Release Old Patterns To Align With Your Authentic Self Part2

In this follow-up talk, we delve deeper into the process of releasing outdated coping mechanisms and integrating new patterns that align with your true self. Together, we’ll explore how to create space for greater ease, clarity, and connection within your daily life. Through self-awareness and practical insights, you’ll learn how to strengthen your alignment with your soul-led purpose, paving the way for sustained transformation and inner peace.

Transcript

Welcome back to this second part of the most common saboteurs and coping strategies.

If you have not listened to the first episode,

Please do so before listening to this one,

So it all makes sense to you.

In the last episode,

We explored the avoider,

Controller,

Hyperachiever,

And hyperrational saboteurs.

Today we are going to explore the next final five,

Named the hypervigilant,

The pleaser,

Restless,

Stickler,

And victim saboteur.

We are also going to talk about the judge and how the judge might play out in our lives and businesses.

And at the end,

I will share with you some tools you can use to start to rewire your experience and soften the saboteur's impact on you.

Let's start with the hypervigilant.

The hypervigilant is about looking for the hair in the soup.

When we have this coping strategy active,

Even if everything runs smoothly and works out perfectly fine,

We don't trust it because we expect another shoe to drop and believe it is too good to be true.

It's also hard for us to trust others,

As we believe everyone always has an agenda,

And so we always expect the worst in everything.

And as energy always follows energy,

Of course we are able to collect the proof of this,

As that's what we end up attracting.

So this coping mechanism gets proven over and over that it is right,

Making it very hard to even start to think about the idea that there is another way to be an experienced life.

And you end up feeling it even more,

So you can't trust anyone.

Just note this for a moment.

Does it feel true to you?

And is this something that might be playing out in your life currently?

I have also often observed that we do not trust our bodies or feel like our bodies might be betraying us when this is active,

Especially if we had health issues in the past.

This can have the flavor of the victim coping strategy and equally of the hyper-vigilant,

As we always wait for our health to decline or something else to show up.

The next one is the pleaser.

The pleaser coping strategy always puts the needs of others first.

Indirectly we try to gain acceptance and affection by helping,

Pleasing,

Rescuing,

Or flattering others.

We lose sight of our own needs and become resentful as a result.

Most of the time this coping strategy has been developed at a very young age,

Either because one of our caregivers or parents had an issue with temper and we needed to please them,

So all was happy and fine.

Or one of our parents or caregivers was not well and we needed to support them and always tried our best to keep them happy.

Sometimes this can also develop later in life if we are stuck in an unhealthy relationship or work environment where we again need to please to keep the peace.

The issue here is that we are burning out,

As we are giving all we have got,

And at the end of the day,

When it is time to take care of ourselves,

There is just nothing more to give.

The next saboteur is the restless.

When we have an active restless coping strategy,

We are consistently searching for excitement,

Looking for the next best activity,

And are constantly busy,

Never really at peace or content or connected with the current activity we are doing.

Usually this shows up when we do not like to feel our emotions or feelings as we have been taught that they are not appropriate,

Or we feel it is not safe for us to feel them.

Sometimes our inner perfectionist shows up.

We want things to be perfect but are not able to put in the energy or the discomfort to make them perfect.

So we distract ourselves.

This situation can also occur in the restless controller and the hyperachiever,

Even though it is the main issue of the stickler,

Our next coping strategy.

The stickler is the embodied perfectionist.

If this coping mechanism is active within your own life or business,

We need order and organization to feel safe in our experience.

We take things too far and experience anxiousness as we put ourselves under so much pressure to make way more things perfect than we can handle at one time.

This coping strategy is similar to the pleaser.

We have learned early that it is important to be perfect so our parents or caregivers are happy and pleased with us and all is peaceful.

You might have noticed by now that many of the saboteurs share similarities but show up differently.

It's also interesting to see how our characters have impacted them forming.

Siblings who have the exact same upbringing might develop similar but different saboteurs to deal with the same situation.

We are all individuals and how things play out for us in our lives might look completely different.

It's these saboteurs that are most common and that usually play out in our lives in one way or another.

Let's look at the last one,

The victim.

When we have an active victim coping mechanism,

We might be perceived as temperamental or emotional at times.

This doesn't always reflect how we experience it playing out.

The underlying story or message we tell ourselves is,

Why always me?

This always happens to me.

Why does it always need to be so hard?

Often we experience a sense of betrayal.

This can also be a betrayal from our own body.

And again,

As energy always follows energy,

This is often how we experience life.

It can be too much.

Often the body feels softer,

The shoulders are bent forward,

And the head and vision is dropped more towards the ground.

I can't stress enough that no matter what coping strategies are active in your life,

They do not want to do you any harm.

They just want to support you because they developed at a time when we needed them to cope and survive a situation.

The issue arises when we live life continuously through their lens and are not aware of them so they can run the show of our lives unchecked.

It is important to understand that we can't fight them.

Because if we do,

They become even stronger,

As they are activated by stress and stresses.

The key to overcoming our coping mechanisms is to come to peace with them,

While also committing ourselves to catching them when they come online,

So we can do things differently and build a stronger embodiment of our authentic self.

By doing so,

They eventually start to drift off more and more into the background,

Becoming weaker and weaker.

A most powerful first step you can take is to become aware of how and when you are judging yourself,

Others or circumstances.

You can see our judges as the overarching saboteur.

Once we give it room and don't keep it under check,

All the other coping strategies come out to play.

So if you are only able to take away one thing from today and start to implement it into your life,

I recommend looking out for your own judgment.

For me personally,

It took me ages to actually discover my judge,

As I'm generally a very non-judgmental person.

Once I discovered it,

I was surprised how often it actually showed up.

Don't be put off in case you notice this too.

It's just because our awareness is there,

So we start to notice it more often.

It's as if we are planning to buy a certain car and all of a sudden we see the car or the color of the car everywhere.

Wherever before,

We did not notice it that often.

So once you discover your judge,

I invite you to notice how this is wired and name it.

Pick a name that resonates with you.

I call mine snob because I judge things that don't look balanced.

I discovered it in a doctor's office as I was running slightly late and I felt stress.

As I was sitting there,

My mind went straight to how can they use this pattern of carpeting with the pattern of the chairs and what were they thinking?

As I discovered this,

It started to make totally sense why both my horses have four black legs and my dog has four white stockings and I would never have the idea to get an animal that is not balanced in their markings.

Thinking of this makes me cringe these days as it goes against all grains within myself and feels so superficial,

Which is the opposite of who I authentically am.

I'm sharing this with you to normalize it and show you that our coping strategies often have nothing to do with who we truly are.

So once you have become aware of your judge,

How and when it shows up,

And when you have named it,

I invite you to commit yourself to catching yourself every time your judge becomes active.

Call it out and bring your awareness back to any sensation you might be able to witness within your own system.

When we allow ourself to pause and notice our physical sensations for a brief moment,

The parts of our brains where our authentic self lives becomes active again.

And the parts of our brain where our saboteurs live becomes less active once more.

We can do this,

For example,

By noticing our breath for a moment,

Feel our feet touching the ground,

Or by rubbing our fingertips against each other and truly noticing the fingertip bridges for a minute.

The beauty is the more often we do this,

The more and stronger neural pathways we build.

So it becomes easier and easier for us to show up as our authentic self.

Usually it's a process.

I think one of the main things is to become aware of what is happening for you.

Be gentle and patient with yourself and commit yourself over and over each day to show up.

All our coping strategies are triggered and become activated when we experience stress or worry.

So another thing to become aware of is to support ourself to soften these negative feelings.

Maybe it is helpful to you to create a list of what worries or stresses you the most and to write down when you face these things.

So you can plan ahead of time to take extra pauses and extra care of yourself in order to come back to the present moment and the sensations in your physical being,

To support yourself more deeply so you can show up as your authentic self with more ease moving forward.

Sometimes it's also helpful to put reminders in your phone to take a short pause,

To connect back during the day regularly so your coping strategies don't have the chance to go overboard.

And so you are able to come back to be in the driver's seat of your life over and over.

As when we are able to show up authentically,

As us in alignment with our soul,

We nourish ourselves and we give from our overflow and not the lack thereof.

This is when we create true magic in our lives and businesses as we lead by example.

If you would like to learn more about the saboteurs and other coping strategies,

Feel free to reach out.

In the next episode,

We are going to connect with our hero's journey through a visualization and a meditation to make peace with our coping strategies so you can move forward in your life and business with more ease.

If this speaks to you,

I invite you to join me again next week.