Self Sabotage - by Victoria Hoban

Are you your own worst enemy?

Sometimes it seems that life just keeps going wrong – it’s as though there is someone standing in your way at every turn. That person, may well be you.

‘I don’t know why I do it,’ says Anna, a 36-year-old freelance book editor, the disbelief etched on her face. ‘Every time I make inroads into a work project I do something completely stupid, that takes me back a few steps.’ Her most recent example of self-defeating behaviour? ‘I landed a plum freelance contract, and then found every possible reason not to meet the deadline. It was a real wake-up call when the project coordinator said the only real obstacle I faced was myself. The most confusing thing was that I was really enjoying the work.’

Your inner saboteur

Like many of us, Anna is all too familiar with her inner saboteur, that extraordinary part of our personalities that deliberately hampers, hinders and hijacks our attempts at success and happiness. This part of our psyche ‘is activated when we feel strong emotions, more often positive ones’, says Martha Beveridge author of Self-Sabotage (Grand Central). In other words, if you expect to experience difficulty, or rejection, or disappointment, and instead find yourself experiencing joy and happiness, it conflicts with your repressed expectation. ‘Becoming a saboteur is a way of dealing with that, and creating an outcome that doesn’t conflict with you negative beliefs,’ she explains.

           

These expectations are cultivated in our childhood years. Growing up, Anna’s emotionally-remote father paid her scant attention. ‘Although he was a successful academic, I got the impression from him that life was a constant let-down,’ she says. ‘He often spoke of disappointments and paths not taken, and always warned me against unbridled optimism. I seem to have inherited his defeatist attitude. So when life is going well, I tend to find ways to revert to type.’

Why do we do it?

According to Dr Colinda Linde, a Johannesburg psychologist, self-sabotaging behaviour clicks into place for a number of conflicting and complex reasons. Stress, anger, heightened emotion and evening drinking to much alcohol can unleash this dormant part of ourselves.

When others voice displeasure at our achievements, we may undermine our successes to avoid criticism.

‘Sometimes our inner saboteur is triggered when we’re scared of a situation,’ she explains. ‘We tell ourselves that it will never last so we choose to end it immediately while we still feel in control.’ Cape Town counsellor Michele Carelse adds that this behaviour often occurs when there is an uncomfortable discrepancy between what we would consciously like to do and what our subconscious fears and desires encourage us to do.

            By way of illustration, Carelse tells the story of an intelligent young client who, a week before her wedding, had a one-night stand with her fiancé’s best friend. ‘Although on one level she wanted to be married and love her fiancé, on another level her subconscious fears of commitment and intimacy played a part in sabotaging a situation that was threatening to her,’ Carelse says. ‘A less complex example would be the woman who summons the courage to assert herself at work, but smiles and speaks in a ‘girly’ voice while doing so, rendering her message weak and ineffective.

Feeling unworthy

Other times, Linde says, we unleash our inner saboteur because we feel unworthy of work success, loving relationships, new friendships or financial good fortune. And, as we now know, this nagging sense of not being good enough is often rooted in childhood conditioning.

            For instance, when a romance starts getting serious, Nadine will find ingenious ways to challenge her partner’s interest in her, until the relationship falters. ‘I don’t feel I deserve all the good things that happen to me,’ she explains. ‘Then, once I don’t have then anymore, I feel miserable and stressed and yet

 -bizarrely- more comfortable with the situation.’ Often, says Durban clinical psychologist Michael Cassidy, self-sabotage occurs after a significantly good event. ‘It is often considered to be part of one’s conscience that is a bit sadistic and cruel, and does not think the person should have anything good in themselves or in their life,’ Cassidy says. ‘This is when the “I don’t deserve it” mentality comes into play.’

            Dr Peter Hodson, a Cape Town Jungian analyst, points out that, as children, we construct a view of ourselves in order to create a sense of meaning and identity in the world. Negative influences can lead us to believe that we are failures, that we are powerless or that we are wronged. An unhappy or unsafe childhood can cause us to be wary of trusting others. Sabotaging our successes can be seen as a means of creating a safety zone, of controlling the rejection we feel we will not invariably receive.

            Nadine admits that she clings to her childhood emotional zone of feeling undervalued and invisible. ‘My mother doted on my younger sister. She was the pretty one, the charming one. I was made to feel rather ordinary. I was never expected to amount to much.’

Fear of failure/success

Intriguingly, both our fear of failure and our fear of success can stir our self-sabotaging behaviour into action. When we fear falling short of our own (or others’) expectations it’s so much easier and safer simply not to leave a corporate job to strike out on your own, implement an ambitious health plan or invite a new friend around for supper. That way, we’re never disappointed. But being anxious about success, and the inevitable changes it brings, can be equally pernicious and limiting. ‘I’ve always been wary of inviting envy,’ says Priya, a 41-year-old food technician. ‘My stepsister was a problem child and never realized her full potential at school – or socially. ’As a youngster, not wanting to exacerbate an already difficult home life, Priya simply downplayed her own achievements. ‘As an adult, I’m still terrified people will think I’m showing off if I do well.’

            When those around us voice displeasure at our achievements, we may undermine our successes to avoid their criticism or unease. This is when our inner saboteur is particularly active, preventing us from achieving success so we don’t have to face the subsequent pressure of delivering or performing. Or the discomfort of our friends, family and colleagues.

            ‘Success – and the change it brings – can be tremendously stressful,’ says Sebastian Bailey, a UK psychologist. When we think about committing to a new relationship, abandoning a toxic friendship or accepting a promotion at work, we move into the ‘change curve’ zone. After the initial ego boost or relief we start to think ‘this is serious’ and focus on what or how we will have to change. ‘At this point, we may start to behave in ways that will make that transition less likely to happen,’ Bailey points out. These self-destructive tactics needn’t be extreme. Seemingly innocuous behaviour, such as frequently losing our keys so that we’re late for work, blowing the budget on something unnecessary so we have to abort our holiday plans, or giving up on an exercise plan so we can continue bemoaning those extra kilograms, can be just as damaging to our goals. It keeps us in the emotional space to which we are accustomed.

            The good news is that, once we are aware of our self-sabotaging behaviour, we can take steps to alter the way we operate.

Victoria Hoban; Psychologies Magazine June/July 2008; Issue No 8

The Mystery of Silence - by Malcolm Worsely

Silence is a multi-faceted phenomenon. It is a form of communication, although not all silences are the same nor do they have the same meaning. The silence experienced by a deaf person is very different from the two minutes silence on a Commemorative occasion.

 A silent loving hug is very different from the manipulative silence of marital disharmony. A silence of realisation in a counselling room is very different from the silence in a Library. The silence between the Lightning bolt and Thunder is very different from the silent gesture of a raised eyebrow. The silence of a spiritual retreat is very different from the silent railway carriage banning the use of mobile phones.

As I get older I am increasingly aware of the power of counselling to bring healing and hope for a variety of problems and to a wide ranging group of people. Yet the power within counselling remains something of a mystery. Body language can give us clues about how a person is experiencing the counselling process and the spoken responses an indication of their thinking. Yet even in Christian Counselling, we are never quite certain what God might be doing, yet we know that in the stillness and quietness of a therapeutic silence, something quite profound can be happening. In some parts of the wider and Universal Church these are sometimes referred to as Holy Mysteries. God moments, for which there is no tangible or obvious explanation, yet in the stillness of that moment, His presence is deeply apparent.

Silences in counselling have always intrigued me and I often wonder whether there is such a thing as absolute silence? By that I mean, not just a lack of sound but the complete absence of thought and activity too. Such is my fascination with silence that over the years I have collected a variety of quotes and sound bites, which you will find scattered throughout this article. Dictionary definitions, describe silence as; The condition or quality of being or keeping still and silent; The absence of sound; stillness. It isn’t surprising that most definitions of silence also include stillness. In Psalm 46 God tells us to, ‘Be still’, and in a book I read many years ago, I have this quote from Mother Teresa written down at the back of my Bible - We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature, trees, flowers, grass grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls.

 Yet I can remember a time in my own life when I found silences to be quite threatening, and often related to the acute loneliness I felt at the time. Silence to me then, meant the absence of family, friends, companionship and support. They were deep, painful silences, devoid of any meaning, value or sense of belonging. I suppose, looking back, what made these silences worse, was the total lack of empathy from those dealing with me. That lack of understanding made the silence seem deeper and darker and almost compelled me to lose myself and hide in my own internal shadows. I not only felt alone in my outer world, but in my inner world too.

There is a well-known American quotation; Silence is a text easy to misread.  In family life, in the work place and in social situations I have my own collection of misread silences, all of them showing a complete lack, of both understanding and empathy! Yet in the counselling room, I have experienced, within the power of silence, that profound moment when words would have no meaning. Another quotation I wrote down was this one by Mark Twain; The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence which often achieves a desired affect where no combination of words, however so felicitous could accomplish it.

 One of the more difficult aspects of counselling for me, has been in achieving accurate empathy within the stillness of silence. Sometimes within the Holy Mysteries of the church, amid all the flourish of denominational activity, it is in, ‘the still small voice’, where God’s revelation is heard and responded to. So it is in counselling. Many years ago I remember reading an analysis of one of Carl Roger’s counselling sessions, and was surprised by how much silence it contained – something like 60% of the session if my memory serves me right.

It spoke volumes to me about the level of empathy he was working at, and challenged me to strive for a higher skill base. Noting the age old saying of, ‘first do no harm’, I set about trying to understand empathy at a deeper level only to discover that I could not separate empathy from genuineness. So rather than starting to work at improving my empathy levels with other people, it seemed that the Lord was wanting me to start with myself! Isn’t it ironic how God uses all resources to get us moving in the right direction. I was reading through a booklet by Elisabeth Küblar-Ross, when I came across the following words; Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose!

I have often reflected on that moment. ‘Be still and know that I am God’. If I thought achieving a deeper level of accurate empathy was going to be difficult, testing my genuineness proved even more challenging. I discovered that I had many securities outside my faith in God, and that sometimes I needed them more than I needed God! I had my own internal laws and values, my own way of doing things. I had, ‘No Go’ areas and sets of rules that it was OK to compromise on. I was a judgemental mess! Yet in the stillness and quietness of the next few painful soul searching months, I learned that genuineness was more about inner honesty than inner perfection. It was about being the real me, being open, being honest, being sincere in all I did and said – being vulnerable, having the grace to show transparency.

The bench mark couldn’t have been higher, yet God gave all of us in the Philippi Trust the ground rules for good therapeutic relationships in the Philippi Charter, Philippians 2:1-5.

For me, the key to a good counselling process was not so much in trying to understand the emotion within the silence, but in trying to catch the changing emotions, and then staying with them on the counselling journey. Alfred Adler summarised empathy like this; Seeing with the eye of another, listening with the ears of another and feeling with the heart of another. Sometimes my empathic journey into the world of another person, encountered strange and challenging scenario’s.

I remember being invited to Northern Ireland to help with the counselling of Church leaders, one week after the Omagh Bombing in 1998. It was a profound and painful journey into a level of grief that I still struggle to fully comprehend. Carl Rogers, offers this reflection when he says: In some sense it means that you lay aside yourself and this can only be done by a person who is secure enough in himself that he knows he will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and can comfortably return to his own world when he wishes.

Standing on the Omagh Bridge, surrounded by wreaths and flowers, prior to beginning the first group counselling session, I was struck by the sheer weight of pain that was tangible in the atmosphere. Even in the sombre business of passing cars, lorries and buses, the silence was profound.

Yes, there was a stillness, and yes there was a silence, but it was a stillness and a silence in turmoil. There were fourteen ministers of all denominations united in their grief and bewilderment. They sat silently, heads bowed, the anguish clearly visible as they raised their heads to look up and I couldn’t think of a word to say to them. I felt completely out of my depth and there was a fear that I might even make matters worse. The silence in that room, although painful, had a unity to it and in the stillness there was a sense of mutual comfort. This was one of the silences that challenged me and increased my interest in the mystery of silence. I was confronted with Post Traumatic Stress and these Ministers needed an opportunity to, tell their story.  Secular counselling was to be made available, yet convincing Northern Ireland Ministers that this would be the best route was the challenge. It seemed to question their belief in the sufficiency and supremacy of God. Yet they recognised that in the turmoil there were occasions when even the most devout Christians needed the services of the Fire Department, the Police and the Ambulance service. This was one of those occasions. Between them they had conducted the funeral services of twenty nine men, women and children and offered pastoral support and counselling to the extended families of all the victims and were still providing regular visits to the two hundred and twenty injured. In that room in Omagh, on that day, the silence was overwhelming. It was a profound silence, yet alive with Holy, comforting, healing activity.

I recognise too, that in recent years I have experienced that same bewildering silence on a global scale; the Twin Towers (2001) as well as the Tsunami’s in Indonesia (2004) and in Japan (March 2011). There was no place for words and no opportunity for action just a stunned silence that swept across many nations, and sometimes silence is all we have and all we need. It is one of the mysteries of the power of silence that remains with me, and still challenges me today. Negative silences can be cruel and destructive, yet within the power of a positive silence so much can be said without even speaking a word. It reminds me that when it comes to empathy, we have a God and Father who is not only in our world, but a living part of it and forever active within the silence of the moment. Be still and know . . . . . .

By Malcolm Worsley