The Shadow Knows

When I read the Book Focusing by Eugene Gendlin, I decided to try the practice he recommended.

At the time, I was wrestling with a major decision and had already taken a particular action. But afterward I found myself wondering:

“Why did I do that?”

I don’t remember Gendlin’s exact process step-for-step anymore, but the essence of it was simple. Sit quietly. Ask the question honestly. Then wait.

You’re not looking for an intellectual answer.
You’re not running over the question analytically.

You’re just waiting to see what emerges.

As I recall, the exercise only took a few minutes.

In my case, the answer arrived almost immediately.

One word:

Sabotage.

And no, I don’t think the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage song was in my head at the time.

What my inner knowing seemed to be telling me was that I had taken the action because, at some deeper level, I was sabotaging my own life. Or at least sabotaging a particular direction my life was moving in.

At the time, this completely baffled me.

Consciously, sabotage was not my goal whatsoever.

But somewhere below the level of conscious awareness (what I have referred to as the relative unconscious level of personality), another part of me apparently had different ideas.

Over time, I came to think of this as an encounter with what Carl Jung called the shadow.

The shadow contains the rejected, suppressed, denied, or disowned parts of ourselves. The parts we don’t particularly want to identify with. The parts that may not fit our preferred self-image.

And yet… they still influence us.

Sometimes profoundly.

The action I took back then went against conventional wisdom. It disrupted things. Changed the trajectory of my life in significant ways.

And my inner knowing was essentially telling me:
“Yes. You did this intentionally. Just not consciously.”

What’s interesting is that I now think we all do this to varying degrees.

All the time.

We say we want something.
Then we don’t do it.

Or we start and stop repeatedly.
Or we take actions directly opposed to the outcome we claim to desire.

And if we pay close enough attention, sometimes we can begin to understand why.

Yesterday I wrote about goal setting for a post-FIRE lifestyle and discussed several ideas I pursued intensely for awhile before eventually abandoning or half-abandoning them.

Looking back, I think some of those situations involved a degree of sabotage too.

Although I want to be careful here.

Experimentation is not sabotage.
Exploration is not sabotage.
Learning through lived experience is not sabotage.

Sometimes something simply turns out not to be right for you.

But sometimes… something deeper is happening.

So what are some common ways we sabotage ourselves?

The first is pursuing goals that are fundamentally misaligned with our values or what we genuinely want.

You may be able to force yourself forward temporarily, but sustained energy becomes very difficult when your heart is not truly in it.

Eventually burnout, resistance, distraction, or avoidance often shows up.

The solution there is not usually “try harder.”

It’s gaining clearer alignment. That is another way of saying you seek and gain clarity

Not just intellectual clarity, but emotional clarity too.

The second possibility is limiting beliefs.

You may carry assumptions about yourself that feel objectively true, but really function more like psychological scripts.

“I’m just inconsistent.”
“I always lose momentum.”
“I never finish things.”

Really?

Always?

Or has that simply become part of your identity story?

The third possibility is that the goal activates unresolved pain, fear, or trauma from past experiences.

I touched on this in my Honey Bun Symbology post.

For example, I may think:
“I want to build a business.”

But unconsciously, the idea of entrepreneurship may still be emotionally connected to the stress, overwhelm, and fear I experienced when my house painting business collapsed years ago.

Part of me may genuinely want some part of business ownership, but another part may associate that same path with danger.

That creates internal friction.

The fourth possibility is lack of self-trust.

You no longer fully believe yourself.

Maybe you’ve made too many promises to yourself that you didn’t keep.

Or maybe — and this is important — you keep setting goals that fundamentally violate your nature.

For example:

“I’m going to start running every day.”

Okay… but you hate running.
You’ve always hated running.

Yet you continue treating your dislike of it as weakness rather than information.

So you force yourself into another doomed commitment cycle.

Meanwhile, maybe you absolutely love riding bicycles.

And if you bought a bike instead, you’d naturally ride every day with far less resistance.

Sabotage is not always objectively bad.

Sometimes it’s your deeper self rejecting the wrong path.

And fifth, you may sabotage your goals because your underlying needs are not being met — or because some part of you anticipates they won’t be met if you continue down the path you’re on.

This can create subtle resistance:
procrastination,
avoidance,
incongruent behaviors,
loss of motivation,
constant distraction.

And this category can be tricky because it may require shifting your identity (e.g., working with your personal myths).

Or it may simply require redesigning your goals so they better support your actual emotional, psychological, relational, or lifestyle needs.

It depends.

Looking back now, I can see that the situation I mentioned earlier likely involved several of these dynamics simultaneously.

Misalignment with what I really wanted in my heart of hearts.
Avoidance of the pain and low-level trauma I had experienced in the past.
The path I was on was not addressing my unmet needs.

But when my inner knowing gave me the word sabotage, I couldn’t make sense of it.

Now I can.

And honestly, I suspect many of us have moments like this throughout our lives.

We think we’re failing, or procrastinating, or we lack discipline.

But sometimes another part of us is trying to course-correct before we head too far down the wrong road.

Which raises an important question:

Is there something in your life you keep saying you want…
yet repeatedly avoid?

Something you start but never finish?

Something where your actions and your stated desires never quite line up?

Maybe your shadow is not merely trying to stop you.

Maybe it’s trying to tell you something.

In my case, I can now see very clearly that my shadow was absolutely at work in several major moments of my life.

And with enough time and reflection, what once looked like sabotage now looks a lot more like self-preservation… or perhaps even redirection.