Chapter 1: The Mountain is You -- Brianna Wiest

THE MOUNTAIN IS YOU
THERE IS NOTHING HOLDING you back in life more than yourself.
If there is an ongoing gap between where you are and where you want to be
—and your efforts to close it are consistently met with your own resistance,
pain, and discomfort—self-sabotage is almost always at work.
On the surface, self-sabotage seems masochistic. It appears to be a product
of self-hatred, low confidence, or a lack of willpower. In reality, self-
sabotage is simply the presence of an unconscious need that is being
fulfilled by the self-sabotaging behavior. To overcome this, we must go
through a process of deep psychological excavation. We must pinpoint the
traumatic event, release unprocessed emotions, find healthier ways to meet
our needs, reinvent our self-image, and develop principles such as
emotional intelligence and resilience.
It is no small task, and yet it is the work that all of us must do at one point
or another.
SELF-SABOTAGE IS NOT ALWAYS
OBVIOUS AT THE ONSET
When Carl Jung was a child, he fell on the ground in school and hit his
head. When he got hurt, he thought to himself: “Yes, maybe I won’t have to
go back to school now.”3
Though he is known today for his insightful body of work, he actually
didn’t like school or fit in well with his peers. Shortly after his accident,
Jung began experiencing sporadic and uncontrollable fainting spells. He
unconsciously developed what he would call a “neurosis” and ultimately
came to realize that all neuroses are “substitute[s] for legitimate suffering.”In Jung’s case, he made an unconscious association between fainting and
getting out of school. He came to believe that the fainting spells were a
manifestation of his unconscious desire to get out of class, where he felt
uncomfortable and unhappy. Likewise, for many people, their fears and
attachments are very often just symptoms of deeper issues for which they
do not have any better way to cope.
SELF-SABOTAGE IS
A COPING MECHANISM
Self-sabotage is what happens when we refuse to consciously meet our
innermost needs, often because we do not believe we are capable of
handling them.
Sometimes, we sabotage our relationships because what we really want is to
find ourselves, though we are afraid to be alone. Sometimes, we sabotage
our professional success because what we really want is to create art, even
if it will make us seem less ambitious by society’s measures. Sometimes,
we sabotage our healing journey by psychoanalyzing our feelings, because
doing so ensures we avoid actually experiencing them. Sometimes, we
sabotage our self-talk because if we believed in ourselves, we’d feel free to
get back out in the world and take risks, and that would leave us vulnerable.
In the end, self-sabotage is very often just a maladaptive coping
mechanism, a way we give ourselves what we need without having to
actually address what that need is. But like any coping mechanism, it is just
that — a way to cope. It’s not an answer, it’s not a solution, and it does not
ever truly solve the problem. We are merely numbing our desires, and
giving ourselves a little taste of temporary relief.
SELF-SABOTAGE COMES FROM
IRRATIONAL FEAR
Sometimes, our most sabotaging behaviors are really the result of long-held
and unexamined fears we have about the world and ourselves.Perhaps it is the idea that you are unintelligent, unattractive, or disliked.
Perhaps it is the idea of losing a job, taking an elevator, or committing to a
relationship. In other cases, it can be more abstract, such as the concept of
someone “coming to get” you, violating your boundaries, getting “caught,”
or being wrongly accused.
These beliefs become attachments over time.
For most people, the abstract fear is really a representation of a legitimate
fear. Because it would be too scary to actually dwell on the real fear, we
project those feelings onto issues or circumstances that are less likely to
occur. If the situation has an extremely low likelihood of becoming reality,
it therefore becomes a “safe” thing to worry about, because subconsciously,
we already know it isn’t going to happen. Therefore, we have an avenue to
express our feelings without actually endangering ourselves.
For example, if you are someone who is deeply afraid of being a passenger
in a car, maybe your real fear is the loss of control or the idea that someone
or something else is controlling your life. Perhaps the fear is of “moving
forward,” and the moving car is simply a representation of that.
If you were aware of the real issue, you could begin working to resolve it,
perhaps by identifying the ways you are giving up your power or being too
passive. However, if you aren’t aware of the real problem, you’ll continue
to spend your time trying to convince yourself to not be triggered and
anxious while riding in the car and find that it only gets worse.
If you try to fix the problem on the surface, you will always come up
against a wall. This is because you’re trying to rip off a Band-Aid before
you have a strategy to heal the wound.
SELF-SABOTAGE COMES FROM
UNCONSCIOUS, NEGATIVE
ASSOCIATIONSSelf-sabotage is also one of the first signs that your inner narrative is
outdated, limiting, or simply incorrect.
Your life is defined not only by what you think about it, but also what you
think of yourself. Your self-concept is an idea that you have spent your
whole life building. It was created by piecing together inputs and influences
from those around you: what your parents believed, what your peers
thought, what became self-evident through personal experience, and so on.
Your self-image is difficult to adjust, because your brain’s confirmation bias
works to affirm your preexisting beliefs about yourself.
When we self-sabotage, it is often because we have a negative association
between achieving the goal we aspire to and being the kind of person who
has or does that thing.
If your issue is that you want to be financially stable, and yet you keep
ruining every effort you make to get there, you have to go back to your first
concept of money. How did your parents manage their finances? More
importantly, what did they tell you about people who had it and people who
didn’t? Many people who struggle financially will justify their place in life
by disavowing money as a whole. They will say that all rich people are
terrible. If you grew up with people who told you your entire life that
people who have money are this way, guess what you’re going to resist
having?
Your anxiety around the issue that you’re self-sabotaging is usually a
reflection of your limiting belief.
Maybe you associate being healthy with being vulnerable, because you had
a parent who was perfectly healthy when they suddenly fell ill. Maybe you
aren’t writing your magnum opus because you don’t really want to write;
you just want to be seen as “successful” because that will get you praise,
which is typically what people revert to when they want acceptance but
haven’t gotten it. Maybe you keep eating the wrong foods because they
soothe you, but you haven’t stopped to ask what they have to keep soothing
you from. Maybe you aren’t really a pessimist but don’t know how to
connect with the people in your life other than by complaining to them.In order to reconcile this, you have to begin to challenge these preexisting
ideas and then adopt new ones.
You have to be able to recognize that not everybody with money is corrupt,
not by a long shot. Even more importantly, given that there are people who
use their money in selfish ways, it is even more important that good people
with great intentions are fearless in pursuit of acquiring this essential tool to
create more time, opportunity, and wellness for themselves and others. You
have to recognize that being healthy makes you less vulnerable, not more,
and that criticism comes with creating anything for the public and isn’t a
reason to not do it. You have to show yourself that there are many different
ways to self-soothe that are more effective than unhealthy food choices and
that there are far better ways to connect with others than through negativity.
Once you begin to really question and observe these preexisting beliefs, you
begin to see how warped and illogical they were all along—not to mention
distinctly holding you back from your ultimate potential.
SELF-SABOTAGE COMES FROM
WHAT’S UNFAMILIAR
Human beings experience a natural resistance to the unknown, because it is
essentially the ultimate loss of control. This is true even if what’s
“unknown” is benevolent or even beneficial to us.
Self-sabotage is very often the simple product of unfamiliarity, and it is
because anything that is foreign, no matter how good, will also be
uncomfortable until it is also familiar. This often leads people to confuse the
discomfort of the unknown with being “wrong” or “bad” or “ominous.”
However, it is simply a matter of psychological adjustment.
Gay Hendricks calls this your “upper limit,” or your tolerance for
happiness.4 Everyone has a capacity for which they allow themselves to feel
good. This is similar to what other psychologists refer to as a person’s“baseline,” or their set predisposition that they eventually revert back to,
even if certain events or circumstances shift temporarily.
Small shifts, compounded over time, can result in permanent baseline
adjustments. However, they often don’t stick because we come up on our
upper limits. The reason we don’t allow those shifts to become baselines is
because as soon as our circumstances extend beyond the amount of
happiness we’re accustomed to, we find ways both conscious and
unconscious to bring ourselves back to a feeling we’re comfortable with.
We are programmed to seek what we’ve known. Even though we think
we’re after happiness, we’re actually trying to find whatever we’re most
used to.
SELF-SABOTAGE COMES
FROM BELIEF SYSTEMS
What you believe about your life is what you will make true about your life.
That’s why it’s so crucial to be aware of these outdated narratives and have
the courage to change them.
Maybe you have gone through the majority of your life believing that a
standard $50K per year salary at a decent company is the most you’ll ever
be capable of. Maybe you’ve spent so many years telling yourself: “I am an
anxious person,” you started to actually identify with it, adopting anxiety
and fear into your belief system about who you fundamentally are. Maybe
you were raised in a closed-minded social circle or an echo chamber.
Maybe you did not know that you could question or arrive at new
conclusions about politics or religion. Maybe you never thought you were
someone who could have great style, feel content, or travel the world.
In other cases, your limiting beliefs might come from wanting to keep
yourself safe.Maybe that’s why you prefer the comfort of what you’ve known to the
vulnerability of what you don’t, why you prefer apathy to excitement, think
that suffering makes you more worthy, or believe that for every good thing
in life, there must also be an accompanying “bad.”
To truly heal, you are going to have to change the way you think. You are
going to have to become very conscious of negative and false beliefs and
start shifting to a mindset that actually serves you.
HOW TO GET OUT OF DENIAL
Maybe this preliminary information about self-sabotage resonates a bit, or
maybe it resonates a lot.
Either way, if you are here because you truly want to change your life, you
are going to have to stop being in denial about your personal state of affairs.
You are going to have to get real with yourself. You are going to have to
decide that you love yourself too much to stop settling for less than what
you really deserve.
If you think that you could be doing better in life, you might be right.
If you think that there is more that you are here to accomplish, you might be
right.
If you think that you are not being your authentic self, you might be right.
It does not serve us to use endless affirmations to placate our true feelings
about where we are in our journey. When we do this, we start dissociating
and get stuck.
In an effort to “love ourselves,” we try to validate everything about who we
are. Yet those warm sentiments never quite seem to stick, only ever
temporarily numbing the discomfort. Why don’t they work? Because deep
down, we know we are not quite being who we want to be, and until we
accept this, we are never going to find peace.When we are in denial, we tend to go into “blame” mode. We look for
anyone or anything to explain why we are the way we are. Then we start
justifying. If you have to constantly—on a near daily basis—rationalize
why you’re unhappy about your life, you are not doing yourself any favors.
You are not getting any closer to creating the lasting change that you so
deeply desire.
The first step in healing anything is taking full accountability. It is no longer
being in denial about the honest truth of your life and yourself. It does not
matter what your life looks like on the outside; it is how you feel about it on
the inside. It is not okay to be constantly stressed, panicked, and unhappy.
Something is wrong, and the longer you try to “love yourself ” out of
realizing this, the longer you are going to suffer.
The greatest act of self-love is to no longer accept a life you are unhappy
with. It is to be able to state the problem plainly and in a straightforward
manner.
That is precisely what you need to do to continue truly uprooting your life
and transforming it. It is the first step towards real change.
Take a piece of paper and a pen, and write down everything you aren’t
happy with. Write down, very specifically, every single problem you face. If
you are struggling with finances, you need a very clear picture of what’s
wrong. Write down every debt, every bill, every asset, and every bit of
income. If you are struggling with self-image, write down exactly what you
dislike about yourself. If it is anxiety, write down everything that bothers or
upsets you.
You must first and foremost get out of denial and into clarity about what’s
really wrong. At this point, you have a choice: You can make peace, or you
can commit to changing. The lingering is what is keeping you stuck.
THE PATH BEGINS RIGHT
WHERE YOU ARE NOWIf you know that change needs to be made in your life, it is okay if you are
far away from your goal or if you cannot yet conceive how you will arrive.
It is okay if you are starting at the beginning.
It is okay if you are at rock bottom and cannot yet see your way through.
It is okay if you are at the foot of your mountain and have failed every time
you’ve tried to overcome it.
Rock bottom is very often where we begin on our healing journey. This is
not because we suddenly see the light, not because our worst days are
magically transmuted into some type of epiphany, and not because someone
saves us from our own madness. Rock bottom becomes a turning point
because it is only at that point that most people think: I never want to feel
this way again.
That thought is not just an idea. It is a declaration and a resolution. It is one
of the most life-changing things you can ever experience. It becomes the
foundation upon which you build everything else.
When you decide you truly do not ever want to feel a certain way again,
you set out on a journey of self-awareness, learning, and growth that has
you radically reinvent who you are.
In that moment, fault becomes irrelevant. You’re no longer mulling over
who did what or how you’ve been wronged. In that moment, only one thing
guides you, and it is this: No matter what it takes, I will never accept my life
getting to this point again.
Rock bottom isn’t a bad day. It doesn’t happen by chance. We only arrive at
rock bottom when our habits begin to compound upon one another, when
our coping mechanisms have spiraled so out of control that we can no
longer resist the feelings we were attempting to hide. Rock bottom is when
we are finally faced with ourselves, when everything has gone so wrong,
we are left to realize that there is only one common denominator through it
all.We must heal. We must change. We must choose to turn around so that we
will never feel this way again.
When we have a down day, we don’t think: I never want to feel this way
again. Why? Because it is not fun, but it’s also not unbearable. Mostly,
though, we are somewhat aware that small failures are a regular part of life;
we are imperfect but trying our best, and that vague discomfort will pass
eventually.
We don’t reach a breaking point because one or two things go wrong. We
reach a breaking point when we finally accept that the problem isn’t how
the world is; it is how we are. This is a beautiful reckoning to have. Ayodeji
Awosika describes his own like this: “You must find the purest, purest,
purest form of being fed up. Make it hurt. I literally screamed, ‘I’m not
going to fucking live like this anymore!’”
Human beings are guided by comfort. They stay close to what feels
familiar and reject what doesn’t, even if it’s objectively better for
them.
Be this as it is, most people do not actually change their lives until not
changing becomes the less comfortable option. This means that they do not
actually embrace the difficulty of altering their habits until they simply do
not have another choice. Staying where they are is not viable. They can no
longer even pretend that it is desirable in any way. They are, quite honestly,
less at rock bottom and more stuck between a rock that’s impinging on them
and an arduous climb out from beneath it.
If you really want to change your life, let yourself be consumed with rage:
not toward others, not with the world, but within yourself.
Get angry, determined, and allow yourself to develop tunnel vision with one
thing and one thing only at the end: that you will not go on as you are.
PREPARING FOR RADICAL CHANGEOne of the biggest reasons that people avoid doing important internal work
is that they recognize if they heal themselves, their lives will change—
sometimes drastically. If they come to terms with how unhappy they are, it
means that they will have to temporarily be more uncomfortable, ashamed,
or scared while they start all over.
Let’s be clear about something: To put an end to your self-sabotaging
behavior absolutely means that change is on the horizon.
Your new life is going to cost you your old one.
It’s going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense of direction.
It’s going to cost you relationships and friends.
It’s going to cost you being liked and understood.
It doesn’t matter.
The people who are meant for you are going to meet you on the other side.
You’re going to build a new comfort zone around the things that actually
move you forward. Instead of being liked, you’re going to be loved. Instead
of being understood, you’re going to be seen.
All you’re going to lose is what was built for a person you no longer are.
Remaining attached to your old life is the first and final act of self-sabotage,
and releasing it is what we must prepare for to truly be willing to see real
change.