(holisticlifenagivation.com)
 We sleep through an alarm, do something we know gets us fired from a job we wanted, or even behave in such a way that ruins a relationship you’ve been feeling really nourished by. Self-sabotage suggests that I do things to myself to destroy the good things that come my way. Once you understand the somatics of capacity you’ll see that this isn’t entirely true.  The greatest issue I see with self-sabotage is the shame. We feel bone-deep shame that we did something to ruin our joy, our potential goodness, or an opportunity we’ve been waiting for. But what if self-sabotage is really a way we intervene so as to not receive something we cannot handle? What if, without the self-sabotage, we experience burn out, illness, and dissociation? I’ve come to revere my self-sabotaging strategies instead of shaming and damning them. When I feel them coming on, or I witness them happening, I understand this as a signal. Just like with freeze and procrastination. The signal is: you don’t have capacity for what you want. And it’s with that truth I go to work tending to my capacity so that I can, eventually, receive what it is I think I want. Or I can be super humbled and realize that I don’t actually want it at all.  The first thing I want you to do is start seeing your procrastination or lack of motivation as a message from your body. A signal. An expression. Not a state. When it’s your state or your identity you cannot move out of it because you are attaching to it. “I’m a procrastinator” is a good example of this. You have labeled what is really a message from your body about your capacity as who you are. No bueno. When you understand that procrastination is freeze, and freeze is what the body does when it doesn’t know how to move excess energy, then you enter into a conversation. Your procrastination becomes a message that you’re overwhelmed. So try this right now. 1) Identify something that you’re avoiding or procrastinating doing. 2) Feel the tension in your body (the freeze) or the lifelessness/numbness (the collapse) when you think of this. 3) Put your hand over that place and say to it, as if it was a friend or a child, “You’re really overwhelmed right now and don’t have capacity to do this.” 4) Notice how it responds. What emotions, sensations, or movements emerge? 5) You can refer to the pillow practice in email #1, or just sit with whatever comes up. This is a simple practice to help you start relating to what’s really happening, somatically, underneath the behavior of procrastination.  Like the example I used in the first email: a car crash is a great place for freeze. I tense up as I watch the big hunk of metal barrel at my car because there’s nothing else I can do. Self-sabotage has a similar physiology. The approaching talk I’m going to give or the intimate relationship I’ve been waiting for that barrels its way toward me is too much for my body. I’m not ready for it. So instead of tending to myself, moving, acting, and expressing – my body begins to tense up. It is from this tension that self-sabotage emerges. And this is why it’s not about self-hatred, it’s about self protection. Your body is trying to get you out of the way of this thing coming toward you. The shame and confusion come from the fact that you “want” this thing. They come from this thing being “good”. So you must really hate yourself if you ruin good things, right? Nope. Good things also take time to be with. Good things also have a charge in the body. Good things also require capacity to receive. And when you lack that capacity, you’ll probably “self-sabotage”.  Capacity is the body’s ability to feel and metabolize sensations, stress hormones, and experiences. Capacity is based on your body’s ability to soften instead of constrict. It’s about your liver’s ability to remove excess adrenaline from your bloodstream. It’s about your blood sugar levels being stabilized so that you can meet stress from a calmer body, so that there is more room within you for things to move. When you lack capacity, you lack the ability to tolerate big sensations. Receiving good things like love, money, friendship, and even joy can be really sensational. These can create mania for someone who cannot regulate. These can also create shutdown for other bodies that fear it. But what is really being feared here? Defenselessness. A body living and developing in the tightness of freeze simply has little experience feeling openness. Receiving is an open posture. It’s a dropping of one’s guard. Understanding that what you want (desire) isn’t always congruent with your body’s ability to handle it (capacity) can be truly life changing. It was for me, at least. I have a whole podcast episode on it right here. Seeing self-sabotage as a gauge for where my capacity is to experience something has allowed a new relationship to myself, and for opportunities to emerge. I’m not taking opportunities from a desperate urgency anymore, nor am I wallowing in a spiral of shame for months after “fucking something up”. I’m just listening, understanding, and learning where my body is at and what it needs moment to moment.  I find, over and over again, when I relate to a part of myself that I formally despised I experience powerful transformation. This is true for both my relationship to myself and others. This audio exercise will guide you to get in touch with your self-sabotaging. To feel where it lives in your bones, and to begin holding it and speaking to it as a kind parent would to a child. See what emerges and takes form. Interested in going deeper? You can register here for the 90-minute webinar, where you can learn and practice moving through the freeze response. |