Hi, and welcome back to Tiny Sparks. This week, we have a little mini podcast episode. I like to change up the way I present the information to you, because some of us like to listen, some of us like to read, and the good thing is, with the podcast episode, if you don't want to listen, you can read the full transcript below. I’m re-sharing this old episode because it relates perfectly to the conversations I’ve been having over on TikTok about how to truly heal from old patterns and start to do the things we WANT to do, not the things we unconsciously feel we HAVE to do.

And - big news from my corner of the world: after years of research, writing, and late nights, I’m finally nearing the end of my doctoral dissertation. As I look toward this milestone, I’ve been reflecting on all the things I wish I had learned earlier in my learning - practical tools for navigating trauma, building resilience, and creating change that truly lasts. That reflection has sparked something new: I’m developing a curriculum that brings these pieces together in a way that feels clear, grounded, and accessible. Teaching this work is one of the places I feel most alive, and I can’t wait to share it with you. If you’d like to be part of the very beginning, I have two opportunities coming up: a live 5 Steps to Long-Lasting Change class on October 26th, and a mini virtual retreat for women on November 6th.

Now, onto our deep dive into “self-sabotage”!

So this week, I wanted to talk about something that comes up so frequently in therapy and healing work, which is the idea of self-sabotage. I see people all the time on social media talking about this, and very, very often the people I work with will come in and say, oh, I was making so much progress. And then I did this, this and this this weekend. And I'm just too self-sabotaging. And oftentimes the way that term self-sabotaging is used is it's very critical, it's very collapsing. It's this idea that I was doing good and now I'm bad. I'm sabotaging myself. And very often, what I want to support people in knowing is that it's not that you are “bad” or purposefully getting in your own way, but rather that a part of your brain is trying to protect you and keep you safe. That automatically shifts the lens from this collapsing blaming lens to this understanding of there's something deeper happening when we talk about self-sabotage.

People mean all kinds of things when they talk about self-sabotage. A lot of times people will talk about things like procrastination, oh, I landed this project that I'm really, really excited about, but instead of working on it this weekend, I scrolled on my phone and watched TV all weekend. I am self-sabotaging and always delaying things- I'm never following through. Self-sabotage can show up in other ways, too. Perfectionism can be a form of self-sabotage, where we set impossibly high standards for ourselves that we can never reach. But oftentimes, self-sabotage people mean that they're not on the path that they want to be on. So they'll say, well, I was really wanting to go to the gym every day to take care of my health, and I did it for three weeks. But then this weekend, I didn't go to the gym at all. I laid on the couch all day and I just ate snacks, and I didn't move, and I didn't even go on a walk. I'm just really self-sabotaging.

So first, there's this really problematic idea, which is that when we're wanting to make a change in our lives or to do something differently, or to move toward something different, that we have to be doing it exactly right every single day, or else we're not successful in that change. That, in its core, is a misunderstanding of how our brain works. When we're trying to make changes or move towards something we want that is new, that is different, that is something we haven't done before, we have to think about our brain and to understand that the things we have done repeatedly in our lives are like beautiful, paved highways in our brain. Our brain creates these patterns on based on what has happened to us in the past, so that it can predict what is going to happen in the future.

So you can kind of think of the roadways in a city. They're not going to make beautiful big paved highways out in the rural country where not a lot of people go. They might have one, two lane rural state highway. They're not going to have a big, beautiful, gorgeous 12 lane interstate. They make the interstates around the major cities where there are a lot of people going, and our brain works the same way. It builds these pathways to say, this is something that's happened in the past. It's likely something that will happen in the future. It's something that I need to be able to access regularly. So I will build a roadway around it. It doesn't matter whether it's something that we like, something we don't like. It's all about what is going to keep us safe, keep us going and what we do repeatedly. When you want to make a change in your brain, you are saying, I want to go off of this interstate highway that I drive on every single day, and I want to go out into the Amazon jungle. That's what it's like in the rest of our brain outside of these neural pathways and predictive patterns.

So when you're wanting to make a change in your life, you are basically getting off the interstate and you get off the exit, and not only is there not a road there, but there's a really, really dense, dense, dense jungle. So it's not realistic to expect that you're going to be able to make a sudden change, because when you get off the interstate and you're in the jungle, it's like, huh, I can't even I can't even drive my car. I'm gonna have to get out of my car and start walking and start hacking down vines. That's what it's like when we want to make a change in our brain. So you can see why. First off, it's simply unrealistic to expect that when we want to make a change, we're going to do the change every single time. Like maybe ten times you'd get in your car and you drive on the interstate, which is not going to the gym. And the 11th time you go out into the jungle, you start hacking down vines, and you do go to the gym. Very often when we start to make a change, we have some initial excitement about making the change, so we're able to override and just kind of go out into the jungle. But after a while, our brain gets fatigued and wants to go back to that old pathway of not going to the gym. In this example, it starts to get a lot deeper than that when we recognize that not only is our brain not wanting to go from the roadway into the jungle, but it's also trying to protect us and keep us safe.

The brain wants to maintain something called homeostasis. And homeostasis means keeping everything the same. It wants to do that because it doesn't want to expend extra energy trying to make changes all of the time. So it wants to stay on those familiar, comfortable highways. When we tried to disrupt the homeostasis by going against the same things that we have always done, the brain is going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa whoa, pump the brakes. In a way, our brain will actively resist change. Then add the next level onto this: when we start to understand that these predictive pathways, these neural pathways in our brain formed to keep us safe based on what has happened to us in our earlier life. Then it gets even more complex.

tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

So if you start to think about what in this example, what does going to the gym represent? Let's just say that going to the gym represents taking care of yourself, that you really want to be able to show up and take care of yourself. It doesn't matter if you walk ten minutes on the treadmill or you stretch or whatever it is, you just really want to start taking care of yourself more. Sounds great right? We're always talking about self-care and taking care of ourselves. What happens if in your early life what you learned is having needs made everyone upset? Maybe in your house what you learned was, when I have a need, when I want something, when I act out a little bit or I reach towards something that I want, everything in my house feels really tense. Maybe it's that your family didn't have a lot of money, so when you wanted something like to go on a field trip, it wasn't that your family didn't want to support you in that, but they just genuinely didn't have the funds. So there was a lot of tension, a lot of stress as your parents tried to figure out how to juggle that and make that work. Or maybe you had caregivers who just couldn't take care of their own needs. They didn't learn how to do that. And so then when you had a need or want or an emotion or an experience that made them feel really overwhelmed, so they pulled back from you, or they sent you to their room or whatever it is, or maybe you lived in an environment that was very emotionally volatile.

So you learn from a young age, having needs and wants was just an unsafe experience. Things already felt so much, so volatile, so unsure, that you just learned to keep your needs and wants shut down- to not take care of yourself, but to focus on taking care of and attuning to everyone else's needs around you. In each of these situations, what is happening is your brain is forming predictive patterns in your brain to say having a need, having a want, having an emotion, having needs, and not focusing on the needs of people around me is dangerous. And this is from the mind of usually a child, a younger part of us. Yes, we can experience this as adults too, but it oftentimes starts in our early environment where children don't have the cognitive complexity- or maybe as adults we don't have the safety- to choose and say, I want to do something differently. This isn't about me. The fact that my parents can't support my needs or my partner or whoever it is isn't about me. We might not have had that opportunity or the ability to do that, because we are so wired to stay in connection to our caregivers in our early life, but instead what we do is we just say, well, if I have to choose between my caregivers and me, I'm going to choose my caregivers. Because it just feels so unsafe to consider anything else. So boom, now you have this really well formed interstate highway in your brain that says choosing myself, having needs, attuning to myself, taking care of myself puts my connection with others at stake, which means it puts my life at stake.

tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Now, when you start to understand that and you say, well, it's really simple, I just want to go to the gym. I just want to take care of myself in that way. Then you start to understand it's not that simple, because not only do you not have that roadway available in the brain out in the jungle, but you have a strong predictive pattern saying, choosing yourself, having needs, attuning to yourself, and taking care of yourself is dangerous. So it's going to start setting off that signal to say a tiger is trying to eat me. And whether we feel that consciously through anxiety or whether we feel that through this pull to not do it, to stay sitting on the couch, we might say, I don't have the “motivation,” because maybe that freeze response starts coming in. All of those things stack up to mean we are not going to do the thing that feels like it threatens our connection to others, or that makes us feel like a tiger is trying to eat us. So while your adult consciousness self might be saying, I want to go to the gym and take care of myself, these old child consciousness predictive patterns in our brain are sending out signals to our survival system to say we're unsafe. So then, of course, you're not going to be consistent about going to the gym.

Something that adds on to this is the experience of guilt and shame. And that's why I take such umbrage at the term self-sabotage, is it puts us back into this guilt and shame pattern. To say, I messed up. I can't do anything, I can't follow through with anything. And if you were criticizing yourself in that way, if you're feeling that heavy, toxic shame, do you think you're more or less likely to start getting back into taking care of yourself in whatever way you want to? Well, less likely, of course, right? If you've been following along with our shame series, you know that shame is actually a process to shut us down and disconnect us from our experience and from what we want for ourselves.

Let's use another example and say that you had a big project that you needed to complete for work, and every time you sat down to work on it, you would feel so anxious because you were like, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can get it right. I just feel like I'm going to mess it up. So you “procrastinate” or you keep yourself busy, you watch Netflix all weekend, you scroll on your phone and you're like, oh, I'm just such a self-sabotager. But if we really slow that down and we look at what was happening when you sat down to work on this work project is maybe you have this predictive pattern in your brain that says, I have to do things perfectly so that I can stay safe and stay in connection to other people. Maybe somewhere along the line in your life you learned that things just felt safer in your home and your school, wherever you were, if you just tried really, really, really hard and achieved things and were perfect, then there was no opportunity to feel all of the overwhelming emotions underneath of what might happen if you weren't perfect. Maybe it wasn't anyone telling you that you needed to be perfect, but maybe things were just a little bit easier in your home when you came home with an A, when you won the soccer game, whatever it is; maybe your parents were just under a lot of stress and not that just made things feel a little bit easier. And so over time, what you learned is: if I do things perfectly, then my connections are safe. Then I am safe, then I am okay. Maybe you also just had the experience of not feeling seen; maybe your emotions couldn't be seen in your family, but you felt seen when you came home from school with a really good grade, or when you achieved something. None of this is saying, oh my gosh, you were so bad as a kid, or your family was so bad or whatever it is. All of it is just noticing that our brain takes in our experiences to create these predictive patterns in our brain- to predict what's going to happen. So if the prediction is: things are safe when I'm perfect, things are not safe when I'm not perfect. Remember, this is coming from our survival brain, from our childhood experiences, not from our adult brain prefrontal cortex. Then it makes so much sense why as an adult we have this underlying pathway, this roadway in our brain that says we have to do things perfectly or we are not okay. Well, that's impossible. It becomes an impossible standard to be perfect. And so instead, we just feel this high level of pressure, of terror, of fear that we have to get it just right or we're going to lose our job, we're going to lose everything, we're going to lose all our friends, we're going to lose our house and be homeless. Even though a part of you knows that it's not true, that old predictive pattern, that child consciousness part of you is getting your survival mode activated so that it feels very true. So then, of course, you would go and procrastinate and watch Netflix and watch TikTok.

Thanks for reading tiny sparks - trisha wolfe! This post is public so feel free to share it.

So all of this to say, when we start to take the word self-sabotage and turn it into self-protection, suddenly it's a totally different lens that we can use to be curious and to observe ourselves and to say, what is happening? What is this subconscious part of me that is coming up and getting in the way of what I want for myself? If you’ve been here for a while, you know how much I emphasize this observation, this noticing, this curiosity of self. And the same thing comes out here, which is we want to start to observe: what is it that I'm wanting for myself and what is getting in the way? And to do that, we need to be able to have enough of the felt sense of safety that our mind and body are online enough to be able to be curious and observe what is happening.

As we are able to do that little by little, then we can start to put our pinky into safety, put our pinky into our present day curious experiencer, our observer, our self, however you want to call it that can notice what is happening, that can notice when that old predictive patterning is getting set off- that can slow down, that can be curious, that can pause and see what are these emotions that are coming up that I'm not even noticing…that when I think about going to the gym, maybe there's a little spike of anxiety, there's a little hint of that old pathway that I'm not allowed to have needs or I'm not allowed to attune to myself. And can I notice that anxiety? Can I be with the part of me that feels anxiety? And instead of pressuring myself to go to the gym, can I see what happened in that moment? If I'm just curious and observing and being with that part of me that is holding all that anxiety, then it becomes not about pressuring to go to the gym, but about noticing what's getting in the way of you taking care of yourself in the way you want to. And when we detach from the outcome because we know it's not really about going to the gym, it's about what going to the gym or finishing the work project represents, then we can come back to how is it we want to feel about being able to show up for ourselves and take care of ourselves? Maybe we just want to feel a little more neutral about taking care of ourselves, and maybe that opens up a lot more possibility to maybe go to the gym one day, go for a walk one day, or rest one day. So again, self-sabotage is actually a self-protection. The more we can notice those parts of us that needed us to be protected, those old survival mode patterns, the more we can build the adult part of us that knows in the moment our life is not at stake anymore, that it's okay for us to try on little ways of taking care of ourselves. It's okay to be with those old emotions that might be coming up from the past, and notice how it's different here in the present.

I can't emphasize enough this idea of detaching from the outcomes and instead just building up curiosity. And we can be curious and observe at any moment, even if it's hours, days, weeks later, that we've been criticizing ourselves and we haven't been going to the gym, and we've just been sitting on the couch and we're stuck in this endless not doing it/criticizing ourselves/not doing it/criticizing ourselves, that's okay. Just the moment you notice it, you have the opportunity to observe. Even if you go back into criticizing yourself, you have fired your neurons in a new direction. And over time, the pathway of observation gets stronger and stronger. And from an observational place, that's where we can say, oh, this is an old roadway. And I want to start to dip my toe into going into the Amazon jungle of showing up for myself, of feeling peace about having needs, of feeling calm about not taking care of everyone else's needs. And that is how we build new pathways in our brain, and that is how we take action. And again, then it makes it so that we don't have to take action every time. We don't have to go to the gym every single day, because the pathway we're building is about showing up for ourselves, taking care of ourselves and attuning to our own needs and not about the outcome of going to the gym. And that is such a life changing lens shift. So if the only thing that you take from today is that self-sabotage is actually self-protection, then what a wonderful new lens you have to try on about being curious in your life of when these protective parts of you might pop up like in Inside Out, where the different emotions run forward and start gnashing on the control board; that's something you can practice noticing and being curious about as much or as little as you'd like to where you are right now.

So thanks again for being here with me. I'd love to hear any thoughts or curiosities you have around self-sabotage, and you can leave your comment here. Or you can reply, and it comes straight to me. Thanks so much!

Opportunities to work with me:

* On October 26th, I’ll be teaching a live class called 5 Steps to Long-Lasting Change. This class is all about making sense of why change feels so hard, and how we can work with the brain and body to make it easier. I’ll walk you through the framework I’ve developed that weaves together neuroscience, memory reconsolidation, and nervous system regulation. It’s practical, compassionate, and designed to help you not only see what needs to shift, but also learn how to create changes that truly last! If you can’t attend live, the full recording will be available for you.

* On November 6th, I’ll be leading a mini virtual retreat for women called The Shift. This retreat is about creating space to step out of old survival patterns and into new ways of being that feel steadier, more connected, and more possible. We’ll weave together teaching, guided practices, and reflection so you can not only understand how trauma and resilience show up in your life, but also begin to gently re-map the pathways that keep you stuck. It’s a space for depth, curiosity, and practical tools you can carry with you long after we’re done. This will also be recorded if you can’t attend live (small group sharing will not be recorded for participant privacy, but all teachings will be!).

* Book club! We just finished up Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, and what a deep experience it was. Next up: Unlocking the Emotional Brain - this book is clinical, but truly informational as the seminal resource on all things coherence therapy, memory reconsolidation, and the science behind why things like EMDR and NARM actually work.

By becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack for just $5 a month, you get full access to my biweekly podcast, where I do a deep dive into each chapter, and two live fireside chats, where we connect and explore our learnings together. You also get full access to the archive of the book club, where you can listen to episodes about Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, No Bad Parts, and The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma - all my favorite books for those who truly want to heal from their past, get unstuck, and start moving forward.

tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe