What if it's NOT your fault?

Knowing what I know now about how the nervous system works, the term self-sabotage REALLY irritates me. I used to get stuck in the self-hate loop of believing I was just constantly sabotaging myself. Not doing all the things I SHOULD be doing?.

Relating Self-Sabotage to Physical Ailments

???We?ve all heard the phrase ?our body is attacking itself" in illness - like antibodies attacking the thyroid for example. That our body is attacking the thyroid for some unknown and unidentifiable reason.

Well I call BS. Our body will never, EVER do anything to harm or damage itself. It?s ALWAYS working toward survival. So, if on the surface, it looks like self-attack, we need to dig deeper. We need to find what?s actually going on.

What if it?s actually our body sending soldiers to attack the foreign invaders in our thyroid - like the toxic load, the perfumes we spray on, the toxicity in the food we eat, the chemicals, the burden of not speaking our truth and so on. Maybe that?s what needs addressing, not the body?s natural defence system.

With me so far?

It?s kind of like saying the fire-fighters are responsible for the fire so let?s blame them and attack them. 

Madness?. And meanwhile the fire still rages.

The Heavy Weight of Guilt and Shame

So now, apply this concept to self-sabotage. Sitting on the couch instead of exercising, eating the cake instead of the apple, snapping at my partner for the tinies little things (poor guy!) - all things I used to beat myself up for. 

I "should-ed" all over myself, drowning in guilt and shame. Just the term self-sabotage alone is loaded with guilt and shame - can you feel how heavy that is?

No wonder I felt so exhausted and overwhelmed all the time! It was a constant burden.

Sound familiar?

Self Sabotage and the Nervous System

Remember how I said our body is never, ever, ever, full stop, no arguments, ever, doing anything to harm itself? I hope I?ve made that super clear!

My body wasn?t sabotaging me - it was protecting me. My nervous system was clinging to the familiar, even if that familiar place wasn?t genuinely helping me. Just like the soldiers protecting the thyroid from the invaders, or the fire fighters protecting us from the fire, my nervous system was protecting me from what it perceived as a threat.

Simply put - my nervous system was shot, so under stress that it was stuck in survival mode. And when the nervous system is stuck in survival mode, it will do whatever it can to survive. And to survive means avoiding threats and finding a way to feel safe. 

And survival is never wrong.

Ever.

?????????"When the nervous system is stuck in survival mode, it will do whatever it can to survive. And survival is never wrong."

Familiar Hell Over an Unfamiliar Heaven

The familiar is where we feel safe. And it felt familiar to me to be stressed, to be run down, to be exhausted, to be in this total state of overwhelm where the tiniest little things would set me off into this anger, this intense rage, or a total state of apathy where I just wanted to sit on the couch and do nothing instead of going for the walk. I intellectually knew it wasn?t good for me (hence the nasty self-sabotage talk) but my nervous system doesn?t run on intellect, it runs on basic survival mode, and it needed to feel safe. So it stayed in the familiar.

It was never self sabotage. It chose the familiar hell over the unfamiliar heaven.

A threat is anything unfamiliar. Which, for my nervous system, was things like peace, calm, self love, self nurture - that all felt foreign, it felt scary. Things that aren't familiar and unknown are scary right? This is how our nervous system operates.

So anytime that came about, it felt scary. My nervous system would push it aside and go back to what was familiar, which was stress, overwhelm, getting angry - all those familiar behaviours that I judged so harshly. 

Essentially, the basic principle I?d love for you to really understand, is our body never does anything to harm itself. It's a natural bodily function to respond in a way that keeps us safe, which might be behaviours that we deem not appropriate or unhealthy - but it's not self sabotage.

External Behaviours Are Just A Symptom

I don't beat myself up for the fact that my body digests food. I don't beat myself up for the fact that my heart pumps my blood around my body. I don't beat myself up for these natural bodily functions. And survival is a natural function of our body, of our nervous system. So it's not self sabotage, it's my body working to keep me alive.

Kinda starts to make sense doesn?t it.

Once I came to understand this, I was able to start addressing the actual root cause, which was my nervous system was just shot. Overwhelmed and exhausted. And that is what we need to address, not the external behaviours. The external behaviours are just a symptom. 

In the same way that my thyroid for example will express symptoms by my hormones being all out of balance, it's the root cause of the toxic load and not speaking my truth that needs to be addressed. This is the same concept.

The answer isn?t to beat ourselves up over these behaviours and drown in more guilt and shame. It?s not even trying to change these behaviours. Because (and trust me on this one!) if I try to change the behaviour without addressing the root cause, it will simply express in another way.

Finding Balance and Peace

The real solution is to find ways to calm our nervous system, to find ways where our nervous system feels safe in peace, where it feels safe in rest, where it feels safe in love. Where these natural states start to become familiar instead of scary and unfamiliar.

And then, the behaviours will naturally dissipate.And as corny as it may sound, finding my way to self love and self peace has been the answer for me. I don't have those behaviours happen so often anymore. I would never say never, but they?re certainly not as often and I don?t stay in that self-hate space for anywhere near as long. And my partner is very grateful, I can tell you!

So I learnt to stop fighting myself and beating myself up for actions I had no choice over. Instead, I learned how to make peace feel normal. How to bring safety to my body in a rested state. I've learned how to connect with my heart and love myself on a truly deep level.

It?s been a journey - hard at times, but one I wouldn?t change for anything and am very grateful for.

If this sounds like you, reach out. Let?s get your nervous system out of survival mode and allow you to find self-love again. You don't have to do this alone.

Book your free 15 minute wellness consult here.