The Childhood Conclusions Fix: Turning Negative Self-Talk Around

by Lisette Schuitemaker

Overview

Reading this book, you get the sense that Lisette Schuitemaker sees right through you. As if she knows that you gorge on chocolate at times, that you go crazy if people know something you don’t, that you are bound to hit the slow cashier one day. Or that in truth you’re not here at all with your thoughts. And how ardently you hope that one day someone will truly love you the way you are.

You, me, all of us have drawn some conclusions in our childhood: impressions we got as a young child and the conclusions we jumped to about ourselves, the world and our place in it. These childhood conclusions still produce habitual thoughts that mark our behaviors. “Why didn’t I know this before and why don’t we all know this?’ were the questions that prompted the author to share her insights. Illustrated with examples from her private practice she shows how childhood conclusions are at work in all of us--and how we can turn them around into a positive outlook on ourselves and others. The five childhood conclusions tell you exactly what you think about yourself. And how you could think differently. And gain so much more freedom for living your life. This book is for anyone who is curious where their habitual thoughts arise from.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781844097708
Publisher:	Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Publication date:	11/14/2017
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Lisette Schuitemaker founded, ran, and sold a communications company before becoming a healer, life coach, and personal development author. She studied the work of Wilhelm Reich as part of obtaining her BSc in Brennan Healing Science. She is the co-author of The Eldest Daughter Effect. Lisette lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Lisette Schuitemaker founded, ran, and sold a communications company before becoming a healer, life coach, and personal development author. She studied the work of Wilhelm Reich as part of obtaining her BSc in Brennan Healing Science. She is the author of The Childhood Conclusions Fix and Childless Living and co-author of The Eldest Daughter Effect. Lisette lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Read an Excerpt

A handful of conclusions

Early psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich at the beginning of last century discovered that as different as we may look in our outward appearance, the kinds of thoughts we think about ourselves are not that different at all. When I first came across the theory of the character defense structures based on his pioneering work, I was struck by the small number of distinct categories of thoughts that we usually entertain. Only a handful!

‘Why didn’t I learn this exceptionally insightful model before?’ and ‘Why aren’t we all aware of how we jump to conclusions in our early youth?’ Those two questions had me write this book. Looking for a kinder term than the forbidding character defense structures, I named the five sources of our ongoing inner fears, our childhood conclusions. None of us will have all the characteristics of a childhood conclusion as I describe them, nor will the self-talk from each of the conclusions be as neatly separated in us as on the pages of a book. For me, however, it has been extremely helpful to be able to categorize the various streams in my ongoing inner monologue, and work to turn them around from negative to positive.

My tenet is that our most negative self-talk hides our most precious gift, and that we can turn our negative self-talk around so we can shine in the gifts that lie on the other side of it.

As it that is not reward enough, insight in our basic childhood conclusions also provides better understanding of our own reactions and those of others. We will be able to respond with more clemency to the previously incomprehensible way colleagues behave, as we realise what causes them to react the way they do. As parents, we will become aware of the inevitable conclusions of our offspring. There is no escape – they will draw childhood conclusions, just as we did when we were small, and our parents before us.

In this book, I describe the gifts hidden by the five childhood conclusions we jump to as children as a result of inevitable unfortunate interactions with our parents or other adults close to us. Drawing on my own life and my professional experience as well as on contemporary books, movies and interviews I describe how it is to grow up with each conclusion as well as what they bring us. A positive present begins with insight in the distinct elements of our negative self-talk, the childhood conclusions they arise from, and how to turn self-depreciating thoughts and heal those early wounds as the gifted adults we are now.

In this world that all of us co-create moment to moment, this seems to be our curriculum: we come in with our genetically determined and mysteriously original gifts, we jump to conclusions on how we should be in order to be cherished and loved, accepted and valued, and then we need to break the scaffolding of those conclusions down to reveal the glory of the home we have built for our treasured gifts.

Table of Contents

Introduction 7

1 Welcoming our existence 21

2 Living to give 48

Pause to reflect 75

3 Willing to create SO

4 Noble hearts 110

5 An authentic fit 139

In the end 164

A list of books 166

A big thank-you 171

About the author 173