Episode 86: Unraveling the Neuroscience of Self Sabotage

Stop me when you've said it:

• "I know that to do...why aren't I doing it?!"
• "I see results...then something blocks me from keeping up with what's working!"
• "I don't know why I always do this...it's like I'm fighting against myself!"

When we understand why self sabotage happens from a neuroscience perspective, we'll never see it the same way again. In Episode 86 of the Becoming MindStrong Podcast, I'm showing you why it happens and, more importantly, my fav exercise for getting to the other side.

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Transcript

Becoming MindStrong Podcast Self Sabotage

SUMMARY KEYWORDS self-sabotage, neuroscience perspective, light of awareness, rewiring brain, drug addiction,
 relapse cycle, weight loss journey, macros skill, mental block, subconscious mind, emotional safety, vulnerability, parts work, self-awareness, safety mechanism 

 | 00:00 Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast, and 00:03 today's topic is one that I think so many of us can relate to. Right? We start a new health and fitness journey. We start getting our nutrition in check. We start getting on a workout routine, pick, pick, pick your area of life, and maybe we see some progress for a few weeks, but then the self sabotage kicks in, and what do we do? We go down the rabbit hole, right? Why am I doing this? I now know what I should be doing. Why aren't I doing all the things I should be and we shame and we blame and we guilt and we try to should our way, S, H, O, U, L, D, should our way into doing those things that we, quote, unquote, should be doing when we understand from a neuroscience perspective, when we understand how our brain is wired, we can start to understand that self sabotage is actually your body's way of trying to protect you. And once we've shined that light of awareness on what that actually means, right and what right, my body's trying to protect me by not sticking to my my nutrition plan, when we can understand what I mean when I say your body is trying to protect you through self sabotage, once we shine that light of awareness, we put ourselves into the driver's seat, and we take back our control. So in this episode, we're going to talk about not only the neuroscience of why we self sabotage, but more importantly, I'm going to give you one of my favorite exercises to shine that light of awareness and start rewiring our brain. Check it out. The best way that I know to describe why self sabotage happens is to give you some some pretty extreme examples. Okay, because I think as you listen to these examples, it'll start to start to click. And then we'll get into how you can relate this to your own life. And then my favorite exercise to rewire our brain. If you have ever had someone in your life, or you've watched documentaries, or whatever it is that struggles with drug addiction. A lot of what we see with drug addiction is someone goes to rehab, right? They work really, really hard for a few months. They get clean, they get sober, whatever it is, and that, you know that takes a tremendous amount of effort, it takes a tremendous amount of energy, a tremendous amount of focus. And then for some people, they relapse. So what do we do? We go back to rehab. We try it all again, we relapse. We go back to rehab, try it again, we relapse. What happens for a lot of people is they get to a point where they say, f it right. Why am I working this hard? If all the proof that my brain has is that I'm just going to relapse anyway. And at some point, for some people, they go down the rabbit hole and they explode their life, right? We see this in relationships. If you've gone from relationship to relationship to relationship, and every single time you get in a new one, it winds up in heartbreak. At some point, what happens for a lot of people is we say, Why do I keep making 

myself vulnerable if it always ends in heartbreak? And what do we do at some point, we say, f it. And we say, it's just easier for me to be lonely and single than keep putting myself out there. For many of us, this is exactly what happens when it comes to our nutrition journey, when it comes to our weight loss journey, we put in listen learning macros is a skill, right? I like to be upfront with people. Look, I'm not here to sugarcoat there is a learning curve to this. It's not hours of your day, it's not overhauling your life, but we got to put a bit of work in to master a skill, right? If I taught you to ride a bike, I don't need you to spend six hours a day practicing, but we're going to put a little work in, and then you have the skill, and then you know how to ride a bike for life. It's the same concept here, but for many of us, here's what happens in our brain. We make an investment, right? We leap. We say, Okay, today's first day of the rest of my life. I've drawn the line in the sand. I say, not another day of dieting. I'm here to learn a new skill, and then we start putting in the work, and we start learning the logistics of macros, and it feels bright and shiny and new and exciting, and we're seeing progress, right? Oh, this is actually different. It's not restrictive. My body's responding. My energies up through the wazoo. Things are locking into place. What happens for most people is, after a few weeks, when it stops being bright and shiny and new, we start to notice ourselves slipping. We start to say, I don't know what's happening, because I know what I, quote, unquote, should do, right? I understand that macros are biology, 101, if I stick to my plan, it's going to work. I know what I should do, but I feel like there is some kind of mental block that's stopping me from doing logistically, the things that I know work, right? I know this works. I feel great when I'm doing it. What in my brain is stopping me? What is self sabotaging me from walking the. Path. And here's the conversation that I have with people as I like to ask a lot of questions just to get into that subconscious mind, right? What do you have to gain from losing the weight? And at the end of this, spoiler alert, the end of this episode, I'm going to talk you through this exercise. So don't try to write down what you can try to write down what I'm saying right now, but you don't have to. I'm going to spell it out for you. Have to gain by losing insert goal here, right? Losing this weight, putting on this muscle, getting your health in check, getting your cholesterol in check, getting your blood pressure on track, getting your hormones balanced out, out of your perio, post menopausal, what 

05:33 

do you have to gain? The 

05:34 

next question is a little more, little more. Aha moment. 

05:37 

What do you have to gain by not doing this, 

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and then I'll take them through a visualization. Picture yourself at again, insert goal, at your goal weight, and 

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we try to be specific here. If 

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your goal is to get to 150 pounds, picture yourself at 150 

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pounds. 

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What does that feel like? Well, I feel sexy, I 

05:57 

feel empowered, I feel in control. 

05:58 

Is there any fear that comes up around that the biggest one that I hear is, what if I can't maintain it? And usually that comment leads down a rabbit hole. I've been at that weight before. I did this once before, and the fact that I'm here again shows me that I don't trust myself to maintain that goal once I hit it. And this, my friends, this is the light bulb moment, just like that drug addict, just like that person who's afraid of being vulnerable if our brains and our hearts are not aligned, one of my favorite coaches of all times you heard me talk about her before, if you've listened to the podcast, Jordan James, she tells me that your brain response to logic, your heart responds to safety. So if we know logically that macros are biology, 101, right, we have learned the skill. We have mastered the skill. We have the keys to the kingdom, and we know all I have to do, and I'm putting, if you're not watching the video of this, I'm putting all we have to do in air quotes. All we have to do is follow our macro plan and we will hit our goal weight. It's it's biology, 101, but that voice in our head is saying to us, yeah, but yeah, but once I hit it, the work's not done, yeah? But what if I put all this time in and do this work and I can't sustain it, yeah? But what if I lose it and gain it all back. And as you know, if you have hung out here before, our brains are designed for safety. They are not designed to keep us kicking butt and taking names. They are not designed to have us living our best, most empowered life. They are designed to keep us safe so anytime that our brain thinks it is in danger of putting us in a situation that could hurt us. It is going to do everything in its power to get us back to our comfort zone, to get us back to homeostasis. So in this case, just again, just like that drug addict, just like that person who's afraid of being vulnerable, what's happening in this moment is we're on the path to hit our goals. Biology says if we stick with our macro plan, it is inevitable that we are going to hit that goal weight and to our brain, there is a little red I'm picturing that red siren emoji going off, saying, danger, danger, danger, because I have walked this path before, and we're going to talk about that in a second, because you have not actually walked this path before, but to your brain, all it's seeing is 

on the topic of weight loss, on the topic of nutrition, on the topic of a health journey. I have walked this path before, and every single freaking time it has resulted in disappointment, in shame, in blame, in guilt, in going down the rabbit hole and feeling like garbage for for myself. So why the heck would I put myself, a in a position to feel like that again, and B to work this hard toward mastering a skill? If I believe on the other side of it, I'm just going to self sabotage, right? And when we step back and look at that, it's kind of valid reasoning. Your brain is not just spewing garbage at you and hoping it sticks like no that we could step back and say, You know what? That that's a valid reasoning. We have tried to lose weight before, and if it had worked, we wouldn't be here. So I say that as a segue into the exercise of of how we approach this, and I'm not going to say how we fix this. I'm not going to say how we get out of that thought process, because trying to shame, blame and guilt our emotions is never going to be the answer. What we have to understand is that as humans, we're made up of a whole bunch of parts, right? There's parts of us that that want to do that big, exciting, scary thing, and there's parts of us that are petrified of that and don't want to take the risk. There's parts of us that love adventure, and there's parts of us that love safety. There's a lot of conflicting parts that make us up as a human and the most important part for this conversation is that they all serve. A purpose. Every part of us is there because it believes it is keeping us safe. So let's zoom out and look at this situation again. Okay, you're walking the path. You're mastering the skill of macros. It's working. You logically know it's working. And there is something inside of you saying, danger, danger, danger. 

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What if? What if? What if? 

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What we are not going to do is shame, blaming guilt, that part what we are not going to do is say, shut up. Little voice in my head, this is not the same. I haven't done macros before. Go away because, you know, if you if you have kids, or you've ever walked by a crying kid, there's kind of two approaches we could take with children. One is, you better stop crying, or I'm going to give you something to cry about. 

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And how does that work out? 

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Right? The kid just cries harder. Or two, we can kneel down to their level. We can help them feel heard. And sometimes all they need is to just get those emotions out. Every single part of us that believes it's there to keep us safe. What it actually wants is to just be heard. It doesn't want to be shamed, it doesn't want to be blamed. It doesn't want to be guilted. It doesn't want to be told why. It shouldn't feel that way, right? You ever have someone tell you you shouldn't feel that way, like, Oh, I'm feeling really down on myself. Well, you shouldn't feel that way. Be happy, okay, all right. Becky on Instagram, sprinkling glitter. That's not how feelings work, right? They need to pass through they need to have space to express themselves. So when that part of us is is crying out to be heard saying, 

danger, danger, danger. I have walked this path before, and it didn't end well. Shaming, blaming, guilting, trying to suppress it, trying to shut it down, is not going to be the answer. So I'm going to walk you through my favorite exercise for any time you feel self sabotage coming up. And I want to be abundantly clear that obviously, on this podcast, right, we talk about things in the context of health, of fitness, of nutrition. This is true for every area of your life. If there is an area of your life where you're like, I know what I should do and I'm not doing it. And the caveat to that is, a lot of people think they know what they should do with nutrition, and they don't. Right. If you're perimenopausal, postmenopausal, you might be doing this stuff that you think you should do, and it's not working. That's not always the case. But my point with this is, let's say that you've put in the work, you've gotten educated. You know, without a shadow of a doubt, this is the path to get results. And there is something in your brain that's saying this feels scary. I don't want to do this. And maybe it's not that blatant. Maybe we're not saying to ourselves, this is scary. I don't want to do this. Maybe it feels more like I don't know what this block is that's stopping me. I don't know why I keep self sabotaging, no matter what the topic is, this exercise I'm about to walk you through is the starting place. Okay, so there's three parts to this. Parts one and two go together, and I want to be clear up front that this is a bit energetically draining. We're tapping into your subconscious mind, and then we're going inward and sitting with the parts of you. And sometimes when we do deep work like that, you feel a little energetically drained on the other side. So when I get to part three, you'll hear me talk about that. You might want to spread these out. Whether or not you do is totally up to you, but this is not a place to white knuckle. Try to knock out this exercise, or it's not going to work again. We're tapping into our subconscious and mind, and we need to be gentle with ourselves. So you're going to grab a journal. I'm a big believer in pen or pencil to paper, not typing on a computer or your phone, and you're going to give yourself a choice, do I want to set a timer for five minutes, or do I want to set a page minimum. Okay, you choose which one. But the point is, we're going to write, write, write, write, write, without letting our conscious brain filter. So you could do that by setting a timer for five minutes. You're you write until the timer goes off, or you can say, I'm not going to stop writing till I have three full pages, whichever way works for you. But the name of the game is we're going to be writing longer than our conscious brain wants us to, and that's on purpose. Okay, so I'm going to stick with the topic of weight loss, obviously, because that's the field in which in which I work. So the first part of this exercise goes like this, we're going to list every single thing you have to gain by losing the weight. So the first few are going to be really obvious, right? More energy, feeling more comfortable in my skin, feeling sexier, not being afraid of mirrors. You're just going to brain dump after a minute or two, or a page or two, it's going to get a lot harder, and that's on purpose. What we don't want is to have time for our conscious brain to start filtering and say things like, Well, that one's not really that big a deal. Or, do I really know anything that comes in your brain? You brain dump. What do I have to gain by losing the weight, by starting a business, by leaving this toxic relationship, by making myself vulnerable again? Okay? Whatever it is, brain. And dump it. That's part one. Part two. We're going to dig a little deeper. What do I have to gain by not losing the weight, by not leaving a steady paycheck for starting a new career, by not leaving the person that I know is toxic for me, by not making myself vulnerable to having my heart broken. What do I have to gain by not doing it and again? Five minutes with a timer, three pages without filtering. This one's going to be a lot harder to not filter, because we're kind of pushing on bruises that our conscious mind doesn't want us to push on. Okay, that's those are parts one or two at this point, if you feel mentally exhausted from brain dumping, take a little break, because part three is where the magic happens, and part three is the most emotionally draining part to all this. Before I get in detail about what part three is, I want to give you a personal example. And if you listen to the season of this podcast where I talk about my Egypt experience. You know, a lot of this backstory, I'm not going to go deep in the weeds about this, but I think giving a personal example is going to help you understand this process a bit more. 

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16:12 

My family upbringing is emotions, feelings, those who are weakness. You don't talk about how you feel. You put your head down. You achieve. You achieve. You achieve. And any experience that I had as a child of showing emotion, all signs point to that is a bad experience. That is where you get made fun of. That is where you get teased. That is why people leave. All the data that my brain has is that showing emotion equals bad things happen. So when I started going to therapy and I started my healing journey, and I started getting more in touch with my feelings, that I stopped feeling for decades, because eventually you just learn to shut that down, right? So when I started doing the work to get more in touch with my feelings, I found this dichotomy in my brain and my heart. Because, as Jordan says, right? Our brains care about logic, but our heart doesn't give a crap about logic. It cares about safety. So my brain would say, No, no, no. You know that vulnerability is a superpower. You know that the way that humans Connect is through vulnerability. So when you show up vulnerably, you're going to attract closer people to you're going to lead by example. All of this makes sense, but my heart said, Are you freaking crazy? Because all the data that we have says that when you show emotion, people make fun of you, people leave your life. It is not a safe place to live, and so every time that I had an opportunity in the beginning to show up vulnerably, to deeply Connect. It's like there was this roadblock. It was like I was running full speed and hitting a wall, and I could not understand why. So then, of course, the should start set in I should do this. I should just show up this way. I should, I should, I should. And as we know, shooting on yourself, Sho ulding ing is never going to work, and when I could identify, wait a second, yeah, I know all the logic in the world around this. I've spent 1000s upon 1000s of dollars on therapy and coaching and doing the work, but at the end of the day, until my heart feels safe, there is no world in which I'm going to actually start showing up vulnerably. So how did I get to a place where my heart started to feel safe? This is part three of the exercise I mentioned a few minutes ago. As humans, we are made up of many different parts. You've heard me reference Jordan James, my my old coach in here. She is literally a parts work coach. This is the work that she did. I worked with her for a very long time, and I love her method, because it is, it is how humans work. Right? As humans, we have these conflicting parts of ourselves, and we tend to shame, blame, guilt, shut down the parts that given the choice we don't really like, it's not what we would choose. But when we can shine that light of awareness and see that every one of these parts is designed for safety. We get to change the game, just like that kid screaming at the top of their lungs, all these parts of us actually want is to be heard. So what I started to do when I would start to feel the feelings of, Oh, this feels vulnerable. Oh, this feels scary. Retreat, retreat. Go inward, put your armor on. Is I would sit in silence. I'd put one hand on my chest, one hand on my lower belly, because that's what felt safe for me, that you don't have to do that, but you might want to experiment with it. And I would, I would go inside. I would close my eyes and go inside and say, Okay, I hear you. What's coming up. Tell me, like, dump on me. Tell me everything that's coming up in a gentle, nourishing, loving way. Not what do you want? Why won't you shut up? But speak to me. I'm listening, and what would come out. It was almost like, like, who was saying all this. It was decades upon decades of hurt little Rachel, all these years saying, I understand that. Doing all this work and everything is saying that vulnerability is superpower. But then it would walk me through decades of bad experiences when I showed up, showed up vulnerably and I just listened. That makes total sense. Tell me more. That makes total sense. Tell me more. And at the end of it, I would go through this mentally as if I was sitting with a child. I would picture little Rachel, the conversation was, you know what? Thank you. Thank you for sharing with that with me, and it makes so much sense. Of course, you don't want to show up vulnerably, because look at all the proof we have of how scary that is and what a terrible end result it gets. And yeah, if we truly believe that's where it's going to end up, there's no way we're going to do it. So thank you for telling me your truth, and it makes complete sense why you're trying to keep me safe. And let me show you why it's different this time, back then, I was a kid, I didn't have a voice, I didn't have any power to stand in yet, so the example that was set for me was that vulnerability made you weak. What I now know as an adult is that when I look around the most beautiful, intimate, powerful relationships in my life and the people that I look up to who show up that 

way, the common theme is vulnerability. And at the end of the day, if I do show up vulnerably and someone does try to hurt me. I'm not a kid without anywhere to run. I have myself, I have my home, I have my loved ones to come back to. I can stand in my power so I hear you, and we're going to tread really lightly, and we're going to go slowly with this, and I'm going to take you by the hand, and we're going to take baby steps together. Now just talking through that, I mean, that that's emotional for me to even tap back into, because the amount of energetic output that those conversations took was powerful. There were times I was sitting there in silence, sobbing because I was talking to little 10 year old Rachel, who was scared. And for most of us, weight loss is a topic that we have been dealing with for decades upon decades upon decades. So when we feel that self sabotage creep up, here's what we're going to do. First of all, let me get a bit more logistical before I dive into that, we're going to go back to that list of what we have to gain by not doing this, and we're just going to reread it. Okay, so again, if you had to take a little pause between brain dumping and doing the work. Take a little pause, because now's where we're going to dig deep. You're going to go back to that list of what you have to gain by not doing it, and just read through it. There's some of them that aren't going to hit that hard. You'll be like, yeah, yeah, I see that. I see that. But there are going to be few in there that you might even tear up reading them like you are going to feel in your body 

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that touched on something. Take one of them. Sit in a place of silence. There's no you don't have to get too technical about this. You don't need a meditation map. You don't need to, you know, light candles if you want to cool. Just sit in some silence and just listen to that part of you without shame, blame or guilt. Maybe it's, yeah, I've lost the 50 pounds before, and every time I have, it's always come back. You know what? That makes so much sense. Tell me more. Well, you know, we we got all hyped about this. We were posting about it on social media, and we even had some people asking about what we were doing, and we referred them to that diet. And then not only did I gain back the weight, but I gained back more. And then I felt really embarrassed that I turned other people onto it. Yeah, that makes so much sense. Why walking a path that's related to that feels scary. What else is coming up around that? And you're just gonna keep asking questions, keep getting it out there. We're not intending to fix. We are not here to fix a part of you that is wrong or broken. We're intending to create space and hear it. Because, just like that child, it doesn't need to be fixed. It needs to be heard. Now at the end of it, when everything is out, is there anything else? Tell me more. Is there anything else when it gets to a place where it is fully heard. Number one, you're going to feel a 50 pound weight off your shoulders just by hearing it. Number two, that's where we can start to introduce a little bit of logic, but we want to be careful that we're not trying to fix or tell that part of us that it's wrong. The conversation might go something like this. I cannot thank you enough for opening up to me about that. It makes 100% sense why you're feeling that way. The thing I want to point out to you is that diet where we lost 50 pounds and we turned our friends onto it, yeah, like that didn't feel good to have to go back to people and be like, Oh, actually, I don't recommend it, right? That was embarrassing. There was some shame with it. I 100% make sense. And the reason that we joined this program, the reason that we decided to draw that line in the sand and say not another freaking diet I am done, is because what I know now that I didn't know back then is that restrictive dieting is never going to work. So it makes. So much sense to me why walking this path is bringing up those old thoughts. And what I want us to understand together is that this truly is different. That's not just something we're saying to to make ourselves feel better. We are putting ourselves in the driver's seat. We are mastering a skill, as opposed to going on another diet. So what I would love to do is take you by the hand. We're going to go slowly where I'm going to the thing, I promise you, is I'm going to give you voice. I'm going to stop shutting you down and shaming you. I hear you, and I'm going to use this as a warning sign to make sure that every step I take on this journey, I am truly in control. I know the why behind it, so that we're not going down an old path that leads to losing 50 pounds and 

gaining back 70. Can we go by the hand and try this together? We're going to do all that for one thing on our list, and maybe you go back and you go back and you do it for two or three the thing I can promise you is this, we don't self sabotage on accident, and we don't self sabotage to be a jerk to ourselves. We are self sabotaging, because there is a part of us that is trying to keep us safe and the way that we that we can get out of this place of self sabotage and get back on the path that we know will work. I'm saying I'm assuming that you have found the path that you know will work. We're not wishing, hoping, praying, going from diet to diet, the way we do that is, number one, shining the light of awareness on what part of you is trying to keep you safe. Number two, giving advice to be heard. And number three, having a conversation with it, not lecturing it, making sure that it feels heard, it feels seen, there's space for it, and then coming up with a plan that feels good going forward. Last thing I'll say is this, this is not an overnight switch, right? We don't do this one exercise and come out the other side and say, hallelujah, I'm never going to self sabotage again. But what you can never unsee once we shine the light of awareness, we can't unsee things, is the next time self sabotage comes up, there's going to be this little whisper in the back of your mind that says, Wait a second, I'm self sabotaging again. What that means is there is a part of me that's trying to keep me safe. I'm going to say that line again so that it's embedded in your brain. When you find yourself savage self sabotaging, it means that there is a part of me that is trying to keep me safe, and my job is to, number one, identify what it's keeping me safe. From number two, sit with it, give it space to feel heard. And number three, have a conversation so we can come up with a plan and keep moving forward. So.