These life traps are rooted in childhood and shape how we think, feel, and relate to others. The ones I have observed the most are abandonment, mistrust, and emotional deprivation. It causes people to repeat painful experiences in adulthood, often without realising it. It is about taking responsibility for past choices and seeing where they are coming from.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of what you may be subject to:

- Fear of Abandonment

- Mistrust

- Dependence

- Social Exclusion

- Perfectionism

But you need the following to feel content:

- Safety

- Connection

- Autonomy

- Self-Esteem

- Self-Expression

- Realistic Limits

Why don't you have them?

You have suffered from either:

- Neglect

- Overprotection

- Abuse

- Criticism

- Harmful Beliefs

And other coping styles...

How are you most likely addressing them?

- Surrender to accepting the trap as truth and reliving it over and over again

- Escape by avoiding situations or numbing emotions

- Overcompensate by posturing confidence, control or superiority

Still, by resisting the life trap, it persists even more.

You must segment and label the Negative Patterns.

You must let go of all your beliefs that you think are iron-clad truths and challenge yourself. You are where you are, not only, but primarily due to your beliefs.

They shape your reality. It is about looking at yourself as if you were a clone of yourself, watching you and taking note of all the patterns you repeat over and over again.

Breaking the subconscious loop that takes away your agency.

By observing how these negative patterns operate, you can break the pattern through inventorying in a journal. It won't be easy, but with persistence, patience, and self-compassion, you can look back on your setbacks and start shifting into a new version of yourself.

Negative Pattern #1: Abandonment

You constantly fear that loved ones will leave, leading to clinginess, jealousy, and unstable relationships.

This comes from parental loss, instability, or overprotection in childhood. This is why you sabotage relationships, both stable and unstable ones.

You project your fear of abandonment and manifest it with your anxious behaviour.

Here, it is embracing the fact that you cannot control the outcome you are so desperate to reach, and no amount of micromanagement towards others will result in it.

If you ignore this, you will put people off, as no one likes to feel imprisoned by the mismanagement of your emotions.

Negative Pattern #2: Mistrust and Abuse

This happens when you have experienced betrayal, abuse or humiliation, leaving you convinced that others will always hurt you.

You will then expect exploitation, push away intimacy or choose abusive partners that will reinforce that fear, operating the same self-sabotage you are trying so hard to avoid.

Here, it is about taking responsibility for your choices, and learning to trust others as a baseline, and removing that trust when clear signs show they can't be trusted.

By operating with distrust from the get-go, you will only attract people of bad faith, whom you suspect everyone around you to be, and miss out on the people of good faith who expect others to be as good-spirited as they are, until they show them otherwise.

Negative Pattern #3: Social Exclusion

This is when you have deep feelings of not fitting in, loneliness and inferiority in social settings. This generally comes from bullying, rejection, and feeling like an outcast, which makes people feel self-conscious and withdrawn.

You don't accept yourself, therefore you cannot allow yourself to be accepted by others, and you will potentially find yourself doubling down, in finding yourself grouping with other outsiders that will reinforce that belief (e.g. incels).

It is about learning to develop self-acceptance and appreciating that what you like or resonate with is not based in a normative framework, but one in which you invite others to enjoy, while welcoming the fact that they may not. In the same way, you invite yourself to be interested in others' preferred activities, but accept the fact that you won't automatically.

Negative Pattern #4: Dependence

This is when you feel incapable of handling life on your own, and you seek a protector. This is detrimental mainly for men in terms of establishing their emotional or financial leadership.

It is generally illustrated by seeking controlling partners to avoid decision-making, or even mask dependence with overachievement, whilst not acknowledging success to avoid responsibility, and using the processing to get there as a coping mechanism.

Here, it is about taking ownership of your life, its successes and failures, and appreciating that as a man, no one will save you. And the love you give towards others is a benediction, not a matter of survival. With independence comes agency, and the discretionary power of giving out of genuine character rather than out of necessity.

Negative Pattern #5: Vulnerability

It is when you have an overly exaggerated fear of disaster, illness, poverty, or what I see most often, the fear of losing control.

You most likely had overprotecting or anxious parents (Helicoptering ones), if not traumatic experiences, when it is not illness which makes you feel weaker than you actually are.

Risk aversion is very clear to see, as anything that could have one has to be avoided as much as possible. They are shrinking their realm of possibilities by looking at the worst possible outcome every time.

Appreciate that the probability of your fear happening will only increase by focusing on it, either through confirmation or survivorship bias. Outside of it, once you open yourself more to the world, things are not as black and white as you make yourself comfortable in believing.

You will most likely relive the negative pattern you are avoiding, but once it no longer impacts or affects you, you will be more ready to appreciate it when it does not, because the original hurt does not have as much impact on you anymore. Rejection is a perfect example.

The more you fear rejection, the more it will haunt you; the more you experience it, the less it will affect you.

Negative Pattern #6: Defectiveness

This is when you have self-esteem issues, which generally translate to you saying to yourself that:

"I am unworthy."

"I am flawed."

When you have suffered from little positive reinforcement from your parents, like they were never satisfied with what you achieved for yourself, because of their high expectations.

You will:

- Shame yourself

- Become overly critical of yourself

- Won't want to expose yourself

- Look for judgmental partners or friends who will validate the feeling that you are never enough

You will either surrender to the feeling or overcompensate with perfectionism or arrogance. Here, it is about acknowledging that you, as a human, can expect respect, appreciation, and camaraderie without needing to perform for others, because of the feeling of defectiveness that plagues you from within.

Negative Pattern #7: Failure

This is when you are convinced you are destined to fail, regardless of your talents.

This will lead to procrastination, self-sabotage through inertia, and avoidance of challenges.

This will hinder the confidence you can develop in yourself and reinforce the loser loop you are subconsciously validating, because any future failure will consciously confirm what you feel about yourself.

Here, it is about conducting a SWOT analysis of your life and acknowledging that you can't be good at everything. Focus on one area where you are naturally gifted and enjoy it, so that it doesn't feel like work. Double down on it until you achieve small successes that will snowball into bigger successes, breaking the negative pattern.

Negative Pattern #8: Submissiveness

This is when you consistently put others' needs first while suppressing your own, often out of guilt or fear. This is where covert contracts appear, fueling resentment and unmet expectations by engaging with one another that do not owe you anything, whilst you expect them to.

This will solidify an inferiority complex that you manifested through your behaviour, where self-sacrifices towards others have no guarantees of positive ROI.

This is not to say that you cannot give to others, but don't create an IOU that doesn't exist. Here, you are operating out of necessity, not to feel less than someone else, but rather to use them as a means to lift you up.

You give out of benevolence, not expecting a return, but inviting one should it come. This is how you attract the right people for you, not the ones you want, but the ones who genuinely vibe with you.

Negative Pattern #9: The Never-Ending Chase

This is when you have a perfectionism overdrive, where nothing is good enough for you. You will feel stressed, experience burnout, and struggle to enjoy success, focusing on the next goal and never appreciating how far you have come.

Usually rooted in over-demanding parents and conditional love. You are most likely a compulsive and workaholic, with an obsession with status. This is not to say you must not have standards, far from it.

The people I have met with this type of mindset are overachievers and very well-off, but they never allow themselves (or at least, from what I have seen) to enjoy the fruit of their own labour.

Some told me their labour is their joy, but my French Art de Vivre is perplexed about it. Here, it is about appreciating that no matter how hard you work, you must do it for yourself and not for the approval of others.

Where is your drive to success, and what are the things that come along with it?

You can be the most successful person out there, but still be slaves to others and no master of oneself, should the source of all these efforts come from the wrong place. In life, imperfections are part of what makes someone authentic.

Allow yourself to think that, by not being so obsessed with reaching perfection, people will perceive you as less genuine, even those at the top of the social pyramid. You are more relatable and less boring when you allow yourself some guilty pleasure.

Negative Pattern #10: Entitlement

It is the belief that no rules apply to you, that you are special. We all have our individuality; however, we are all equal in death.

This is the opposite of the Defectiveness Life Trap, where you most likely had over-indulging parents who made you believe that you can do nothing wrong.

You are most likely too selfish, and thanks to a past where you got away with murder, you think that it will continue forever, from that precedent-setting.

There is no free lunch in life, especially if you are a man. What goes around comes back around, in various forms and shapes. You will most likely enjoy short-term positive feedback loops, attracting people with a sense of defectiveness, as you will reinforce their feeling that they are never enough, creating resentment with them, not to mention well-earned antipathy (rather than jealousy) from others as well.

You will be more charming because you exhibit attributes people would love to have, often coming from a position of power, but without a degree of empathy towards others and some accountability. Every tyrant is toppled when they become too drunk on their own delusion of grandeur.

Allow yourself to be less self-centred to avoid becoming disliked to the point you can't operate in a social setting like a pariah. It is one thing to own the courage to be disliked; it is another to make it a goal you are desperate to achieve, rather than a natural outcome, in allowing yourself to be who you are.

Because people will see, it is just an indirect way for you to express your shame in admitting your desperate need to feel loved.

Conclusion

Change is hard and requires facing pain, but it is always possible, should your drive be strong enough to address the outcomes in your life that you are not satisfied with.

If this article resonated with you and you would like to address one or more of these patterns holding you back, you can get in touch with me here.