Are you a love saboteur?
Are you feeling frustrated with your relationships? Do you want a loving partner but seem to be unsuccessful in reaching your goal? Do you feel you are destined to be the one who is always single?
If you are choosing men who are inappropriate and don’t have the capacity for a relationship, you may well be sabotaging your success for healthy relationships. Self sabotage is a term used to describe the things people either do or say, which ruin any chance of experiencing lasting success or happiness in their life.
Self sabotage can manifest itself in many different ways, from not even trying to get what you want to achieving a high level of success and happiness, and then suddenly losing it within a short period of time. We’ve all heard the stories of lottery winners who, despite having won millions, have either spent or lost their money through reckless spending and risk taking and have returned back to where they started.
Similarly, many of you may have found the perfect partner but, within time, become critical and judgmental, creating arguments and making accusations of infidelity with no real evidence. It can get so bad that your partner has no choice but to end the relationship, giving you a feeling of rejection. Events have turned out just as you expected, after all, hadn’t you always said that you were “destined to be alone”? Self- sabotage is ultimately a self fulfilling prophecy.
An important point to remember about self-sabotage is that it is not something which you do consciously, so unless you recognise it you will be living with its effects for ever. Like a game of mental tug-of-war it is the conscious mind versus the subconscious mind and, without fail, the subconscious mind will always win.
You may be thinking “This isn’t me. I want a loving relationship/a man that treats me wonderfully/someone to share my life with”. As such, your conscious mind dutifully carries out actions to work toward a goal (you go out on dates, read all the dating books and genuinely try to get your man, but it will not be long before the subconscious mind reveals your true feelings and beliefs and gets in the way of reaching your goal. The key to eliminating self-sabotage is to make sure that your conscious and subconscious mind are in harmony. You may get away with lying to others but you can never get away with lying to yourself.
How to beat self-sabotage:
1. Examine your beliefs
Are you expecting to meet a loving partner, someone you can share your inner most feelings with, someone you can trust and fall back on? Or are you expecting one-night- stands, to be let down and to settle for second best? Perhaps you have been let down so many times in the past that you simply no longer question that it will happen. And maybe you revel in your role of being the Bridget Jones of your friendship group…
Stop and examine your beliefs and where they have come from.
– First ask yourself, what do I really expect to happen in terms of meeting a partner? Whatever the answer, you now have your belief.- Ask yourself where this belief has come from and why do you have it.
– Finally, ask yourself whether this belief really supports you in meeting your goals.
Your beliefs (the majority of which were created in your early years of life) will largely determine the extent of your self sabotage, and how worthy you subconsciously believe you are of success or happiness. You can then start to formulate more helpful beliefs.
2. Address your trash-talk
How highly do you really value yourself? People that sabotage themselves and don’t allow themselves to find happiness and success in relationships are often hyper-critical of themselves. This often manifests itself in negative self-talk. The constant negative chatter that accompanies you wherever you go is a real bar to happiness.
Negative self-talk reveals itself in phrases such as “I don’t deserve this”, “It will never last”, “It’s as good as I’m going to get” or anything else that puts you down. If you use negative self-talk when success or happiness presents itself, this indicates your limiting beliefs and is a good sign that you will probably sabotage happiness or success when it appears.
Every time that stupid voice enters your head ignore it and change it to something positive. Your words are incredibly powerful so if you can change: “I’ll never find a man” to “I’m going to find the love of my life very soon” enough times, it will start to happen. A useful guide is if you wouldn’t say it to a friend, don’t say it to yourself!”
3. Be vigilant
Self-sabotage does not have to completely destroy a relationship or stop you getting into one in the first place. It may be enough for you to continue a relationship with a partner on the basis that you’ll find happiness in the future when things “get better”.
The trouble is that happiness in the future will always be in the future, and so it never comes. Ultimately this type of belief leaves you in a relationship that you are unhappy in, all because at the subconscious level that is what your mind thinks you want.
Never assume that a relationship has to fail completely for there to be self-sabotage. Instead notice how you are feeling in a relationship and take responsibility for your own emotions. Don’t put of happiness until tomorrow; you are worth so much more than that.
Kim Trevett is a nationally recognised EFT practitioner who specialises in helping women remove the unconscious limiting beliefs they may have and eliminating self sabotaging behaviour. She has helped countless women clear the emotional clutter so they are able to work out exactly what they want from a relationship and then go and get it.
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