Walk On Podcast Episode 76 : How to Stop Self-Sabotage
Susan Wilkinson
I didn’t know I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know that even when I did know, I didn’t feel worthy. I didn’t know that not feeling worthy led me to accepting less.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.”
-Carl Jung
I was calling it fate.
It was probably self-sabotage.
Growing ever more frustrated with my own lack of progress, my own two steps forward, three steps back approach to life, I started to realize
(gasp)
I may have been playing a part in this.
While I was growing up, I was often made to feel not good enough. Whether through my emotionally unavailable caregivers, through a purposefully withholding and guilt weapon-wielding narcissistic matriarch, or just by being constantly criticized for being weird, fat, ugly, a smart ass, a goody-two-shoes but not so good that I didn’t get into big, over-the-top trouble for the bad I did so maybe I was just a goody-one-shoe. Everything I wanted was supposedly out of my reach. “Why don’t you comb your hair, don’t you want to be beautiful?” “Why can’t you wear a little makeup, don’t you want boys to like you?” “If you just lost maybe 10 lbs I think you’d be perfect.” “I don’t really see you as a lead singer, more like someone who sways in the background.”
The way these words played over and over in my head without my permission, y’aaall—it was constant.
Everything I tried to put myself out there felt like standing on the edge of a cliff. I would try as much as felt safe for me to. I felt like if I invested too much, the inevitable disappointment would kill me—like the coyote chasing the road runner off the cliff, only falling once he looked down.
Like so much of my life that I had more of a say in then I realized, I would wonder
“WHY DOES THIS SHIT KEEP HAPPENING TO ME?!?!?!”
And then the answer came, slowly, quietly, unfolding, like a flower, a little at a time.
I didn’t know how to be happy. I didn’t know how to receive love. I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted. My thoughts weren’t my own, but were put there by people who didn’t know or love themselves and who weren’t capable of giving me what I needed. So I started giving it to myself.
One toxic thought at a time, I reprogrammed. One limiting belief at a time, I examined what they were, who’s voice they were in, and whether or not they felt true to me (most didn’t). I replaced them with how I actually felt. And I grew, and grew, and grew. And I shed and shed and shed.
I started to feel, like, magnetized differently or something. As if by magic (and hard inner and outer work, obv, but when you’re in ~the flow~ the work feels effortless) things I wanted started to manifest for me. Opportunity, change, freedom, experience, love, community. In brighter and better and more positive ways. There were still hiccups, as there always will be, because there will always be more to heal (and often our wounds are revealed to us through struggle), but I was able to wade through those rough waters with more and more grace and gratitude. Life felt a lot easier.
Most of us weren’t loved exactly right. The pressures of the white supremacist capitalist cisheteropatriarchy gets to everyone. Often, the criticism we received from our parents was coming from a place of concern—they meant well. But parents aren’t always right. They actually don’t always know what’s best for us. Just like those people who don’t want student loans canceled because they paid theirs all the way off, our parents wanted us to conform the way they had to. But that’s not how progress works. Allow yourself to live in a new reality. Give yourself the gift of deciding how you feel about things—especially yourself.
Self-sabotage is just a symptom of trauma. It’s just an indication that we don’t know how to receive. You can start learning by giving to yourself: rest, grace, forgiveness, confidence, radical self acceptance. You don’t have to do it all, just take one little bite at a time.
You’re enough. And you’re so worthy. You are more loved than you realize. You are love. Say it, out loud if you can, until you feel it vibrating around you in a warm, white light.
I am enough
I am worthy
I am loved
I am love
Happy healing! Listen here // watch here
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