Freedom From Self-Sabotage Page 9
We can ask new questions when we apply the concept of co-creation to the circumstances of our life. For instance: “How have I contributed to this situation in which I am feeling neglected (or deprived, controlled, betrayed)? What is my role in this situation in which I want to believe I’m an innocent victim? Am I involved with this person (or this situation) in order to recreate and suffer once more with an issue that is unresolved in me?”
As we plunge deeper into these questions, the concept of co-creation challenges us to consider that we create, maintain, and reinforce sensations and experiences that are harmful and self-defeating. “Why would I be doing something that is harmful to me?” we keep asking. “It doesn’t make sense.”
We need to challenge the notion that we are simply passive recipients of what we experience. We expose the distorted impressions and deductions we make inside us about what is happening around us. When we create emotional reactions to external stimuli, we form conclusions that can diverge greatly from the reality of what is happening. These conclusions can produce fixed negative messages and expectations about us and others. As children and as adults, we process the “facts” we perceive according to highly subjective interpretations.
Understanding co-creation enables us to become responsible for our experiences, helps us to overcome inner passivity, and helps to avoid self-sabotage. Here is an example.
George, a dentist, was a client who had a tendency to drink heavily at social events or parties. He said he needed alcohol in order to “come alive” and really enjoy himself. However, before these evenings had run their course, he frequently became obnoxious or got sick from drinking too much. The next day George would often have forgotten much of what took place at the party, and his wife would complain that his conduct had embarrassed her. “I don’t want people to see me as a drunk,” he said earnestly. “I want to be able to drink and not go over the edge with it.”
I asked him, “How would you feel if you went to a party having decided not to drink?”
“Well, it hasn’t happened for years. But I can tell you—I get bored. I look at them and see the same old faces and hear the same old small talk. I’ve heard it all before. I’m not good at it. Just let me go home, I say to myself, and watch TV.”
I told him, “I want to show you how you contribute to creating that impression that the people are boring. As a child, you picked up your father’s insecurity and lack of self-respect. As you’ve told me, your father felt like a nobody—insignificant and worthless. He would drink and became a show-off and a showboat around others to compensate for that feeling. Well, George, you have some of that in you. When you go to a social event, you are steeped in the feeling that you’ll be seen as boring and insignificant unless you make a big splash and become the center of attention. But by drinking and becoming obnoxious, you become like your father and create the feeling of being a fool, which is the way you expect to be seen—the same way you saw your father.
“When you don’t drink, you believe the problem is that the people you are with are boring and insignificant. You are seeing them as you really expect to be seen—as boring and insignificant—and as how you see yourself. The solution is, first, to acknowledge your attachment to the feeling of being seen in this negative manner; second, to get in touch with your feelings of having seen your father exhibit in this negative way and the emotional effect it had on you; third, to see that you are subjecting others to the same foolishness that you were subjected to, in order to identify with their shame and embarrassment; and, fourth, to understand that regarding yourself as an insignificant fool blocks you from seeing your authentic self and appreciating and loving who you are.”
As another example of co-creation, Tom and Grace are trying to help their nine-year-old daughter, Sally, with her homework. Sally interprets their intervention as an indication that she isn’t smart enough to do it on her own. She feels bad about herself and resists cooperating with them. Tom and Grace genuinely have Sally’s best interests at heart and hope she will benefit from their helpfulness. Unconsciously, however, she resists experiencing the situation from that perspective. She perceives “help” as an indication that she is inadequate, that her parents must intervene because she is lacking in intelligence.
Sally is not aware of her secret willingness to be judged negatively. She makes a subliminal claim-to-power defense: “I cause them to have to come to my rescue because I’m not smart enough.” She accepts the “fact” that she is not smart enough for the purpose of covering up her passive affinity for seeing herself as defective or unworthy.
In accepting her parents’ help, Sally feels that something unpleasant is being done to her by them. She feels acted upon and slips into a deeper passivity. She may then begin to react passive-aggressively in other situations (replying caustically, being late, and procrastinating on chores) under circumstances that baffle her parents. By resisting their help, she also fails to assimilate the lessons of her homework, and thus sabotages herself in this way. This pattern of passive-aggressively resisting help, based on her subjective interpretation of inadequacy, is likely to be played out in her adult life, particularly in how she is apt to resist the support and love of others.
Sally is receiving and interpreting her parents help as an indication of her inadequacy, while her parents are offering their help without being aware of their daughter’s reaction. Two intersecting points of view are happening simultaneously in an interactive dance. This is co-creation, not cause and effect. Were Sally to see this, she would have the option to come into harmony with the experience of being helped and make it work to her benefit.
Understanding co-creation helps us to respond in a healthy way, rather than a self-defeating way, to even the most challenging situations. If something or someone affects us, we are allowing it to affect us, whether positively or negatively, consciously or unconsciously. We react emotionally to stimuli from our own psychological issues. We feel controlled (or deprived, rejected, criticized, and so on) in a given situation based on our willingness to feel controlled. Thus, we are co-creators in our emotional and behavioral experiences rather than passive recipients of what life or people dish out.
Cause-and-effect thinking leads us to conclude that our negative feelings and self-defeating actions are justified by difficult external challenges or conditions. Or we may deduce that, indeed, we are to blame for our self-defeat, yet still misunderstand the problem. For instance, we might attribute the problem to our physical, personality, or character flaws when, in fact, such “flaws” are being highlighted by our defense system to cover up our deeper problem of lingering attachments to unresolved negative emotions.
Cause-and-effect thinking is revealed in statements such as, “He hurt me by staying away” and “You offended me with that remark.” When we understand co-creation we might say instead, “I see that I’m feeling hurt and offended by his actions. These negative feelings come from within me,” or “I can see by my negative reaction that I’m allowing myself to be offended by his remark.” Our negative reaction to a given situation is within our power to regulate, especially when we see and understand how our reaction covers up our secret willingness to be hurt, offended, or otherwise victimized.
Quick to Feel Provoked
A cartoon shows a man sitting down for a job interview. The interviewer says with a neutral expression, “Your resume says that you’ve filed lawsuits against all your former employers. Is that true?” The man answers with a reproachful look, “Are you trying to upset me?” We laugh at the joke because this touchy fellow is so foolishly blind to his self-sabotage. We often laugh at someone’s obvious idiocy because the spectacle provides a momentary reprieve from inner accusations of our own shortcomings: “He’s the fool—not me!”
All of us feel provoked by challenging circumstances. I’m reminded of an incident years ago when I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and was more prone to self-sabotage. A man muttering angrily to himself trudged diagonally across the street
in front of me, requiring me to brake my vehicle and wait for him to pass. His rumpled, distracted agitation suggested he might be making his way from the nearby police station. Instead of looking away as he crossed in front of me, or at least maintaining a neutral expression, I caught his eye and shook my head in disgust. He swore at me and kicked the passenger door of my SUV as he went by, leaving a small dent that, to give it the best spin, enabled me on many occasions to recollect the incident for helpful self-reflection.
Why did I get triggered by this man and shake my head in scorn? In childhood I was tormented with doubt about my value as a person. I was convinced my mother and father frequently viewed me with disappointment and scorn. I often got “hit up” with impressions of being looked at with disgust and was burdened with the shame of being seen as defective and bad. Consequently, I tended to judge others in a similar way, just as, through my inner critic or superego, I would harshly see and treat myself.
I wasn’t the innocent victim of a car-kicker. The man wouldn’t have done it without the participation of my unresolved negative emotions. Through the awareness of co-creation, we understand our role and collusion in self-sabotage. We can take more responsibility for personal, national, and world problems.
Co-creation, along with unrecognized inner passivity, was at play in the following situation. A client told me once how resentful she felt toward her husband. “I’m furious at him,” she said. “In lots of little ways he likes to be in charge. We bicker about how to decorate the house, even how to park the car, do the dishes, and take out the garbage. When he gives his opinion, I feel I have to resist. So much of my attention revolves around how he thinks and feels about what I do.”
“Let’s look at your part in this,” I replied. “Begin to monitor and to observe how you experience this situation through the feeling of being acted upon by him. Although he too has issues and can be provoking, you’re still the one who experiences him as a restricting, controlling influence. You do that because, emotionally, you’re ready to take on that feeling at any opportunity. While you say you hate that feeling, you still cooperate in the process whereby you and he have this dynamic together. You vigorously cover up that willingness to feel controlled through your anger toward him and through your resistance to cooperating with him or seeing his point of view. Ultimately, your anger is a defense against your attachment to feeling controlled, meaning your anger is produced to cover up your willingness to ‘take a hit’ on feeling controlled.
“If you didn’t have the attachment to feeling controlled,” I continued, “his attempts to be controlling or dominating would not trigger you. You would stay calm. It would be like dropping the rope in a tug-of-war. No longer would you be interested in playing that game of who’s going to control and who’s going to submit. Soon he would stop his inappropriate behavior because you would not engage him at that unhealthy level of discourse or feed into it.”
Another client, Tom, also began to understand how his self-sabotage was co-created through his inner passivity. His frequent angry outbursts revolved around feelings of being controlled and dominated by others, especially at work. He also felt held back and restricted. He went to his department-store job five minutes late one morning and saw the manager looking at him from a distance. Tom hurried off in the other direction, fearful he would get angry and defensive if the manager approached him. Later in the day Tom fumed with stifled rage when the manager told him that the day off Tom requested had been denied.
I said to Tom, “Your anger is a direct reaction to the feelings you take on of being passive to someone like your boss. You are attached to an emotional impression of being controlled by him and at his mercy, and your feelings of anger are designed to cover up and protest against this attachment.
“Meanwhile, your inner passivity, meaning in this case your unconscious willingness to feel constrained and controlled, leads to self-sabotage. It makes your job precarious and more unpleasant. Your defensive or aggressive reactions to feeling controlled could certainly get you in trouble with your boss. As well, you will feel this inner passivity in other areas, with your wife and friends. As you’ve said, you feel it when you’re stuck waiting in traffic or in a line at the supermarket. All the while, you want desperately, as a defense, to believe that your impatience and other negative reactions are justified by the trying circumstances in which you find yourself.”
“I don’t know any other way to feel,” he snapped. “What am I supposed to do? Kiss their butts?”
“Just be aware that a part of you jumps in and takes on feelings of being held back and controlled. Try to observe that part. Stand back from it and see it like a software program in a computer. It’s an unsatisfactory program but you keep running it. You are attached to the feeling of being controlled, so you have an unconscious willingness to play this program and thereby to keep experiencing the feeling of being controlled. Just see your part in this. Make it as conscious as you can.”
In understanding co-creation, we discover how our unconscious mind can work against our best interests. We begin to explore pertinent questions such as: “Why did I do that? What was the underlying feeling? Where did that feeling come from? What’s my real motive for wanting this? What am I secretly holding on to? How am I feeling about myself? How am I mistreating and limiting myself?”
Inner Passivity’s All-Consuming Embrace
Passive-aggressive behaviors often produce self-sabotage. These are behaviors in which we passively withhold our cooperation or seek in other ways, often unconsciously, to frustrate the person or situation to which we are reacting. These include forgetting to do what was promised, being persistently late, delaying with excuses, acting stupidly or incompetently, retaliating in subtle ways, holding grudges, making sarcastic comments, declining to say yes or no, displaying ambivalence, making poor decisions, and refraining from expressing our needs and expectations. We might obligingly tell someone, “Oh yes, I’ll take care of it, I’ll do it.” However, in being unaware that we are producing inner feelings of being controlled or pressured, we conveniently forget our pledge.
Passive-aggressive behaviors have their roots in inner passivity. More signs of this inner passivity include:
1) Feeling oppressed or persecuted by someone or something;
2) Feeling we have to comply with the requests of others or agree with their opinions;
3) Believing our independent thoughts, feelings, or behaviors will be disapproved of by others;
4) Allowing ourselves to be emotionally or financially dependent on others;
5) Feeling helpless and defeated;
6) Saying yes when we want to say no; enduring situations without taking action;
7) Borrowing someone else’s belief system rather than making our own assessment of reality; assuming external authority knows more than we do (this surrendering to authority makes it easier to overlook or rationalize unethical or corrupt behaviors, as well as to be less responsible for our own behaviors and attitudes);
8) Being swayed by political polls and tempted to follow the crowd; or believing the worst of others without proof, and thus being influenced by gossip and negative political advertising campaigns; believing naively that others have our best interests at heart and have no self-interest;
9) Envying others; feeling passive to their material accumulations or accomplishments;
10) Expecting the police, the government, or other authorities to solve all our problems;
11) Relying on others to inspire us or push us into action;
12) Giving undue authority to certain groups or adopting extreme ideological positions;
13) Taking as fact the false promises of loved ones (“I’ll take care of you forever,” or “I’ll never do that again,” or “I’ll stop drinking for good starting next week”), or believing the empty promises we make to ourselves (to exercise more, eat less, and regulate alcohol consumption);
14) Feeling confused about what we want in life and in what directio
n we should go.
Much of our self-sabotage is a result of this passivity, which incorporates our (unconscious) giving of consent to being intimidated, controlled, unduly influenced, held back, restrained, made to wait, thwarted, and having to endure. The chronic feeling of helplessness is an aspect of passivity. Avoidance is often a symptom of passivity. So are rash decisions made out of inappropriate anger, which are actions that outwardly appear aggressive but are based in passivity. Blaming is a form of inner passivity because it declines to step up to the plate and take personal responsibility for some situation. An entitlement attitude, when it sabotages one’s potential, is also passive.
Both men and women have issues with inner passivity, although styles of passivity can differ along gender lines. As a generalization, men are more likely to indulge in feelings of what they may lose (status, skills, virility), while women are more tempted to resort to feelings of missing out on something (participation, romance, love). In a wider sense, passivity is a consequence of our emotional attachments to feeling loss, deprival, refusal, rejection, and criticism. It is also an expression of our difficulty in orienting ourselves in the world without something to react against or something to oppose.
Ultimately, inner passivity is a negation of our own self—of our authority, power, perspectives, ideas, and visions. It is a major block to self-actualization.
Unaware of our underlying passivity, we often point to aggression as the cause of our problem. For example, it is popular to believe that domestic violence is caused by aggression and rage. But what prompts the aggression and rage? Self-hatred, passivity, and a sense of victimization contaminate the psyche of both the recipient of the violence and the perpetrator. A typical perpetrator in domestic-violence cases is a male who believes, ironically, that he is the one being victimized and abused by his spouse or girlfriend, his children, and life in general. He believes his partner, his children, and others don’t understand him, don’t respect him enough, and make too many demands on him (mirroring how he feels about himself). He holds them accountable for his frustration, anger, sense of helplessness, and powerlessness. In acting out his violent reactions, he unconsciously identifies with his partner’s feelings of being violated, reduced, and negated, feelings that he himself is secretly attached to. In other words, his violence is a reaction to, and a symptom of, his own entanglement in passive feelings such as worthlessness and helplessness. Considering that most abusers were themselves abused as children, he imposes on his partner the mistreatment he received as a child, recreating through her the helplessness of being at the mercy of the cruel, demeaning other and the pain of being treated with utter contempt. Inwardly, he abuses himself through self-rejection and self-hatred.