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Your self works for you. But it may not be coordinated enough. All parts of you wants the best for you. If you are self-sabotaging, it probably means there’s a lot of stuff in your shadow that needs to be worked through.
An act of self-sabotage in your conscious mind can be an act of deep self-love on an unconscious level. Self-sabotage is self-love emanating upwards from the subconscious mind. Some part of me, when I feel like I stand in my own way or sabotaging myself is trying to love me in a way that I don’t understand.
There are always trade-offs to anything we do in life. The key to treating self-sabotage is to make those trade-offs conscious so that we can begin working effectively with them.
There needs to be a negotiation between the inner child and the inner parent.
Our inner child represents our needs, vulnerabilities, passions, and what we feel aligned with in the short term. Our inner parent represents the part of ourselves that are disciplined and knows what’s good for us in the long term.
Does my inner child or my inner parent tend to run the show more often? How can I get them to talk to each other in a more cooperative way?
Strategy 1: Figure out which of your goals are based on authentic, embodied want vs based on the things you should do
- What about this is what I don’t want?
- What are we getting (or what are we benefitting) by not working on our goals? On making a change?
Strategy 2: Continuously recognize when you are making a trade-off. Validate the part pf yourself that is sad about that trade-off or that doesn’t want to make it and accept that whatever part of you is getting that hit needs to be compensated in some other way.
An error some people make in the attachment healing process is when they think that fixing their insecure attachment systems will make their life continuously better. When in reality, your insecure attachment strategies are actually allowing you to function well in many areas you are not aware of until you start the healing process.
So for a period of time, you might actually feel less equipped to deal with your life and your personal relationships the healthier you get.
Strategy 3: Try to imagine what your day-to-day life would look like when you accomplish your given goal or outcome rather than only imagining the “highlight reel”. This highlight reel is almost always coming from your conscious mind. The day-to-day reality is always what your unconscious or subconscious mind gets faced with.
💠Thought: Nora as an example of self-sabotage
Nora from The Midnight Library (book) can be seen as an example of someone who self-sabotages which results in accumulating bad outcomes which eventually made her take her own life. She does not consciously think of the trade-off of her choices and this makes her disappointed in the countless lives she tried.
Another helpful tip is to make changes slowly to allow yourself to adapt to your new reality. This will help calm down the inner child and not make it run the show.
