08/12/2026
I’ve never really liked the term "self-sabotage".
We use it so easily. We say we sabotage ourselves when we procrastinate on something important, shut down when we want connection, become anxious when things are actually going well, avoid something we deeply want, or react far more strongly than the situation seems to warrant.
But the more I work with the unconscious mind, the less the idea of "self-sabotage" makes sense to me.
Why would your mind deliberately work against you?
Usually, it isn't.
Very often, something in us is trying to protect us with an old strategy.
Something learned when we were younger, when we had fewer choices, and when safety, belonging, rejection or failure meant something very different to us than they do today.
The problem is that a strategy that once protected us can become completely inappropriate for the life we're living now.
Then something happens.
A conversation. A look. A situation at work. A feeling of being criticized or misunderstood. Something doesn't go as expected.
And suddenly we're not responding only to what is happening now.
An entire emotional history can enter the room.
This is why understanding ourselves intellectually isn't always enough.
We can know exactly where a pattern came from and still find ourselves caught in it before we've even realized what is happening.
This is the part I find fascinating.
What happens first?
Maybe it's a tightening in the chest.
A thought.
A change in breathing.
An urge to leave, fight, please, control, shut down or simply escape what we're feeling.
There is often a tiny window between feeling something and acting on it.
And that window matters.
In my work, I help people recognize these patterns earlier, understand what is underneath them, and discover that an old automatic response doesn't have to be the only response available.
And doing this work doesn't require perfection from the person helping others, either.
It requires awareness.
The willingness to meet our own shadow, recognize our own patterns, and take responsibility for what we do with them.
A reactive moment can show us something about ourselves that isn't particularly comfortable to see.
But maybe that's where some of the most important work begins.
Not in pretending it didn't happen.
Not in drowning in shame over it.
But in becoming curious about it.
What happened there? What was I protecting? What was I afraid of?
And eventually being able to say to that old part of ourselves:
"I understand why you're here.
But you don't have to decide what happens next."
That is the kind of healing I believe in.
Not becoming perfectly regulated. Not erasing anger, intensity, vulnerability, fear or contradiction until we become some sanitized version of a human being.
Just becoming aware enough that our oldest wounds don't have to keep making our newest decisions.
That's also why, in my work, I'm much less interested in judging a behavior than in understanding what is underneath it.
The anxiety. The craving. The inexplicable fear. The automatic reaction. The thing you keep doing even though another part of you wants something different.
Because a pattern is not necessarily a personality.
A defense is not an identity.
But once we can see our patterns more clearly, we become responsible for what we do with them.
That is where compassion and accountability meet.
And that is where real transformation begins.
