Reversing Self Sabotage And Overcoming Abandonment

Self-sabotage is the residual of unresolved abandonment. Its lingering insecurity and self-doubt cause us to forfeit our long-range goals.

What about you? Do you sabotage your relationships? Your diet? Your career? Your bank account? These are among the ways, large and small, that people abandon themselves. By abandoning our most important dreams and goals, by shortchanging ourselves on a daily basis, by succumbing to Outer Child’s incessant need for immediate gratification, we seek feel-good relief rather than work toward substantial fulfillment.

Outer Child is the part of the personality that breaks our diets and gets attracted to all the wrong people. Outer Child is the harbinger of self-sabotage. Self-sabotage, in turn, is all about self-abandonment.
Self-abandonment stems from not loving yourself enough to give yourself what you really want and need. Self-abandonment means not bothering to delay your need for instant gratification in favor of taking the longer, more rewarding path toward reaching your true potential. When you don’t care enough about yourself to pursue your most important goals, it means you’re letting your Outer Child run your life. You fall into old habits:

• You rage at your significant other, rather than contain your emotional impulses.
• You pout and storm away rather than remain open to a healthy exchange of feelings.
• You avoid doing things to advance your career for yet another unproductive week.
• You run up your credit card rather than deposit money into a savings account.
• You go for a second bowl of pasta rather than stick to your diet.
  You numb out in front of the TV rather than clean out the garage.

When you learn to use the tools of self-love, your Adult Self finally takes charge and guides you outside of your comfort zone, allowing you to take forward strides.
Why let Outer Child continue to spin your wheels with its compulsive over-avoidance?
The tools of abandonment recovery involve making a significant internal connection — a connection to self. This bond serves as the basis for becoming:

• emotionally self-assured in relationships
• consistent in your fitness program no matter how tired, hungry, bored, or stressed you become
• determined to fight through your inertia and anxiety to promote your career.

Some people feel that loving themselves means being self-indulgent, like buying or eating one more thing… Eat now, diet tomorrow; spend now, pay tomorrow; cling now, cry tomorrow. But these quick fixes don’t express self-love because they move you backward rather than forward.
When you practice self-love — Big You to Little You — you stop acting out in compulsive over-avoidance. You overcome your complacency at work and temper in relationships. Instead, you build steadily toward all of your long-range goals.
You can’t think your way out of self-defeating patterns. You DO your way out. Reversing self-abandonment means taming your Outer Child, but beware: Outer doesn’t want to DO anything differently. Outer will hold out for the magic pill that makes everything happen as if by osmosis.

The true solution is to take behavioral steps that demonstrate unconditional self-regard. Positive actions, even baby steps, help to boost your self-esteem and confidence and create momentum. Abandonment recovery provides the tools to take these steps. The exercises function like physical therapy for the brain. You work steadily, incrementally to reverse self-abandonment, and reach your goals.

Susan Anderson © Sept 27, 2013

Originally published at https://www.abandonment.net.