How Self-Sabotage Served Me as a Child, and Finding New Ways to Cope
When I was in college, a guy I was crazy about broke up with me for another girl.
I was heartbroken, even though we were only casually seeing each other. And since I felt like I couldn’t technically be mad at him, I did the next logical thing... I took public transportation into town and got my tongue pierced.
I remember laughing to my friends that “since I couldn’t hurt him, I hurt myself,” but the truth was self sabotage had been part of my experience for years already, and would continue to be for many more to come.
I saw a hypnotist last week. I was going through some emotional detox and a friend told me about her life changing experience with hypnosis. I was ready to do anything. I shared with the hypnotist how self sabotage remained my gut reaction to pretty much anything, even 3 years into my recovery from substance use disorder. Why do I do this? What is wrong with me?
During the session, I was able to connect my self sabotage instinct to an early childhood experience. I was only 7 years old. I was in pain, I was desperate, and I didn’t know how else to cry out for help.
Those neuropathways were formed and they played a role in my survival ever since. Cutting, eating disorders, and alcohol... all ways I tried to hurt myself in a misguided cry for help.
Mind. Blown.
I’m not a broken person. I’m just a woman with a 7 year old inner child still trying to cry for help in the only way she knew how.
And now that I know why my mind is immediately drawn to those thoughts first and foremost, I can give myself grace and move forward with the tools in my recovery toolbox that are self-sustaining. I can also send compassion to the child in me as she learns to form new neuropathways, using tools she didn’t know about or didn’t have access to 35 years ago.
Therapy, meditation, medication, exercise. So many powerful healing sources are available to us.
I’m not broken for not instinctively knowing how to heal. I’m human. And what used to work for me no longer serves me.
If I could talk to my seven-year-old self now, I would tell her that I will take care of her. Every day I am learning and growing. I see her. I am her, and I’m finally learning how to heal.