Here are some familiar type
magazine articles:
-The five easy steps to losing weight.
-Four secrets to being successful with
women/men.
-You too can be a millionaire.
-How to solve your child's behavior problems.
The reader of my book will learn which of their
specifc family dynamics were responsible for their
ongoing problems, and how and why they continue
into their adult life even though they have left their
families years ago. Most people are skeptical that
this can be accomplished but here is what makes
that possible.
I explain why the causes for these behaviors,
(outlined below) remain hidden from consciousness
and are difficult to access, even though it is
necessary to see what is beneath the surface if one
is to successfully overcome one's problems.
The charts in particular, and the real life
examples and explanations will quickly help a person
to see which one of five or six common causes are
responsible for their self-defeating behavior.
The charts in the book are organized according
to the responses that one made to the flaws of one's
parents and siblings which led to one's self
destructive patterns. The responses to those flaws
are one of three types:
Accomodations
Rebellion-protests
Mimicking
For example, weight loss difficulties can be
understood as staying overweight in order to
1. Accommodate to a parent or sibling who is
threatened by you being attractive by staying heavy.
2. Acommodating to a parent or sibling who is
threatened by your success with your opposite sex
parent. You might stay fat in order to avoid being
favored by that parent.
3. Accommodating to your parent who feels
happy and fulfilled when you eat. Therefore you don't
stop when you are full, in order to not disappoint
your parent and feel bad.(guilty)
4. Accommodating a parent who was tight with
money and couldn't stand for you to waste
food. "The children in Africa are starving." So you eat
everything on your plate even when no longer hungry.
What about rebelling as a motive for staying fat?
1. Your parent is obsessed with thinness and
scrutinzes your eating habits. As a protest, you rebel
by overeating, hoping that your parent will get the
message and stop being so obsessed with weight and
looks.
2. Your parent witheld food, especially desserts
as a way of manipulating or punishing you. You
rebelled by secretly eating desserts whenever you
can.
3. You weren't allowed certian foods because
your parent thought they were terrible for your
health, or because of allergies or specific illnesses.
You felt cheated and rebelled by overeating to
overcome the sense of feeling deprived.
What about Mimicking as a cause of staying
heavy?
If you believed that you had something to do
with your parent or sibling being fat, you won't feel
that you deserve to be better off than they, and so
you too remain fat. You don't want them to feel bad
about their weight problems so you join the fat club.
The same kinds of charts and real life examples
explain people's problems with love and sex, career
and wealth, and parenting.
My book contains many explanations about how
the powerful affects of guilt and resentment drive
self-defeating patterns. For example, by not
accommodating your parent or sibling's flaws, and
instead doing what is right for you, you
are made to feel guilty about hurting them. ("How
could you do this to me." "After all I have done for
you." "Just wait until you have kids." etc.) These
type of comments are often accompanied by pouting,
sulking, withdrawing, screaming etc. which reinforce
the fact that they have been hurt by you.
In order to not feel guilty you tried to please
them, rescue them, and not threaten them, no
matter the cost to your well being. Finally when your
resentment and anger about accommodating finally
intensifies enough, you begin to shift to acting in
your own self interest until your guilt about that
pushes you back in the direction of accommodating.
That is why people so often experience repeated
frustration because pursuit of their goals is usually
followed by undermining them.
My book also explains the following:
-Why some people have to feel like a victim.
-How psychological crime, punishment, and
psychological jail are always related.
-Why people deceive themselves into thinking
that they are in control of their life.
-Why people have trouble seeing the flaws in
their family even though they can see the damaging
effects.
Double trouble: How pleasing one parent can
provoke the other, and visa versa.
For example: Overeating to please the parent
who loves to see you eat, but causing the other
parent to become overly critical or upset. And visa
versa.
My book also explains the tremendously important
role of siblings in the origin of one's serious problems,
and how often it is overlooked by both patients and
psychotherpaists.
Because the book is written in a clear easy to
read style, without psycho-babble and complicated
psychoanalytic theory, it will be useful to the
psychotherapist and particularly helpful for people in
therapy to have quicker access to and understanding
of their underlying problem behaviors.
