a vice. They determine how you think, feel, act and relate to others. They trigger strong feelings such as anger, sadness and anxiety. Even when we appear to have everything – social status, an ideal marriage, the respect of those around us, career success – we are often unable to savour life or believe in our accomplishments.
Inspirational Winners’ bespoke “Road to Reinvention” (R2R) program focuses on these self-defeating personality patterns, where clients are able to grasp the origins of these life-traps and quickly identify their own. The approach is integrative, participative and powerful in producing change. It draws on cognitive, behavioural, psychoanalytical and experiential therapies, while maintaining a practical, problem-solving focus on cognitive therapy.
With compassion and sensitivity, we navigate our way through a voyage of self-discovery, entering, sometimes quite scary, unchartered territories. Leading us to finding our true selves, we get the chance to fulfil our potential and to even achieve those dreams.
So, here’s looking at you, kid. Are you feeling brave enough to give it a go and to finally get out of that trap?