There is no such thing as self-sabotage.
Meanings are made up after the event. What we now call self-sabotage was fun at the time. Or maybe it was compulsive, but it wasn’t sabotage.

People smoke. Not because they’re trying to kill themselves, but because it’s really, really soothing.

But people don’t talk about it in these terms.

This reminds me of drinking. It was so much fun.

You do what you do and did what you did to feel pleasure and connection. Not because you’re hell-bent on self-destruction. It feels good, and when you do it around other people, they become your gang.

And then, of course, sometimes, it becomes not fun. Then some action is necessary, and it’s not easy to undo.

Even then, it’s a very different conversation when you have the perspective that these habits were once pleasure. The Addiction Industry likes to see them as sure signs of character defects, self-loathing and all-round f**kedupness.

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What is the effect of being told you are defective? Is telling somebody that they must hate themselves an empowering and uplifting thing to do?

And ‘self-sabotage’ is equally unhelpful. It implies you have dark forces within you, which you can’t control, and they are ruining your life.

What we call self-sabotage is something that was a great idea at some point in the past, but now looks like a terrible idea. It’s a meaning made up after the fact.

Making mistakes hurts, losing money hurts. There is an emotional fall-out from making a decision that adversely affects your survival and social standing.

To deal with the pain and fear, we tell ourselves all kinds of things, including:

? I should have known

? There must have been signs that I missed

? I am going to work out why this happened so that I make sure I never sabotage myself ever again

? I will see a therapist/join a spiritual group/read self-help books so that I can find out why I hate myself so much that I would do this.

This will keep you very busy. But it will be worse than useless for releasing what happened, and moving beyond it.

It will encourage preoccupation and regret. It will magnify the event in your mind until it comes to define who you are.

Things happen because they are caused. If they are caused, they had to happen. That’s it.

Minds are far too complex for any of us to ever know why they did anything. You have billions of neurons and somehow, they came together and caused you to act as you did.

That’s it.

I learnt this from Jon Connelly, PHD, MSW, LCSW.

Before I discovered his work (The Institute for Rapid Resolution Therapy, Inc.), I wasted far more time and money than I want to admit on my project to Improve Sally.

And now it’s OVER.???