The Twisted Road to Triumph: A Shadow Journey
Do you ever self sabotage so you can have the story of triumph?You know what I mean: procrastinate and panic but still meet the deadline, leave late and somehow make it on time, and other scenarios where the stressful, seedy backstories get tossed in the ocean, never to be seen again. Oh, the glorified stories of struggle are regaled, but only so much as they support the positive outcome.
Focusing on the Pleasure, not the Reality
When my scone and latte addiction are in full swing, I think I'm loving life until I try to put on jeans. My wardrobe is mostly dresses and leggings, so it can be a good 10 pounds between jeans wearing. That's probably intentional. That's self sabotage.
Now sometimes I'll stop my bingeing or counteract it with exercise, but usually the addiction prevents those things from happening once they've taken hold.
No one in my life ever stops or challenges these impulses, 'cuz who doesn't love coffee and baked goods?? No one wants to be the bad guy in that camp. And no one wants to be misconstrued as saying I'm getting fat. I get that.
Underlying Motivations
We are in an age of body positivity if you are surrounded by loving people. The thing is, though, I'm not hating on my body. But I do have a preference. I like being lighter so it's easier for me to get in motion. I'm more likely to run when I'm lighter. Cycling is easier. Yoga is more enjoyable. I overall feel better.
What I'd love is for someone to check in about that. Not challenge the eating specifically, but ask what the motivation is behind undermining my efforts to be healthy and active.
Since my support network doesn't look like that right now, I can easily slide past addiction into self sabotage. Mostly because I love a challenge, and I love a triumph. But that's being presumptuous because triumphs are not easy to come by.
Facing the Seedy Underbelly
To use a concrete example, I'll continue with the food issue. If I put on a few pounds, it doesn't feel like a big deal. I could easily lose it, right? No one would notice much either way. There's no big transformation, no big reveal, and no saga. It doesn't change my life much.
Now if I've put on 20 pounds (this is hypothetical, right? ahem), that's a challenge. I like challenges, right? And losing 20 pounds is such a much better story. A story of triumph. Way better than never having put on the weight in the first place.
I'm not positive, but this is what I think my mind and body are subtly doing when I'm not paying attention. To put this in witchy terms: my shadow self is helping me out by making decisions that feed into my love of challenge, triumph, and transformation. I've been going along with it, and now I can't wear any of the jeans in my closet.
Find a Thread and Follow it to the Roots
Looking back to a tumultuous year where I didn't have a consistent sense of security, yet I was having fun and not wearing jeans because they were too loose, life has gotten quite a bit easier of late. During the Year of Tumult, I was meeting those challenges of life by also rising up — using tools to meet them. I meditated. I exercised. I cooked and ate healthily and consciously. I applied myself at work and worked really hard. I maintained social networks and actively built sources of joy into my life.
When more recently my level of security evened out — what a blasé way of saying I met the love of my life, we moved into together, and I established some level of financial and emotional security that I haven't had in a decade — apparently I lumped all those supportive, foundational habits into the We Do This When Struggling category. I didn't drop them all together, but they became erratic, which is worse because my mind can say I'm doing them even though I'm not. Self sabotage much?
Start Where You Are
So, that's where I'm at. Calling my own self out on my own shit. I don't actually want the Weight Loss Challenge, but here I am, facing it. Again. It's an allegory for other spiritual and emotional things going on — my desire for challenge and the story of transformation and triumph. That resonates.
I'll also dig further by having some convos with my Shadow Self to understand her driving motivations and how she's protecting me. There may be deeper roots of worthiness and deserving — can I be happy, loving, stable, safe and fit too?? I say Yes! — I'll see what her perspective is about all that (which will reveal my own underlying fears). The convos are always enlightening, and yet I always want to take the steering wheel back while thanking her for her service (there's no kicking her off the bus because she does have my back, and I appreciate her for that). Wish me luck.
Do you have similar shits to call yourself out on? Or is this just me? Let me know down in the comments.
