Sabotage

Do you have a saboteur? An inner voice that seeks to weaken you and prevent you from accomplishing your goals? You know - the one that tells you that you need to eat the brownie because there may never be another brownie to eat? Or that you do not need to go for a walk because it is going to be painful and pain is bad? Or that you cannot get lab tests because blood work makes you faint?

The voice keeps you from succeeding by preventing action - action that could improve your health - physically and or emotionally. The saboteur has a purpose and really it could be considered noble if it weren't so limiting. The purpose is to keep you from getting hurt and from failing. Funny thing about this is - No try - no failure and oh, NO SUCCESS either.

It is time to make that voice work FOR you instead of against you. Let it protect you but control it - use it. If you are overcome with an intense sense of dread, fear, anticipation - or do not feel those things directly, but engage in procrastination, avoidance, denial or defensiveness (no one is going to tell me what to eat)- then it is time to take control.

Yes, you might get hurt, feel pain, fail - but then again you might not. So address the fear. Acknowledge that it is there and play out the worst case scenario option in your mind or on paper. If the worst case scenario happens, how can you pull a positive out of it? Name it, explore it, challenge it, overcome it - or as I like to say - Do IT Anyway! You can eat less than you are now (if you need to) you can exercise more, you can lift weights, you can get a physical, you can go to a new place, you can stop smoking, you CAN .... fill in the blank, friend.

Use the voice to tell yourself what you ARE capable of doing and then well, to borrow a phrase, Just Do It.

It doesn't take willpower to make a move you know. It takes confidence and faith. Confidence in yourself and confidence in the behavior. I used to faint every time I had my blood taken - the fear from having that happen kept me from getting blood work for a few years. The first time I managed to have a blood draw without fainting, well it wasn't long ago - maybe 2001. I had to talk myself out of fainting - I had to do it on FAITH. I told myself, "I do not have time to be sick all day." "I want to run later." "I am going to call my Dad after this and say, I did NOT faint, Daddy." I used faith in myself and motivation. Now, I still am scared. I still have to lie down and use self talk, the difference is, I have confidence I will not faint because I have experiences where the worst case scenario did NOT happen.

To learn more about defense mechanisms and how to overcome them, I recommend a book by Drs. C. Cortman and H. Shinitzky titled, Your Mind.