This is a brief portion from an article by Martha Beck (author of six books, most recent is Steering by Starlight (Rodale); Oprah magazine July 2009).
Are you driving yourself crazy with dumb mistakes, "what was I thinking?" comments, and other lunkhead moves? Whitney's problems began when economic chaos hit the advertising company where she was an editor. As Whitney cut redundant prose from ad copy, her company cut redundant workers all around her. Whitney herself had always been a perfectionist who loved her work, but after the downsizing, her performance nose-dived. She began to forget meetings, sleep past her alarm, accidentally forward highly personal emails to her boss and more. "Do I have early-onset Alzheimer's?" she asked desperately. "Maybe ADD? A brain tumor? It's got to be something medical."
In the midst of such madness, it can help immensely to know that there's a name for your pain. You may be using something psychologists call a counter phobic mechanism, a tendency to slide toward, not away from, something you fear. Those of us who use plain English might call it self-sabotage - and it can ruin your life. As counter intuitive as it might seem, these subconscious reflexes can be helpful. In these officially Troubled Times, it behooves us all to be aware of them and use them consciously and skillfully.
"One of my theories," says the evil Count in William Goldman's classic story The Princess Bride, "is that pain involves anticipation." He then leaves the captive hero, Westley, chained next to the Machine, a torture device the Count has promised to use on Westley later. An albino dungeon-keeper offers Westley a way out. "You deserve better than what's coming," he says. "Please let me kill you. You'll than me, I swear." Only Westley's superhuman fortitude keeps him from accepting. The Counts theory about anticipation is right on the money. And self-sabotage is the mind's way of accepting the albino's offer.
We may screw up in precisely the places we want most to succeed, not realizing that we're subconsciously trying to force a resolution, to stop the anxious feeling that's hanging over our heads, to lose the job rather than continue to worry about a pink slip. To resolve the situation, we must first recognize that we're using counter phobic mechanisms. And that means punching through denial.
When I suggested to Whitney that she might be courting job loss precisely because it was her worst fear, she laughed. I then asked, "Seriously, what will you do if you lose your job?" Whitney's comment, "I can't lose my job," "It'd be the end of the world."
Whitney was stuck contemplating the Machine of unemployment. But she'd shoved this intense fear out of her conscious awareness, so her subconscious mind had built a counter phobic mechanism to kill the job and end the agony, "You'll thank me," her inner albino was saying. "I swear."
Either let the albino dungeon-keeper of your subconscious kill the very thing you fear losing or do what brave Westley chose: FACE and EMBRACE YOUR FEAR.
If you're repeatedly making dreadful mistakes and finding yourself in embarrassing snafus in an important area of life, push yourself to contemplate your worst-case scenario. I suggest doing this in the company of friends, family members, therapists, coaches, or all of the above. While you're gaping and reeling like a stunned mullet, your more objective advisers can help you do some contingency planning.
Whitney wasn't totally convinced she would be okay, not by any means. But she did sound a tiny bit hopeful. Her fear of the Machine was already waning - and that, I knew, would end her unconsciously driven train wrecks at the office. The more we examined ways Whitney could survive being unemployed, the less likely she was to cause that very fate.
It may not be fun to contemplate everything that could go wrong in your life, especially in a time of massive economic upheaval and uncertainty. But by going straight into the fear, you can save yourself a crazy go-round with unconscious self-sabotage. You deserve better than that. You'll thank me. I swear.
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