Accelerator, Brake . . . Accelerator,
Brake . . . by Alyce Barry
Have you ever heard the term "self-sabotage"?
What I understand "self-sabotage" to mean is the act of
unintentionally, and unconsciously, undermining your
own efforts.
Self-sabotage is one way of resisting change. If you're
like me, when you realize you're resisting change, you
give yourself a hard time about it. I've called myself
"resistant," "foolish," even "undisciplined." And when
I see myself sabotaging my own efforts, I feel even
more foolish, and ashamed.
One of my favorite images for self-sabotage is a person
driving down the road with one foot on the accelerator
and the other foot on the brake.
Would it surprise you to learn, then, that in driving
with a foot on the brake, you've actually been wise,
and strong, and loving?
This is what I think self-sabotage means: That a part
of you is afraid something terrible will happen to you
if you keep driving. So it's keeping its foot on the
brake in a frantic effort to slow you down or stop you
altogether.
It's got its foot on the brakes for what it considers
good reasons -- the need to protect you from something
terrible happening. It isn't resisting because it's
foolish or undisciplined. In fact, it's anything but
undisciplined -- it's hard work to keep your foot
clamped on the brake when the accelerator is feeding
gas to the engine!
WANTS AND RISKS
When I do with Shadow Work with someone, I start by
helping her determine and state clearly where her
accelerator foot wants to go. Then I help her find out
what part of her has its foot on the brake, and what
terrible thing it thinks is going to happen if her
accelerator foot has its way.
In other words, I help her find out what's at risk for
her to go forward. I like calling it a risk because
"risk" makes it clear that there's a choice to be made:
you can take the risk, or choose not to take the risk.
Risks come in all shapes and sizes. But they've all got
one thing in common: they say something good about you.
Is that surprising? Let me give you an example of the
kind of risk I see all the time.
Let's say a woman named Elle comes to work with me.
Elle wants to change jobs because her current job is
boring, or unfulfilling, or too stressful, or doesn't
pay well enough.
LET THE SABOTAGE BEGIN
Elle has changed jobs in the past, so she already knows
what she needs to do: she needs to get the word out to
friends that she's looking, brush up her resume, look
at job ads, and so on. But somehow she keeps putting it
off. She resolves to start on it this Saturday, then
the next, and the next. She prints out her old resume,
intending to revise it by hand, and somehow loses it.
She goes to print it out again but can't find it on her
computer. She finally locates the resume in her
computer's Recycle Bin and realizes she actually
deleted it! It's at this point that she realizes she's
sabotaging herself and asks me for some help.
Elle's accelerator foot wants to change jobs, but her
other foot is on the brake. The part of her with its
foot on the brake is afraid of some of kind of risk
involved in changing jobs.
WISE, AND STRONG . . .
Because a woman's job has so much impact on her life,
there may be many different risks for Elle in changing
jobs.
Let's say one risk is that her new job will look good
at first and then turn out to be just as bad as the old
one. We talk about this a little, and it turns out this
happened to her once. She changed jobs, and her new one
was better in some ways but worse in others. She gave
herself a hard time about it, judging herself harshly
for having spent all that time and effort only to wind
up back at square one. She found this self-judging
painful, so it's no wonder she doesn't want to risk
going there again. In fact, it's actually pretty wise
for her to be trying to avoid more painful
self-judging. As we talk it through, however, Elle
realizes that she's already judging herself harshly for
not changing jobs. An opposing risk is beginning to
balance the original risk, and the balance between them
is making it easier for her to contemplate making a
change.
Elle's staying in her old job is also a sign of
strength. She's been kicking herself for not moving on,
so she's seeing herself as kind of weak right now. But
in my opinion, it takes a lot of strength to show up
every day at a job you dislike. You've got to put some
pieces of yourself "into shadow" to get through the
day, and it takes energy to keep them out of sight.
. . . AND LOVING, TOO
Staying in her old job also shows what a loving person
Elle is. And not just because she doesn't want to
subject herself to the pain of moving to another job
and then finding it's no better. As we talk about it
some more, we find out Elle is loving somebody else by
staying in her current job, too: she's loving the
friends she has there. Having changed jobs before, she
knows how common it is to fall out of touch with former
coworkers once you no longer have a workplace in
common.
But this isn't the end of it. I'm guessing there's
someone else she's loving, too. When a woman can't
leave a job even when she dislikes it intensely, what I
picture in my head is a bond that she wants to sever
and can't. I don't know who's on the other end of that
bond, but I know one way to find out.
I ask Elle to imagine that we have someone in the room
to play the role of a person working in a job they
don't like. I ask her if she would tend to choose a man
or a woman to play this role, and she says, "A man." I
ask her what he's like, and she says, "He's standing,
kind of hunched over, looking depressed." I ask Elle if
we can use my music stand to represent him, and I
adjust the music stand so that it's kind of hunched
over.
I ask Elle if there's a color that captures the essence
of this role, and she says, "Blue." I put a piece of
blue fabric around the music stand. I ask Elle if
there's a line he can speak that sums up what it's like
for him to work in a job he dislikes. She says the line
is, "I don't want to be here."
Then I ask Elle if she'll come to the other end of the
room with me. Together, we stand and look back at the
music stand. I tell her I'm going to repeat the line
again, and I want her to look, and listen, and feel in
her body, and tell me, What's her reaction to a part
like this?
I repeat the line, and she says she feels sad. We use a
small chair to play this sad reaction, which she drapes
with yellow fabric, and its line is, "But I want you
here with me!"
Together, Elle and I stand where we can see both these
parts: the blue music stand saying, "I don't want to be
here," and the yellow chair saying, "But I want you
here with me!"
I tell Elle I'm going to repeat their lines again, and
I want her to look, and listen, and feel in her body,
and tell me, Where has she seen these before? Because
it's my guess that she wasn't born with them inside
her, she must have learned them somewhere along the
way. Who are these people?
CONNECTION TO THE PAST
I repeat the lines a few times, and Elle says the blue
music stand reminds her of her father. She tells me a
little about him, about how he worked for years in a
job he disliked, when he really wanted to be an artist.
He'd been taught by his parents that you can't make a
living as an artist. They persuaded him to go into a
lucrative profession he disliked. Occasionally, as Elle
was growing up, he said in a moment of frustration that
he'd rather be starving in a garret somewhere. To young
Elle, this meant that he didn't want to be with her and
the family. She was too young to understand that he was
simply venting his frustration about a job he disliked.
In that moment when she believed he didn't want to be
with her and the family, Elle lost part of her
connection to her father. And she did what we all do
when we lose someone: she took something "to remember
him by." She took staying in a job you dislike, which
reminded her of her father.
Now, years later, Elle is working in a job she
dislikes, just as her dad did. The little girl inside
her is afraid of losing this unconscious connection
with the father she loves so much. This is the real
reason why she's been sabotaging herself. The risk for
her in changing jobs is losing connection with a father
she adores and wants to remember forever.
Elle may have been thinking all this time that she
wasn't loving her father enough, when in fact, she was
loving him with everything she had. She has proven her
love by working all this time in a job she dislikes.
She sees for the first time what a loving person she
really is. She gets an inner shift in identity that
will transform her life.
OTHER POSSIBLE RISKS
There are many such risks that we encounter in our
lives, and every one of them says something good about
us. A woman might not leave a job because of the risk
of stepping into the unknown. Most of us step into the
unknown every day, and while it's often uncomfortable,
it's not usually enough to stop us. So it's likely that
at some point in the past, she stepped into the unknown
and it didn't work out so well. She is wisely very
cautious about doing so again.
Another woman might not leave a job because it might
feel like leaving friends behind. ("Will I still belong
with the old crowd?") Yet another woman might not leave
a job because she feels undeserving of a job she truly
loves. ("Is having a job I love too good to be true?")
Still another woman might not leave a job because it
makes her feel like a malcontent. ("Am I bad for
wanting something I love?")
WHETHER YOU SAY YES OR NO
One of the great things about facing risks is that
you're doing important work whether you take the risk
or not. Choosing to say "no" to a risk is just as
valuable as saying "yes." Saying "no" is a way of
setting a boundary, and setting boundaries is important
work, in my opinion.
Just seeing what the risk is can make it easier to say
"yes," especially when we can see the positive things
the risk says about us -- that we have been wiser,
stronger, and more loving than we knew.
Seeing the positive messages in the risks we're facing
can lift some of the shame we feel about resisting
change. And less shame means clearer vision about what
to do next.
Alyce Barry
(Feb., 1996, Lake Delavan, WI)
Writer, Shadow Work Coach, Facilitator
www.alycebarry.com
alycebarry@qwest.net
303-485-5400
Alyce Barry is a certified Shadow Work group facilitator and coach, with a client practice in person and over
the phone. After many years in the Chicago area, she now resides in Colorado in the foothills of the Rockies.
Alyce did Woman Within in February 1996 at Lake Delavan, which she describes as a profoundly transformative
experience that helped her reclaim her beauty and return to a spirituality that is now central to her life.
She became involved in Shadow Work in 1995 and was certified in 2001.
She enjoys speaking about Shadow Work to
large and small groups that have included the International Coach Federation and the Master Facilitator Journal.
A writer since age 12, Alyce has published book reviews, essays and short stories, and is the editor of the Shadow
Work email newsletter. She is finishing a book about Shadow Work with the working title "Shameless." She welcomes
visits to her website at www.alycebarry.com
and loves responding to comments on her blog.
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