The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery

CHAPTER 1

THE MOUNTAIN IS YOU

THERE IS NOTHING HOLDING you back in life more than yourself.

If there is an ongoing gap between where you are and where you want to be—and your efforts to close it are consistently met with your own resistance, pain, and discomfort—self-sabotage is almost always at work.

On the surface, self-sabotage seems masochistic. It appears to be a product of self-hatred, low confidence, or a lack of willpower. In reality, self-sabotage is simply the presence of an unconscious need that is being fulfilled by the self-sabotaging behavior. To overcome this, we must go through a process of deep psychological excavation. We must pinpoint the traumatic event, release unprocessed emotions, find healthier ways to meet our needs, reinvent our self-image, and develop principles such as emotional intelligence and resilience.

It is no small task, and yet it is the work that all of us must do at one point or another.

SELF-SABOTAGE IS NOT ALWAYS

OBVIOUS AT THE ONSET

When Carl Jung was a child, he fell on the ground in school and hit his head. When he got hurt, he thought to himself: “Yes, maybe I won’t have to go back to school now.”

Though he is known today for his insightful body of work, he actually didn’t like school or fit in well with his peers. Shortly after his accident, Jung began experiencing sporadic and uncontrollable fainting spells. He unconsciously developed what he would call a “neurosis” and ultimately came to realize that all neuroses are “substitute[s] for legitimate suffering.”

In Jung’s case, he made an unconscious association between fainting and getting out of school. He came to believe that the fainting spells were a manifestation of his unconscious desire to get out of class, where he felt uncomfortable and unhappy. Likewise, for many people, their fears and attachments are very often just symptoms of deeper issues for which they do not have any better way to cope.