Are You Using Your Painful Past to Predict the Future?
The Psychology of Self-Sabotage
What fears, based on your painful experiences from the past, are you trying to confirm with your current behavior?
“David, this doesn’t make any sense! Why would I want to confirm my fears?”
I know it sounds weird. But I guarantee that by the time you’re done reading, you’ll recognize at least one fear you’ve been trying to confirm.
Describing how our lives can be ruled by our past, the great Jungian psychoanalyst James Hollis writes,
“Paranoia is extrapolating a core fear to multiple other recipients, even those wholly undeserving. It’s a form of “knowing” something—a believing something in the past and transferring it to the present and making it predictive of the future…” (A Life of Meaning)
Let’s take, for example, the core fear of betrayal. People can experience crushing betrayals that leave lasting marks on their psyche. A parent might’ve abandoned them, or a partner left them for someone they considered a friend.
What emerges from this is a fear that evolves into a conviction.
“All women are going to betray me.”
or
"All men are going to betray me.”
or
"All people are going to betray me.”
The fear turns into a conviction that you are trying to prove because one thing worse than the betrayal is the uncertainty of whether the next person is going to betray you or not. We know that humans hate uncertainty and go to great lengths, often self-sabotaging, just to avoid it. So rather than living with the possibility that the next person might betray you, you adopt thought and behavior patterns to prove they definitely will betray you.
“If he/she betrayed me, you will too. I will constantly look for evidence to confirm my suspicion. By doing so, I will make our relationship unhealthy and push you away. Once the relationship fails, I’ll have my proof - you betrayed me.”
Once again, the brilliance of James Hollis in explaining how we use projection as a protection against uncertainty.
“Projection is one of the psyche’s ways of trying to make the new moment (and every moment is new) familiar.” (A Life of Meaning)
Do yourself a favor. Take 30 minutes to sit with yourself in silence and journal on the question we started with:
“What fears, based on my painful experiences from the past, am I trying to confirm with my current behavior? What are the behavior patterns I’m using to prove my case?”
Thank you for reading.
P.S. For more questions that will help you rewrite the story of your life, check out my self-discovery course, Clarity Quest.
Interesting blurb on the predictive power of our thoughts.
What are the next steps, once you've identified aberrant lines of thinking?
How do you 'rewrite' those maladaptive patterns if you don't have any positive experiences to draw from?
Big fan of James Hollis, I sometimes wonder that he fills a somewhat similar space to JBP, but is infinitely more competent/worthwhile. He could offer so much more to people if he had the same prominence of JBP.