Sabotage – An Inside Job

I work in clandestine realms. Shadowy and furtive by nature, I orbit in the background, the underbelly of your mind.

You will not see me coming.

I’ve infiltrated the velvet ropes and I have free reign over your unconscious landscape. I roam pathways and corridors that even you don’t know exist.

You cannot hear me coming.

I am suspicious of change and progress. I detonate, undetected, as soon as I feel threatened. I live parasitically inside of you.

You will always be caught flatfooted.

My networks are savvy, tactical, and coordinated.

You will not smell, feel, or anticipate my presence.

I am relentless and I am unpredictable.

This is an inside job.

Do you know who I am?

I am sabotage.

__________________________________________________________________________

Coming to work with me is voluntary. No one is court ordered. You can come and you can go. People show up because they want to. They want to feel better. They want to perform better. They hunger for change.

And yet, for so many of us progress and change is achieved slowly, if at all. Most of the people I work with, be it in therapy or in my consulting business, have had long periods of time stuck in defeating patterns that are not reflective of their effort and desire to achieve change. In fact, nowadays, as I shift increasingly towards working in the realm of performance consulting and positive psychology, people come in with a good deal of information on the topic of peak performance and optimal psychology. They are well read, they listen to all the right podcasts, and they “follow” all the sentinel leaders in this increasingly popular field.  And yet, progress still eludes them.

So the question for me shifted from “how” do we change our behavior to what are the sources of stagnation?  Why can’t we just simply will our way towards change? How come we can’t take a pill and make it all better? How come we can’t “learn” or “study” or “understand” our way towards insight and growth? What’s getting in the way of a more linear progression line?

Universally I have found sabotage at the epicenter of this disconnect between desire for change and our ability to make it happen. Our patterns of sabotage impact our ability to leverage our suffering, to use friction to achieve lasting behavioral changes and emotional shifts. Sabotage keeps us orbiting endlessly around self-defeating dynamics. We can’t outrun it. We can’t trick it. The fix isn’t downloadable. There is no app to hack it. This is an inside job.

Sabotage is a universal human trend. It doesn’t matter if you work with me in therapy, consulting, or other venues of self-examination, sabotage is one of the primary dynamics we will observe. It is at the core of a lot of the self-defeating, self-limiting aspects of our behavior. Addiction, relationship problems, business performance, anxiety fueled processes, enabling, co-dependence, and a lot of the personality disorders I see in my line of work are all fueled by aspects of sabotage. With sabotage, it’s you against you.

Sabotage, while its impact is enormous, it is always stealth. Sabotage operates unconsciously. It is subtle by design, that’s how it gains traction in your life.  Sabotage doesn’t announce its arrival.  There is no Jaws music playing in the background as sabotage spreads itself out over your psyche’. And here’s the other thing, sabotage is unique in each person. That’s why you can’t hack it. It’s too diverse, too unique, like a fingerprint. You can’t copy or mimick your way out of sabotaging patterns. 

But it’s there. And we can find it if we know what to look for. We can cast light on the feelings, behaviors, and thoughts that fuel a quiet riot of your mind. Like I said, sabotage doesn’t announce its arrival. It hacks your motherboard quietly, painlessly, while you are sleeping. It is both patient and has a hairpin trigger. It’s highly adaptive and prone to shape shift. Sabotage, like fear, often appears in those pockets of our ego where we are most wedded. Part of its warfare is that you cannot actually find the source of your own ruin. Until you uncover your covert patterns of sabotage, your demise will eternally be an inside job.

Sabotage is so effective that it is part in parcel of your greatest strength(s). They are woven together, bonded as a pair. This is one of the ways it operates unconsciously; it hides in broad day light, tucked on the underbelly of your personality assets. You aren’t looking for it because to do so would mean to begin to examine even those aspects of your psychology that “work” for you. Most people don’t willingly do this kind of analysis. A lot of people live by the motto “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Rarely has someone walked into my office requesting to examine his or her sabotaging patterns. Most people come in looking to “feel better” and maybe to address some specific symptom, let’s say anxiety. What they don’t realize yet is most psychiatric symptoms are, at the core, merely a byproduct of much more complex psychological and neurobiological phenomena. My experience has been that deeply unconscious and firmly rooted patterns of sabotage are routinely at the epicenter of what infringes on our ability to make lasting changes in our lives.

I know. I know. You are thinking, as you always do, so what now? What can I do to “fix” these dynamics?

Trust me when I say this, I wish I was the kind of shrink who could give you a 5 step process, a to-do list, that would yield the results we are looking for. I wish I believed in those kinds of approaches, the ones that outline a few nicely organized steps you can take to change your behavior. Viola, it’s all better.

But I am not and I do not have that for you. Again.

What I can offer is what I have done from the start on this site; I can offer you an opportunity to become still and steady inside yourself. Learn how to just simply be present in your own skin and bones. No phones, no apps, no ipad, no tv, no music, no sound. Nothing. Just start to become comfortable in the discomfort of stillness.  You can call this mindfulness, meditation, etc. etc. I don’t have a horse in that race. What you call it is irrelevant as long as you do it.

Do this every day for 90 days. Attempt to do 10-30 minutes.

Break it up.

Do it all at once.

Dealer’s choice.

But do it.

As always please don’t try to “find” the time.

It’s not lost.

You must create the time.

And here’s the thing, do it especially when you least want to. Stay in it when it’s hard. That’s the early indications of feelings and emotions that will give us “data” for our work together. Those feelings, the ones that make it uncomfortable to sit still, the ones that make you cringe, that make you reach for the phone, grab the drink, light up the joint, search social media, all those behaviors are fueled by a psychological process. We need to get “under the hood” of those feelings and to do so, you must first create the ability to simply be still and observe your interior world. This is where you get really clear and really honest about your own bullshit, the ways in which you stunt your own progress. I repeat, this is an inside job.

Trust me, I know this is hard. I know it is easier to close this blog out and go back to the ones with those neat and tidy lists. I am more human than otherwise. I suffer from all the same self-limiting and self-defeating crap that plague our specie. I’m no guru, trust me.

But the truth is that just this task, the request for you to be still in your own skin and bones, will bring you to your knees. It’s the hardest thing I have ever asked of my clients. It is the one thing that every single person resists. And yet, it is the only thing that truly yields results. Without this muscle, all other efforts toward change will be moot.

After the 90 days, if you are still interested, genuinely curious about how and where you sabotage your own growth, call me. Or call someone in my line of work. That’s when you’ll know you are ready.


About the Author: Dr Sarah Sarkis

Sarah is a licensed psychologist living in Honolulu, Hawaii. Originally hailing from Boston Mass, she has a private practice where she works with adults in long-term insight oriented therapy. She works from an existential psychology vantage point where she encourages her patients to “stay present even in the storm.”  She believes herself to be an explorer of the psyche and she will encourage you to be curious about the journey rather than the destination.  She emphasizes collaboration, partnership, and personal empowerment.

She approaches psychological wellness from a holistic and integrative perspective. Her therapeutic style is based on an integrative approach to wellness, where she blends her strong psychodynamic and insight oriented training with more traditionally behavioral and/or mind/body techniques to help clients foster insight, change and growth. She has studied extensively the use of mindfulness, functional medicine, hormones, and how food, medicine and mood are interconnected.  Her influences include Dr.’s Hyman, Benson, Kabat-Zinn and Gordon, as well as Tara Brach, Brene’ Brown, Irvin Yalom and Bruce Springsteen to name only a few.

Please visit her website at Dr SarahSarkis.com and check out her blog, The Padded Room

3 Comments

Jenny/Shiroe

I really like this article. I am a student who just started my Bachelors’ (I have my Associate’s) but I am also 43 and well-studied in what I term “spiritual psychology.” The kind of practice Dr. Sarkis writes about is the kind of practice I would like to have when I finish my degrees.

Reply
Sue F

I did bring me to my knees but if I hadn’t done anything about it a few years ago I would still be the blubbering, people pleasing, co-dependent person that I had been. It’s hard to look at yourself, to really look at yourself but I had got to the stage where I just didn’t know who I was anymore. I felt like a puppet and somebody else was pulling my strings. I had no boundaries, I could not say NO to people and I felt like a doormat. Lots of reading and research about my family of origin. I was curious as to the why’s. The first book I read was “Whose Pulling Your Strings” by Dr Harriet Braiker. Game changing for me.

Reply
Rob S

Wow !!! This will go down as one of those ‘reads’ that is actually more beneficial than anything I’ve previously read. I can so relate to the Sabotage thing, but like most people fail to understand how it ‘lives’ within our psyche. This explanation was brilliant. Thank you.

Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Join our newsletter

We would love you to follow us on Social Media to stay up to date with the latest Hey Sigmund news and upcoming events.

Follow Hey Sigmund on Instagram

BIG NEWS!

You've been asking for it - and here it is. 

The Hey Warrior Workbook is now available for presale, for delivery on 20 August. 

The workbook is the ultimate sidekick to ‘Hey Warrior’ and ‘Ups and Downs’. 

It's jam-packed with practical activities, powerful strategies, and clever little life skills, this workbook will help kids wrangle anxiety, build their brave, and navigate their big feelings (waaay easier when they have a guide!).

It's playful. It's practical. It's got warmth, humour, and loads of heart. 

Best of all, it will guide kids through their ups, downs, and everything in between, all while supporting them to explore their feelings, build self-awareness, and find what works for them.

The more kids can understand why they feel the way they do, and how those feelings influence what they do, the more they can meet those feelings with compassion, confidence, and clarity.

Because all kids can do amazing things with the right information. (But you already knew that!)

For ages 5-12. (And super helpful for grown-ups too.)

Available to order now from the online shop - link in the bio. Or save 15% with the Mighty 3 Bundle which includes Hey Warrior, Ups and Downs, and The Hey Warrior Workbook. ❤️
We don’t need the last word. We don’t need them to agree.

When there is a power struggle - we want … they want … we’re trying to convince them … they’re trying to convince us … - leave power on the table. It’s already yours because you’re the grown-up. You don’t need to convince them, and nothing they can do or say (or don’t do or say) will change that.

The presence they are looking for is an anchor presence - love + leadership - strong, steady, grounded and able to care for them through the storm.

Anchors don’t stop working when the storm hits. During the storm, they work harder to hold on and keep things safe. They don’t take things personally and they don’t judge their performance on how well or how quickly they can stop the storm. 

It doesn’t matter if our kiddos don’t see things our way. They’re looking through a different lens - one that can’t always see around corners the way we might be able to. They don’t have the same resources, experiences, or skills as us. Neither did we at their age.

We’re in charge of keeping them, others, and their relationship with us safe. They’re in charge of how they respond.

It’s why boundaries have to be about what we do - because it’s all we can control.

Sometimes an anchor presence means recognising that we can’t stop the storm, and we don’t need to.

When they don’t have the skills or resources to do what we would like them to do in the moment, we do what we can do to keep the moment safe, while letting them know we are here for them.

If they’re hurting a sibling, we move the sibling away, and stay in connection while we do. ‘It’s okay to be angry. I won’t let you hurt their body (while we’re physically moving their sibling - that’s the boundary). I’m right here (relationship).’

Or if they’re yelling: ‘I want to hear what you want. I care about you much to listen when you’re saying those things about me. (Boundary - I’m not listening.) 

Or, ‘You might stay angry with me for a while and that’s okay. I’m here when you want to talk about it, but I won’t listen while you’re yelling at me. Take your time. You’re not in trouble.’♥️
Mattering is about feeling valued and feeling like I’m doing something that adds value. It doesn’t have to come from grades or schoolwork, and for so many kids it probably won’t. There are so many ways to help kids feel seen and valued that have nothing to do with schoolwork, but which can work to engage them in schoolwork. Little things make a big difference. 

We also have to let our teachers know how much the matter. They are the greatest key to ‘mattering’ (or unmattering) in our schools and for our young people.♥️
If we want to meet their learning needs, we first have to meet their relational ones. If we want them to be open to learning, they first have to open to the adult they are learning from - and they won’t be open if they don’t feel seen, safe, and cared for. It’s not always easy, it’s just how it is.♥️
You know what's lovely? Aside from Sundays and sunshine? …
Sales. 

You know what's even lovelier?
Sales that are 25% off books and resources designed to help kiddos feel bigger, braver, and calmer.

For a short time, we’re taking 25% off books, plushies, courses, posters, and a bunch of tiny treasures that can help build courage and calm in kids and teens.

With the end of the financial year just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to top up your toolkit — or quietly replace those resources that have shimmied away while you weren’t looking. (We see you. We've been there.)

This one is for you. And the young ones in your life. Actually, this one is for everyone.

Happy shopping!

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This