🔴 Why Do We Sabotage Ourselves For No Reason?

Carl Jung discussed how consciousness can easily succumb to unconscious influences, which are often truer and wiser than our conscious thoughts.

He noted that unconscious motives frequently override our conscious decisions, particularly in matters of vital importance.

Many people tend to undermine their own agendas, leading to frustration and bewilderment as they find themselves making irrational decisions, experiencing mental blocks, and even suffering from physical ailments that thwart their plans.

It's as if a mysterious force takes control, steering them away from their intended goals.

Plagued by ongoing self-sabotage, these individuals seem never to reach their desired destinations.

But why do we sabotage ourselves?

Why do we ruin our plans for no apparent reason?

The psychiatrist Carl Jung discovered plausible answers to these questions.

By becoming aware of a part of the psyche he called "The Shadow," we can view the shadow as a psychological container within the realm of the unconscious.

In this dark place, where the light of our conscious awareness does not reach, we store our undesirable traits.

There are various reasons we might hide certain unwanted aspects of ourselves under the rug: perhaps our parents disapproved of them, they didn't align with societal ideals, or life taught us that they lead to suffering.

We repress these traits by banishing them to the depths of the psyche as if they weren't part of us, but they are.

According to Jung, repressing unwanted aspects of ourselves doesn't solve the problem; in fact, it can have disastrous consequences as these aspects take on a life of their own, operating in the darkness.

Here is where self-sabotage begins.

The repressed parts of our personality revolt against our conscious minds from the depths of the shadow.

We find ourselves at war with ourselves without even knowing whom we are fighting.

Fortunately, there are ways to stop this self-sabotage.

Instead of repressing what is in the shadow, Jung urged us to integrate it into our personality.

We can only do this by making the unconscious conscious and discovering what lies beneath.

Let's explore the psychology of self-sabotage and how to overcome it based on Carl Jung's works.

There is a common misconception about the shadow that leads to much confusion and misunderstanding about the role of the shadow and how to integrate what has been repressed.

It's often thought that the shadow is simply the dark and negative side of the personality due to the problems it can cause, and it's often envisioned as a shadowy figure, suggesting an ominous other self that exists outside our conscious awareness.

However, the shadow refers to something fundamentally different.

The shadow is more like a dark place than a shadowy figure.

We might think of the shadow as a dark closet in the human psyche, where the light of consciousness does not shine, and this dark closet is where we lock away all the repressed parts of the personality that we are unwilling and unable to confront or reintegrate at the time for various reasons, such as trauma or unmet needs.

Thus, when we talk about doing shadow work and integrating it, we are not integrating the shadow itself; we are integrating the contents of the shadow.

And when I say the contents of the shadow, I mean all the repressed parts of the personality.

These are the parts of the self that dwell in the dark place that is the shadow.

Just as you might put objects in a dark closet and they become enveloped in shadows, you could also take those same objects out of that dark closet and bring them into the sunlight, and they would no longer be wrapped in shadows.

This is also true for the parts of the personality that dwell in the shadow.

There is nothing inherently shadowy or negative about them; it is simply that they have been placed in a shadowy place and are operating outside of our conscious awareness and often causing problems for us because of this disconnection.

An important realization here is that when these parts of the personality are repressed, it's not as if you simply have some repressed traits.

It wouldn't be entirely accurate to say something like repressing my greed or repressing my joy because both greed and joy are floating qualities.

To repress a quality like greed, joy, or anything else, you would have to repress an entire fragment of the personality that is associated with those qualities.

These fragments of personality, which often detach from conscious awareness and are called aspects of the shadow, are really more like mini personalities, and each of these mini personalities is 100% you because they are fragments of your personality.

And when these mini personalities detach from your conscious awareness and are placed in the dark closet of the shadow, they become separate and autonomous from your conscious personality, which is the ego and the part of yourself that is in the light of consciousness that you refer to as "I."

In the same way that our conscious personality or ego has its own perspectives, needs, and agendas, each of our aspects of the shadow also has its own perspectives, needs, and agendas.

And the agendas of any given aspect of the shadow may or may not come into conflict with the agendas of our conscious personality.

When the agenda of your conscious personality clashes with the agenda of one or more of your aspects of the shadow, this can cause quite a bit of internal agitation and a feeling of resistance or struggle with yourself.

You can notice your aspects of the shadow and their agendas in action when you engage in procrastination and self-sabotaging behavior that prevents you from making positive changes in your life.

Let's discuss an example of how shadow-based self-sabotage can manifest in someone's life and hinder their plans.

Suppose a man strongly identifies with being solitary.

His goal is to run a successful online business and live in the countryside because that lifestyle minimizes interaction and dependence on other people, which he consciously believes is ultimately what he wants.

Despite the practicability of self-sufficiency, he repeatedly undermines the progress he achieves.

For instance, he is offered the opportunity to buy land in the countryside at a friendly price, but he rejects it for a flimsy reason.

Or he attracts a considerable number of followers on his lifestyle blog that has much earning potential, yet he decides to stop posting without being able to explain his decision with solid arguments.

From the perspective of the ego, the way he consciously perceives himself and determines what he wants and needs, his choices make no sense.

After all, he strongly identifies as the solitary "Batman" and has dreamed for years of being self-sufficient, independent, and away from the herd.

But as soon as his dreams become reality, he throws a wrench in the path.

He can't explain why; it's as if something or someone is sabotaging him, as if an unwanted guest is lurking in the shadows of his soul, supervised out of his conscious awareness.

And as this person quickly takes control without consultation, it destroys what the efforts of the ego have achieved and then leaves without a trace, just like any form of solid reasoning to support his self-sabotage.

The mysterious guest remains elusive.

He knows something strange is happening in the darkness, but he can't point it out since it's beyond his conscious reach.

And as long as he fails to illuminate what lurks in the shadow, it will rule him like a puppeteer from behind the curtain.

Any autonomous complex not subject to conscious will exerts a possessive effect on consciousness proportional to its strength and limits the freedom of the latter.

When our aspects of the shadow take the reins, destructive consequences can arise.

Unexplainable desires and emotions may emerge out of nowhere, and when they please, without permission, overriding our authority and diminishing our willpower, they influence and sabotage our conscious agendas while pulling the strings from behind the stage, leaving us perplexed by our irrational behavior.

Murray Stein wrote the following about the sabotaging nature of complexes:

"Complexes function to hinder the process of individuation by intimidating the person into emotional dead ends.

One can easily fall victim, for example, to an implacable need for revenge, an implacable anger towards wounds inflicted in childhood, or fall into the bottomless abyss of nostalgia.

The complex has a will of its own that is often stronger than the ego's ability to resist."

This autonomous force can lead to behaviors that are self-sabotaging as the complex drives the individual to act in ways that may not consciously be desired, thus perpetuating cycles of frustration and failure.

The complex, or mini personality, lurking in the shadow of the man represents a repressed characteristic: the desire for human connection due to past wounds.

It had dispossessed him, and he is unaware that this unwanted aspect of himself has turned into a shadow government trying to undermine the actions of a fearful isolationist disguised as a lover of solitude and independence but unknowingly deeply craves companionship from the depths of his psyche.

This repressed personality plays a paradoxical game.

On the one hand, this aspect of the shadow wants to be part of his conscious awareness.

It wants its motivations to be heard, its desires felt, its needs met.

Thus, it sabotages the firm individualism of the conscious personality and all its efforts toward independence.

Consequently, he lives with roommates and washes his clothes in a public laundromat, where he sees many people.

This situation may seem inconvenient and unwanted from the perspective of his conscious personality, but it is precisely where the aspect of the shadow wants him to be.

On the other hand, the aspect of the shadow does not want to be illuminated, and its evasion is understandable since it not only represents the unwanted but also rebels against the person who dispossessed it.

If it is found, it will lose its sovereignty.

So as long as it remains in the shadows, it maintains the power to troll, sabotage, and autonomously destroy while remaining its own personality and, above all, safe.

But

by doing so, it will be in perpetual conflict with its host.

There are several different reasons why self-sabotage may occur, but in the example of the man, the self-sabotage comes from an aspect of the shadow responding to a need that might go unmet: that is, the need for connection.

From the perspective of this aspect of the shadow, the conscious personality's agenda of moving towards extreme independence is entirely antithetical to that need.

Deep down, this mini personality knows that when its host succeeds financially, he will have enough money to have his own house without roommates and his own vehicle.

He will have his own washer and dryer, so he will no longer go to the laundromat, where he has much social interaction.

The aspect of the shadow also realizes that having more money means it has more ability to neglect and ignore its need for connection and socialization.

Thus, in a desperate attempt to preserve the scant connection with other people that this aspect of the shadow receives, it sabotages his financial success and manipulates the conscious personality to avoid financial success by making inexplicably poor business decisions.

Furthermore, it might also create different rationalizations and mental blockages about success, and perhaps every time he wants to work on his blog, he suddenly feels overwhelmingly tired and just wants to take a nap when he was previously perfectly energized and awake.

Now, the solution for self-sabotage coming from an aspect of the shadow with an unmet need is quite straightforward.

The first step is to recognize the needs and agendas of your conscious personality and the needs of each of your aspects of the shadow, and this requires observation and brutal honesty.

If this man in the example is very honest with himself, there will be many clues throughout the day that he actually values connection and a sense of belonging.

He just has to be willing to unearth these things and admit them to himself.

Then, once he realizes this need, it is his role as the conscious personality to weave this need of the shadow aspect into the conscious personality's agenda for financial success and to make the necessary changes to satisfy that need.

Instead of imagining himself becoming totally independent when he achieves financial success, he can imagine having more time and freedom due to the money he earns and using that time and freedom to socialize and connect with friends and loved ones.

The solution would be to satisfy the needs of the shadow aspect in this way.

The shadow aspect does not have to sabotage the goals and dreams of the conscious personality to ensure those needs are met.

As we learn from Carl Jung, be aware of your shadow so that you are not unconscious of the dominance it exerts over you.

To your success,
Daily Manifestation Team

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