Self-Sabotage - "Dancing with our Shadow"

Self-Sabotage – “Dancing with our Shadow”

Self-sabotaging behavior is when we have a tendency to be our own worst enemy, or produce behavior that is contradictory to what we “say” we really want. Sabotaging behavior is usually the result of unconscious beliefs, imprints or “patterning” that is operating subliminally in our lives because we have failed to recognize them consciously. This usually comes as a result of the fact that they exist in contradiction to our conscious awareness and perceptual style of thinking and how we tend to make up reality. They are usually beliefs that contradict our internal motivation in some way, or what we believe is possible for us to create that counteracts a conscious desire.
Even though we have no direct awareness of subconscious beliefs, we can learn to recognize them through the stories that we tell about things. Our stories are always consistent in expressing our identity and personality. Our personality is created primarily at the subconscious level during our formative years, and our identity emerges as a conscious process that forms congruence with our personality. They are virtually different aspects or levels of expression of the same thing – the soul. We have aspects to our personality that governs our natural behavior that are predominately subconscious. We can have conscious thoughts that completely contradict subconscious beliefs through various forms of denial, projection, deflection and repression. They continue operating in our life however, outside of our conscious awareness, and often in very inappropriate and self-destructive ways.
Subconscious beliefs do not create through actual thought processes, but rather more subliminally as tendencies and preferences that form natural selection. We simply find ourselves moving into them (behavioral patterns) or doing them without realizing it. By directing or commanding our awareness we can begin identifying what we are doing by symbolically interpreting our experiences. Experiences are created by the story we tell ourselves about them. By exploring our own stories, we can enter into subconscious exploration and see the significance of subliminal themes and patterns. Once we bring them into conscious awareness we can begin identifying how we have integrated them into all areas of our life through a highly complex matrix of corresponding beliefs (system) and supporting perceptions that serve to validate them. We literally “see” the world in a way that makes our beliefs “true” and factual. We create realities out of our beliefs and find ourselves gravitating towards certain tendencies that form consistent experiences.
Many beliefs exist as a form of memory. The experience we had when we formed the belief becomes the “organizing principle” for the reenactment of that belief in various life circumstances. Because of this, I can produce the perceptions and behavior to consistently create a particular “type” of failure in the midst of rich opportunities. The “feeling” of a belief is it’s most prominent and revealing factor. Beliefs are feelings that have particular type of realities or experiences associated with them. I have a feeling, and my mind will search my memory to find a corresponding experienced where I had the same feeling, bring it to the forefront and create an experience with a similar meaning in the present circumstances. The most immediate way to identify an unconscious belief is by becoming very in-tuned to how you experience feelings in your body (subconscious).
Sabotaging behavior comes most readily when I have a conflicting belief to a desired idea or outcome. Anytime that the conscious and unconscious are in conflict, the unconscious nearly always wins. Our only true power comes through awareness. The conscious mind through it’s ability to choose and discipline itself to act out a new idea or pattern until it becomes natural, can direct and give instruction to the subconscious, but only if what is unconscious becomes conscious. We can only change what we can “see” and can recognize when we are about to do it, or in the process of doing it. Awareness has to be “present”. We can only change what we are doing in the moment we are doing it. All change is a form of choice. All choice exists in the moment when we recognize it and are able to actually decide. It then requires the “will” to act it out against natural tendencies that do no support it. When this happens we are stepping into the unknown and untried and truly become a creator in our own life.
The easiest way to tune into what is happening at any given moment in our lives at the subconscious level is by becoming very aware of how we are feeling, regardless of what we are thinking. Feelings are body oriented and intuitive by nature. They are “experienced” directly. The conceptual “thinking” mind is the one that creates illusions by telling stories about things that interpret neutral facts into personal meaning. The subconscious works via direct experience. We know without knowing how we know. Our feelings never lie because they simply warrant our awareness without a thought process or a story involved. Whenever the conscious mind checks out, or becomes distracted with thinking, the unconscious mind runs the system and determines what we do. We can be thinking about one thing, while doing something else entirely. When left unchecked, the subconscious is running our behavior while the conscious mind is busy trying to “figure stuff out” or make things up. So when we have a subconscious believe that contradicts a conscious belief, we automatically act out the subconscious one without even recognizing what we are doing, then imagine it is being done “to” us..

Linda Gadbois, Ph.D(c)) CCHt., RMT
http://www.creativetransformations.com
Linda@creativetransformations.com