How I Beat My Self-Sabotage

For the past few months, I have been experiencing an almost insurmountable amount of resistance to completing my work. To write. To fulfill client deliverables. I work to earn money for myself. My inner voice told me I was lazy. That I was no good anyway. That none of it mattered. Or that it wasn’t even a big deal, I would do it tomorrow. But I never would do it tomorrow. Or the next day.

I began scheduling my work time just before client meetings so I had a time factor to getting shit done, waiting until I had virtually no other choice but to force myself to work. I would cope with the resistance I felt by self-sabotaging. By eating or scrolling for hours on social media or lying in bed doing absolutely nothing, a creeping sense of dread and anxiety slowly bubbles up in my body. The guilt, the shame, the frustration. Yesterday, just as I was in a k-hole cope on TikTok and practically by divine intervention, I came across this video:

Self-sabotage is actually self-protection when a part of us that doesn’t want to change feels threatened or unseen by the part that does want to change something. Resolving that war with ourselves involves letting that reluctant part of us be safely seen, heard, and accepted by the part that resists it. — Luci Lampe

I watched it again. And again. Slowly processing this new information. My self-sabotage, my avoidance, my self-betrayal, was all actually a means of self-protection? What?? All of the time I have spent beating myself up and banging my head against a wall was because I’m just trying to protect myself? From what exactly?

I decided to drop in. And what I found was a typical impostor syndrome at first. I wasn’t writing my client’s landing page because I didn’t think I was good enough to. I didn’t think I could; I thought my work was stupid and bad. Who was I to draft a landing page? I thanked this part of myself for showing me this feeling and then referenced all the success I had helped my clients achieve in the past, assuaging this insecurity and feelings of inadequacy.

But then I got deeper. This part of myself expressed that for the first time in my life, I was truly on my own. Now, I have had my own consultancy for over two years, but for the first time, I found myself in a place where I wasn’t repeating the relationship dynamics I had with my mother in my work environment. I had done the work and finally eradicated all the narcissistic women from my work life, a recurring pattern that had haunted me since I began working. Now, I was no longer fueled by validation, by earning love, by the fear of what would happen if I didn’t perform. I was on my own and had nobody to work for. I was lost and I was scared. Who would even love me if I fulfilled these tasks? How do I get love now? This part of me asked.

I began to cry. I held space for myself to release and to feel my emotions. I thanked myself for sharing and for being open and vulnerable. I allowed myself to just experience everything my body was telling me without shame. Only compassion, as you would a young child. And then I replied:

“Morgan. We are loving ourselves now. We are undertaking this work because it will generate revenue for us. When we work now, we do it out of love for ourselves. Working and earning money is an act of self-love. Because we are free and freedom is the best thing. Gone are the days of being fueled by fear, of having someone else control us, of sourcing love outside of ourselves. I love you. Thank you so much for sharing that with me.”

Normally, after a breakthrough like this, I would have called my best friend to share my experience with her. I do this in part to share, but in part to continue resisting. Instead, I opened the document I had started and began writing. I felt in flow, super focused, no underlying anxiety or urge to check my phone. Just natural and confident.

I know this is going to be a muscle I will need to build. And I also know that this comes at a time when I am already targeting this issue in RTT Therapy. However, this massive breakthrough, this experience with my inner self, feels like a major catalyst for steering the ship in a different direction (especially considering I've written this entire blog after a five-month absence). The next time I catch myself engaging in self-sabotage, I now know to drop in, talk to it, explore and experience the feelings I'm ignoring, and reconnect with my flow in love.

Being raised by a narcissistic parent, we learn to ignore our feelings, to stuff them down, and do whatever we need to in order to earn love. Learning how to be in a relationship with ourselves is the single most important thing to recovery and to living a happy, authentic life. The more we drop into our bodies, experience our feelings, and honor them, the more we are able to release them to make room for new feelings, new patterns, and a new person of our choosing—and this is the true key to self-mastery.