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Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again Paperback – Unabridged, May 1, 1994
| Jeffrey E. Young (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
| Janet S. Klosko (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Do you...
• Put the needs of others above your own?
• Start to panic when someone you love leaves—or threatens to?
• Often feel anxious about natural disasters, losing all your money, or getting seriously ill?
• Find that no matter how successful you are, you still feel unhappy, unfulfilled, or undeserving?
Unsatisfactory relationships, irrational lack of self-esteem, feelings of being unfulfilled—these are all problems that can be solved by changing the types of messages that people internalize. These self-defeating behavior patterns are called “lifetraps,” and Reinventing Your Life shows you how to stop the cycle that keeps you from attaining happiness.
Two of America's leading psychologists, Jeffrey E. Young, Ph.D., and Janet S. Klosko, Ph.D., draw on the breakthrough principles of cognitive therapy to help you recognize and change negative thought patterns, without the aid of drugs or long-term traditional therapy. They describe eleven of the most common lifetraps, provide a diagnostic test for each, and offer step-by-step suggestions to help you break free of the traps. Thousands of men and women have seen the immediate and long-term results of the extraordinary program outlines in this clear, compassionate, liberating book. Its innovative approach to solving ongoing emotional problems will help you create a more fulfilling, productive life.
- Print length365 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPlume
- Publication dateMay 1, 1994
- Dimensions5.29 x 0.76 x 7.96 inches
- ISBN-100452272041
- ISBN-13978-0452272040
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Several of the most painful petards upon which people become hoisted during an unhappy childhood are neatly dispatched here by two cognitive therapists, who attack 11 common ‘lifetraps’—destructive patterns that underlie a variety of emotional problems. Young and Klosko ably demonstrate how to deal with issues of abandonment, dependence, trust, social rejection, emotional deprivation, failure and vulnerability. They provide meaningful case histories, perceptive descriptions, diagnostic tests and a variety of nugget-sized, easily understood lists detailing the causes, danger signs and effects of negative impulses and actions, as well as ways to short-circuit them.”—Publishers Weekly
“Using illustrations from case studies, the authors describe each lifetrap, discuss its origins in childhood experience, and provide a questionnaire for self-assessment. They then offer a program for change using techniques ranging from experiential (getting in touch with your inner child) to cognitive (writing a ‘case’ against your lifetrap) and behavioral (identifying specific behaviors to be changed).”—Library Journal
About the Author
Dr. Young is coauthor of a psychotherapy outcome study evaluating the effectiveness of cognitive therapy in comparison to antidepressant medication. He has also served as consultant on many cognitive and schema therapy research grants, including the NIMH Collaborative Study of Depression, and on the editorial boards of journals including Cognitive Therapy and Research and Cognitive & Behavioral Practice. For his exceptional teaching skills, Dr. Young was awarded the prestigious NEEI Mental Health Educator of the Year award in 2003.
Janet S. Klosko, PhD, Codirector of the Cognitive Therapy Center of Long Island, in Great Neck, New York, is senior psychologist at the Schema Therapy Institute and at Woodstock Women's Health in Woodstock, New York.
Product details
- Publisher : Plume; Reprint edition (May 1, 1994)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 365 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0452272041
- ISBN-13 : 978-0452272040
- Item Weight : 10.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.29 x 0.76 x 7.96 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #10,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #65 in Cognitive Psychology (Books)
- #104 in Self-Esteem (Books)
- #429 in Personal Transformation Self-Help
- Customer Reviews:
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It is not going to directly tell you how to move forward with a list of solutions because everyone’s scenario is a bit different. What it did do for me is help identify potential original situations that shape life choices making me more aware of similar things that might help continue the cycle.
Chapter two is outdated. Frankly the whole book is out of date. Young has updated the assessment and there are now 16 (I think) "life traps" as opposed to the 8 (?) in the book. Unfortunately it hasn't been revised...but nothing has been eliminated, just additions and changes in wording. You can find the rest online.
You'll recognize at some point in chapter three when a 'life trap' description starts to resonate and that vague sense of conflict is defined. Then you'll know what you didn't know. It doesn't feel nice but what other choice do you have?
I'm working through this with a therapist and it's amazing. The structured and collaborative approach to schema therapy is actually functional...no more fuzziness or nebulous questions...there's actually concrete work to do.
Life changing! Well worth the read. Great book for a group book-study!
"Reinventing Your Life," which is based on Jeffrey Young's Schema Therapy, is the all-purpose, or should I say, multi-purpose book for your needs. The first 5 chapters provide the background and theory to understand your problems (what the authors call your "lifetraps") and then provide surveys to help you identify which lifetraps are interfering with your life. After this background theory section, you then only have to read the relevant chapter as each chapter is devoted to a specific lifetrap. Near the beginning of each lifetrap chapter, there's a survey to help you identify the degree to which the lifetrap is interfering in your life. The chapter then goes on to give you specific strategies with which to overcome your lifetraps. In some cases, the authors do recommend therapy in addition to self-help work as the more severe the problem, the more likely a therapist would be helpful.
Now you may be wondering, "What is this lifetrap business all about?" A lifetrap can be defined as a pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving (i.e., personality pattern) that has its origins in childhood and is a result of something that was done to us by our parents/caretakers (e.g., over-protection, harsh criticism, physical or sexual abuse, emotional neglect). Lifetraps cause us to become stuck in a repetitive pattern of interacting with others and the world that, time after time, get us into trouble with relationships and/or work. In short, life-traps lead us into self-defeating behaviour that blocks us from fully realizing our potentials and living a happy and successful life.
Some of the common lifetraps the authors identify are called Unrelenting Standards (i.e., excessive self-criticism/perfectionism), Mistrust and Abuse, Abandonment, and Social Exclusion. I will briefly describe a few of them. The Mistrust & Abuse Lifetrap involves having a general distrust of others, which interferes with closeness and intimacy, but at the same time, also having a tendency to get involved in abusive relationships. The Unrelenting Standards Lifetrap involves harshly criticizing oneself when not achieving one's goals. Because this lifetrap involves perfectionistic standards (i.e., unattainable goals), this makes it easy for your inner critic to walk all over you when you "fail." You can check out the Table of Contents to see the full list of lifetraps.
After coming to a full understanding of your particular lifetrap(s), each chapter then describes specific strategies to help you overcome your self-defeating pattern. To help change unhelpful thinking patterns, rational challenging of your thoughts (a cognitive strategy) and evidence-testing of your beliefs (a behavioral strategy) are suggested, which are based on the idea that changing your thinking and behaviour will change how you feel. One specific cognitive method is to write reminder/coaching cards to yourself. For instance, you could write rational statements that prepare for when you get into a situation you might get into trouble. For instance, let's say you are prone to harsh self-criticism before a high-pressure situation (e.g., a demanding work project). In your mind, if you really attend to what's going on mentally, you may notice such harsh self-talk such as, "You suck!" and "You know you'll fail!" These statements may leave you feeling inadequate, anxious, and unmotivated. Before starting the project, though, you can pull out the coaching card to help you challenge such critical thoughts and get you in a rational head space and more emotionally energized to work. In addition to cognitive and behavioral strategies, the authors also offer experiential strategies.
As a psychotherapist, I have used this book with clients and will continue to do so. A person who is committed to changing and willing do the hard work will benefit greatly from its strategies.
Overall, I liked the book. I gained some insight into some of my own negative behavior patterns, and it certainly gave me some things to think about as far as relationships! With a foreword by renowned psychiatrist Aaron Beck, the book held great promise for insightful psychological breakthrough. I enjoyed reading about the different lifetrap patterns and how each could be unknowingly cultivated in a child by parents who are either absent, addicted, or well meaning and just uneducated. Young and Klosko go into great detail of childhood origins of each behavior pattern, giving examples of each and an anecdotal story of how some of their patients (of course with privacy protected) learned to overcome the self defeating behavior. The book was an easy read, used little medical jargon that was not well explained to the layperson, and will get you thinking.
All that being said, there were some negative points, as to why I felt it only earned 4 stars. For starters, the information can be somewhat dated. The book has a copyright of 1993, so some of the interactions and anecdotes are not as applicable to the current world. That in of itself, however, is a minor flaw. The biggest issue I had with the book was the fact that there were just not enough time and words spent on how to fix the behaviors and how long that was going to take the average person. While a list of steps to take to remedy the behavior was presented with some explanation, I felt that wasn't enough to really assist a person in making drastic changes in thinking and interaction patterns without a professional therapist to assist. Therapy is great, but the point of a self help book is to help yourself, so they could have spent some more time explaining just how to implement these recovery steps and give more detail into how each of the examples did so in their lives. Compared to the amount of information provided on childhood origins (which provide great insight, but that is only half the battle), I think the implementation of change sections were lacking.
In the end, I do recommend the book for use with your therapist in helping to determine and solve some self defeating behavior. I'm a huge fan of education and self improvement, so if you enjoy the same, this book might be worth your time to check out.
Top reviews from other countries
This book really has changed my life! I have never understood myself, and have never understood what makes me tick, what makes me do the things I do, and behave in the way I do. I often got into situations and then got frustrated and unhappy as a result.
This book has helped me unravel ALL of my life from the day I was born. It has helped me piece together so many different aspects, to the point where I was able to sum up my life in a short 1000 word essay and completely discover who I was.
I didn't read chapter one of this book, I was a bit impatient so went to straight to chapter 2 - the quiz. Out of 11 of the lifetraps - 8 of them were problems for me. Ouch!
I then read chapters 3,4,5 to understand more about lifetraps in general and how we respond to them. Fascinating insight in to my life already. I then did the longer questionnaires for the 8 potential lifetraps and whittled it down to 5 confirmed lifetraps. I then set about reading just these 5 chapters. I would NOT recommend you jump into this book without first doing the test in chapter 2 and working out your lifetraps - this is really important.
I have to say that reading these chapters was like reading a biography - it was ME - in a book!! It was a very emotional time. Not only did the book tell me about the lifetraps but it provided me with practical advice on how to stop them controlling my life.
This book - in combination with reaching the lowest point in my life at the end of 2014 has been a revelation and I cannot praise it enough. Buy it.
My abusive ex partner borrowed the book after me. After reading the first few chapters, he has taken it upon himself to calculate how much money he stole from me over the years, and has taken a second job to pay it back. He apologized for the way he treated me when I was with him, and for the first time I see genuine empathy and emotional connection in his eyes. We have been broken up for 1.5 years, and in that time he was unable to connect with to anyone, let alone me. While the book didn't come in time to save that relationship, it may have at least saved his self worth, and prevented him from victimizing anyone else in the way he hurt me. This is such a powerful book.










